Sermon. Ash Wednesday. 26 February 2020. St Mary’s, Little Ilford.
You may well have heard – or agree with any way – the claim that every preacher really has within them only one sermon. They just vary it this way and that, ad nauseam. If you think that’s right, please do not tell me or Fr Lee. We like to think we have at least 1.5 sermons in us – and I mean within each of us. If you think we have only 1.5 sermons between us, combined, definitely do not tell us that.
If, however, you were to accuse me of having only one Ash Wednesday sermon, which I tweak from year to year – to that I am likely to plead guilty. I’d even offer this justification: it may sound arrogant, but I do feel under some obligation to offer some corrective remarks against a wrong understanding of Lent.
Ways of getting Lent wrong are Legion.
- There’s the idea that Lent is about dieting... so as to fit into an item of clothing that keeps shrinking in the wash. But! But if you feel it’s right to lose weight, you need to take advice, make a plan, and have a go. You don’t need a Christian season for that.
- There’s the idea that Lent is about giving up something that you know is seriously bad for you... But! But if you know something is consistently bad for you, the right thing to do is to set about doing what you need to do to drop that thing. It is not something to be set aside for the season of Lent, and then picked up at Easter.
- There is the idea, summed up well by Fr Ted... that the meaning of Lent is beating your rivals in the Giving Things Up game. (You may remember: it was about Craggy Island beating Rugged Island. It didn’t end well.) But! But Lent is not a competition.
- An even more serious point: Lent is not even a competition with yourself.
- For we may play the game of competing with an ideal, “super-Christian” version of ourselves, of seeking by an act of self-will to prove something to ourselves, by self-denial. That too is not the meaning of Lent.
These are all relatively superficial misreadings of Lent. I am going to be a bit controversial now, though. I will say something even against the great modern slogan about Lent. You probably know it even before I say it. It states: Rather than giving something up for Lent, it is better to take something up. I am not against that whole line of argument. Not at all. Really not. It’s just I think that in taking something up, we can find a different way to compete with ourselves, to act out of self-will and pride. Here, too, we need some deeper self-awareness.
But we are still hovering around the surface of misunderstandings of Lent. Let us cut through to the heart of things. Lent is a penitential season, the principle penitential season. This is true. But we may hear this as saying that Lent is about feeling bad about yourself. We feel bad about ourselves, for a time and a season, as that’s good for us, and then we can get on with feeling better about ourselves at Easter. Job done. The Church’s cycle is sustained. This is wrong. This is very wrong.
Let me let the pendulum swing all the way away from that. Feel it happening now.
I am going to say that a core theme of Lent is joy. Our joy. My joy. Your joy. It is not about exuberance, that is true. So we are right to drop the [cough]-lelluias, and the feasting. Lent is about being reflective rather than exuberant. But it is still about joy.
Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
This is not at all about feeling bad about yourself. It is not telling you that you deserve death. No! A million miles away from that. It is reminding you that you are mortal, that you are made to live for a time and a season, and then face an end. So your life is precious. (Precious is a difficult word, somehow. It attracts to itself all kinds of notions and connotations which are not helpful. But I don’t know a better word to describe precisely this.)
This day is precious. This hour is precious. You have never experienced this moment before, and you will never experience it again. This moment has never experienced you in it before, and never will experience you in it again. You are precious in your uniqueness. No one – in the history of humankind or in any part of the universe - can love Gd or neighbour quite like you can.
So all those cliches about life not being a rehearsal are true. They are cliches because they need saying, a lot. It is strangely so very easy to live life as if it can start... but only once this has happened, or that, or the other, or the other other. Dare we, then, live as if the time to be true to Gd and to ourselves, at whatever cost and risk is now. The time to live your life is now.
So we are invited – invited, not compelled – to give up something for Lent. It is to be something that is intrinsically good, or at least neutral. Not something we know is out-and-out bad for us. Something we can truly and simply enjoy at Easter. But something it will do us no harm to go without for a bit. It is something like kicking away one element of our comfort, one element of the scaffolding that we think holds us in place, one distraction that we might rely on a bit too much.
And we don’t give up something we might rely on a bit too much to make life harder for us. We do this because it’s one token way of saying: I am going on an adventure this Lent.
I will live slightly differently, the better to have the adventure of finding out who I am, who I am before Gd.
Lent is about joy, because it is about the insistence of your own unique preciousness. Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.
And Lent is about joy, because it brings Gd’s own insistence that you can change. Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ. You can turn. You are invited to turn. We celebrate our capacity for change, for the adventure of self-discovery leading to change.
Now, I once knew a nun. Not “our own” Sister P. In many ways the opposite of Sister P. Rather than Sister P’s glint in her eye, she had steel. She left you in no doubt as to where she stood. She also happened to be French (I am not suggesting any connection). And she said something the truth of which I have not been able to check. She said in the French liturgy the words on the imposition of ashes either was or could be:
Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
Rejoice and believe in the gospel.
"Rejouis-toi!"
Rejoice, for the season of joy, of gentle joy, of joy in your preciousness, of joy in your capacity for change and growth which Gd is gifting you, the season of Lent is here.
Rejouis-toi!
Amen.
