Lent For (Absolute) Beginners: Against Being Glum

 

The nuts and bolts are this. Lent is the Church season that comes before Easter, beginning (in the West) on Ash Wednesday,
and ending with the first Easter service. Easter marks the death and resurrection of Jesus, which Christians believe changes everything. It’s the most important festival in the Church calendar. So it makes sense to have another season, preparing us for it.

 

You may well have heard that Lent lasts “40 days and 40 nights”. There are a couple of theories why, but 40 seems to be a “round number” in the Bible. But in fact, from Ash Wednesday to the Saturday before Easter Day is 47 days. This is because the Sundays don’t count. Every Sunday is a Feast Day of the Resurrection, a mini-Easter. So it’s right to remember that Easter is already with us through it all.

 

To be clear: Christians tend to call times when we are encouraged to rejoice “Feasts”, no matter whether a big meal is involved or not. Lent is not a “Feast” but a “Fast”, again, whether or not we cut out some meals. Here “fasting” really means taking time away from distractions to reflect and be honest about ourselves. Like all the Christian seasons, it wasn’t established by Jesus. Rather, it grew up over centuries, as Christians wanted to mark major events in the life of Jesus and the Church. The word “Lent” is probably not originally a religious word. It is probably another word for Spring, for Lent is a Spring season. The tradition of “Spring cleaning” may be related.

 

In normal years, on Ash Wednesday many worshippers have the chance to be marked, usually on the forehead, with ash, usually in the shape of a cross, and to hear words such as these: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ” or “Repent and believe in the gospel”.

 

Fasting. Dust and Ashes. Mortality, Death. Sin, Repentance. This bundle of ideas may well give the impression that Lent is a glum season, a time to feel bad about ourselves. It’s undoubtedly the case that, over the years, it has sometimes been taken in this way. But that doesn’t make it right. Rather, we are to remember that we are dust and to dust we shall return - to remember that we are mortal - that our lives are limited. And all this is really telling us that we are precious. Our lives our precious. Only you will experience this present moment as you. Only you, in the history of the universe. Neither you nor the moment will come round again. So just under the surface is this thought: Are you making the most of your precious, your unique life?

 

Christians (in the West) these days tend not to “fast” in any dramatic way. The custom has grown up of giving up just one or two things, say, meat and television, or puddings and coffee. In any case, the idea is that you give up what’s good for you – or at least not bad for you. (Things that are bad for you are best given up on the spot; you don’t wait for a particular season.) Yes, it can be good to give up good things, for a spell. It’s a way on reflecting on how we treat the things around us.

 

Do we take them for granted? Do we “need” them more than we should? Do we feel we are “not really ourselves” if we can’t lean on them, consume them, make them ours? Can we turn the discomfort we feel when we go without into a prayer to God to help us through? Mightn’t that be a good thing to do in its own right?

 

Lent is also a good time to take up new good things, or more of the good things we have. Here we may think of Bible-reading, other spiritual reading, prayer, or simply sitting still before God and Christ, and of course helping others in really practical ways. These things are good things – good for us. They are not intended as burdens or duties. Lent is an invitation to connect with these good things, and this way of thinking about them.

 

In other words, Lent is the time in the Church year above all others for us to ask ourselves who we are, what we really hold dear, and if and how we might live differently. We can even say it is the season for experiments. Rather than making us feel bad about ourselves, Lent itself is an encouragement to feel good about ourselves. This is because it is based on the conviction that we really can change; we do have the freedom to change. This is why in churches which offer structured “confession”, Lent is a good time to make the most of that, to be freed from our sins by words of forgiveness.

 

But Lent it is never an end in itself. It’s a way of getting us to reflect honestly, so that when we come to all the drama, sadness, pain, joy, surprise, love and forgiveness of Holy Week and Easter, we are that bit more open – honestly open - to what God is showing us there.

Sermon. "Go Ye"

Sermon. St Mary’s Great Ilford. 8 March 2020  

Lent 2 (Year A)

Genesis 12.1-4a

In today’s first reading, from the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, we are introduced to Abraham. Actually, that is not true, in two ways. First, Abraham is not yet Abraham; he has his earlier name of Abram (or Avram), meaning something like High Father. Second, if we were reading through the book of Genesis, we would already have met Avram. In the preceding chapter, we are given his family tree. We are also told that his family, led by his father, Terah, already intended to move from Ur to Canaan, but had settled in Haran instead, where Terah died.  

  

In today’s reading, then, we move from the big picture, of the clan of Abram and their movements as a family, to the detail of Abram himself. The movement of the narrative is slowed right down. And something really dramatic happens. Something momentous, miraculous even, happens. And we can miss it. What do I mean?  

  

I mean that Gd speaks to Avram. Gd addresses Avram. Gd uses - so the story tells us - human language to give Avram a message, a command. This, as far as we can tell, has not happened before. It is a radically new thing in Avram’s life. Indeed, it gives his life its purpose. It is the beginning, in more ways than one, of his life’s journey.  

  

If we missed altogether how astonishing this is - that Gd speaks to Avram - we need not be critical of ourselves. The text itself presents Gd’s speech as perfectly natural, normal even. The Hebrew is as normal as the English: “And the LORD said to Avram…” And Avram is apparently unperturbed by being spoken to by Gd, and simply responds, simply obeys. We may well want to ask exactly what happened. How did Avram know it was Gd, for example? But we are not told.  

  

So we may well want to conclude that this is deliberate. That the message here is that Gd is intimately involved with us, and, when Gd speaks, we need not be bowled over by fear and awe, we can simply respond. We can say yes to Gd.  

  

There is something unusual about the Hebrew which the English does not convey. The expression “Go” in English does not capture the Hebrew well. The Hebrew is literally: “Go to yourself” or “Go for yourself”. It is one occasion when the King James Version actually does it: “Get thee out” it says. “Go ye” is another translation.  

  

This expression is rare. So it is likely to be telling us something important. It may be that Gd, who is always intimately involved with us, and who can speak quite naturally to us, can issue commands to us, and those commands may be difficult to obey, may involve risk and loss and hardship, but they will also be “for us”, they will be about going with the grain of our truest selves. They will be about us becoming more ourselves. “Go for yourself”.  

  

By the way, the only other time this Hebrew form is found in connection with Avram is when Gd gives Abraham another command, the hardest command of all, that he prepares to sacrifice his son, Isaac. So the expression is surely a solemn one, and not a throwaway line.  

  

Avram then is to go, is to leave his country, and his kindred, and his father’s house. Notice how the intensity of what Avram has to leave behind grows. He is to leave not only his country (hard enough) but his wider family, and not only his wider family, but his more immediate family too. 

  

And/but but/and if Avram does this, then he will be blessed and blessings will abound. He will be blessed and blessings will abound. Any who bless him will themselves be blessed. And in him all the families of the earth will be blessed. Except it is not quite that simple. The Hebrew may indeed say that in Avram all the families of the earth will be blessed. But it can just as naturally be translated as in Avram all the families of the earth will bless themselves. You know, like a parent saying to a child: “May you grow up to be like Avram, rich in blessing”. Unfortunately, the context doesn’t really help settle the matter here. We simply have to make a choice. But in any event Avram stands for blessing.  

  

So in these few verses we are told important truths. The truth is expressed in story form, as so often in the Bible. It is, then, more an invitation to ponder, and take to heart, than it is a lesson to be learned like an equation or spelling. The truth in question says that we need to remember that Gd is close to us, is intimately involved with us, and can even speak to us, can command us to act, that the action Gd command us to take can be hard and costly, but that at another level it will truly be “for us”, but it will never be wholly for us, it will always be so that blessings abound in the world around us.  

  

Now, you and I know how the story continues with Abraham and Sarah. It is involved. There are hard times. Abraham certainly makes some mistakes along the way. It would be very wrong to think of Gd as always obviously alongside Avram simply offering reassuring words. That is not how life was for Avram, and we know full well it is not how life is for us.  

  

So, what do we do with this story? We can indeed treat today’s first reading as an invitation, a call to draw us in. It may resonate with us strongly, but even if it does not, we can still ask ourselves, well, how would life be, if it really were true that Gd is close to us, is intimately involved with us, and can even speak to us, can command us to act, that the action Gd commands us to take can be hard and costly, but that at another level it will truly be “for us”, but it will never be wholly for us, but it will always be so that blessings abound in the world around us? How, then, to live?  

These surely are questions that take us close to the essence of this still-young Lenten season.  

  

Amen.  

  

Sermon: Jesus, the Jew, Turns to Torah

Sermon. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford, 1 March 2020. 

First Sunday of Lent 

Gospel: Matthew 4.1-11 

Last week, we heard of Fr Lee’s moving visit to peak of the Mount of Transfiguration. The journey up, in the taxi, was difficult and dangerous, but the peace from the summit made up for all of that. In contrast, I have never been to the Mount of Transfiguration, but I have been to the Mount of Temptations. Make of that what you will (you will any way). 

In any event, I can tell you this: the journey up to the Mount of Temptations is easy. It’s a steep old climb, but it is so steep that you go up in a cable car. It was comfortable. There was just the slightest sign that things had not always gone smoothly. On the door of the cable car pod was a sign (and this is a true story): “Do not open this door when the vehicle is moving.”  

• 
  
• The arduous journey to the Mount of Transfiguration, bringing life-giving light, over against 
• the deceptively easy journey to the Mount of Temptations, bringing a need to do battle with the diabolical.  

You may well think there is a sermon, right there, and I am done. But, if so, I must disappoint you. It doesn’t quite work after all – because after my comfortable journey to the Mount of Temptations, we visited a monastery, with beautiful icons, and (I’d say) a similar orientation to serenity as at the other summit.  

So let us return to the gospel text, and Matthew’s story of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness. Now, we are not told if Jesus’ own journey there was difficult or delightful. We are told it was direct: straight after his baptism and the hearing of the Voice from Heaven, Jesus “was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness” [Matt 4.1], into the wild places. He has no choice. There is no escape-door to open. 

The dialogue that follows is probably known to us. Here’s a possible summary.   

1. The devil says to the famished Jesus: Make bread by miracle. Jesus says: However hungry I am, food that goes against Gd’s word is wrong.  

2. The devil says: Jump to your death so that Gd has to save your life. Jesus says: That’s not how to relate to Gd.    

3. The devil says: I’ll give you all earthly power, just worship me. Jesus says: Only Gd is worthy of worship.  

So Jesus is tempted with wrong, ungodly patterns of miracle, spectacle and power. He resists the temptations. His ministry (all his ways of being with and for people) will be different. It will involve some elements of spectacle, maybe power, and certainly miracle. And/but it will be always hand-in-hand with his Heavenly Father. This is all emphatically to our good; the story of our salvation can unfold.  

Is that all that can be said? I will say: No.  

Let me draw your attention one thing, seldom reflected on.   

The devil quotes Scripture to Jesus. What does he quote from...? He quotes from the Psalms (Ps 19.11-12).  

Jesus also quotes from the Scriptures. What does he quote from...?  

• He quotes from the book of Deuteronomy.  
• Three times he quotes from Deuteronomy.  
• He quotes only from Deuteronomy.  
• More remarkably still, all three quotations come from within three chapters of Deuteronomy, from early in the book of Deuteronomy. He quotes from chapter six twice, and chapter 8 once. (In Matthew’s order: 8.3; 6.16; 6.13).  

So what? Is anything at stake? I will say: Yes. 

I am going to suggest this story confirms the Jewishness of Jesus.  

First, he knows the Jewish Scriptures. Second, he knows his own Bible well enough to quote it from memory. (In truth, that’s the same point: to know the Bible in Jesus’ oral culture would mean to have heard it and be able to recite it. This wasn’t a book-based society; no one had a Bible by their bed.) So, second, Jesus has had a good and thorough Jewish education. And third, as a good Jew, he knows how to order the books of the Jewish Bible.  

What do I mean by this? I mean that when Jesus faces some existential threat to his own vocation, when he is famished and weak and vulnerable and desperate even, he does not just turn to the Scriptures. No, he turns specifically to the Books of Moses, to the first five books of the Bible, to the books which are sometimes called “Law” but which are better left untranslated as “Torah”. The whole of the Teaching that comes by tradition from Moses. Torah.

  

I have said it before, but it bears repeating: the Jewish way of ordering the books of the Hebrew Bible which we call the Old Testament is different from the Christian way. In the Christian way, there is something like an attempt to set out a history in linear from, from the making of the world to the final Hebrew prophetic text. In the Jewish way, there are rather three concentric circles:

• At the heart of things is Torah, which either is or contains direct revelation. Directly from Gd to the whole people, at Sinai, and then elaborated on.  
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• Around this centre are the Prophets, who bring revelation, but focused on particular people and places at particular times.  
• 
  
• And around the Prophets is a wider circle. This is everything else, called simply “the Writings”. It contains arguably more inspiration than revelation.  

If time allowed (and I know that it doesn’t), I would show from other texts in the gospels that this is broadly a pattern that Jesus knew and accepted. The fullest or most direct revelation of Gd in the Scriptures is that of Torah, the books Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and... our old friend, Deuteronomy.  

I say again that Jesus is a Jew. Not just “ethnically” Jewish (whatever that means). But religiously Jewish. Here – when it really counts – he thinks, speaks and acts like a Jew. And not as it happens just a Jew of his own time, but as religious Jews today might also think, speak and act. He brings it back to Torah.1  

So Jesus is tempted with wrong, ungodly patterns of miracle, spectacle and power. He resists the temptations.  

• 
  
• That he resists the temptations is remarkable, a miracle in its own right. And let us thank Gd for the angels who appeared and helped him.  
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• The way he resists the temptations is unremarkable. As a religiously educated Jew of his day, he goes straight to the heart of things, to the Torah of Moses, to his own people’s understanding of revelation.  

I do not know, in any detail, what temptations you and we will face this Lent. But one temptation is perhaps constant.  

The temptation to think we “know” Jesus.  

That is to put things at their most provocative. So let me clarify. Of course, we do know Jesus, in that we are acquainted with him. He is with us, as he promised. This whole service (and all that we do) works from the basis that he is here. But we don’t readily “know” him, in the sense of always understanding him, knowing what “made him tick” in his earthly life.  

So I am going to suggest that it can be no bad thing if we go into this Lent allowing ourselves to think of Jesus as we meet him in the gospels as not a church-person at all. Jesus as different. Jesus as strange, if you like – but strange as in intriguing, inviting us to wonder. And at least part of that invitation is to see Jesus as, well, yes, indeed, abidingly Jewish.  

Amen.