| The First Sunday In Lent |
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The First Sunday in Lent
March 1, 2009
Rev. Douglas S. Long
Umstead Park UCC
A couple of years ago an article appeared in the News & Observer entitled: “What are you giving up for Lent?” I read a few of the entries… “What are you giving up for Lent?” - Skydiving, Extreme snowboarding, spacewalking and smoking! Why, me too, I thought! And then there’s the ubiquitous- -"I'm giving up religion for Lent!"
What is all this "giving up" about? Lent… the 40 days preceding Easter, excluding Sundays. A few years ago I met a clergyperson who got his dander up because someone said something about the First Sunday of Lent. “It’s not the First Sunday OF Lent,” he cried. “It’s the First Sunday IN Lent.”
Though he got a little over emphatic, he was right. “In”… not “of.” Sunday's don't count.
So… how many of you have given up chocolate for Lent?
[When they
raise their hand, throw them a piece of chocolate.] Go for it! It’s Sunday. (Oh… I see a few more of you have suddenly taken the plunge.) "Good grief," you now say, "do you mean I could have eaten chocolate on Sundays all that time and no one TOLD ME!!"
In truth, this whole “giving up” aspect has me scratching my head a little. The season is about preparation for Easter. It’s about fasting and prayer. Somehow, we seem to get the fasting part… or at least the concept… giving something up…. but we don’t hear as much about the praying. The point of denying the flesh is to accentuate and focus on the spiritual.
Spiritual focus, we wonder… What is that? …and true enough, how much is that valued in our culture…. Spiritual focus? How do you market 'giving up' in a consumer society? We hardly know how to approach the topic… …and yet, that is what this season of Lent is really about.
A friend recently gave me a copy of Anthony De Mello’s “Awareness.” If you’re not familiar with De Mello, I wasn’t either… but De Mello was a famous Jesuit who held spiritual conference’s worldwide (He operated out of India) and De Mello died very suddenly in 1987. One of his close friends, a disciple as it was, recorded some of the content of his spiritual conferences and produced the book… “Awareness.” I find myself not agreeing with every word of it, but highly intrigued. I’ve read and reread parts of it. Here’s one such passage: Awareness p. 15…
“Anytime you
renounce something, you are tied forever to the thing you renounce. There’s a
guru in “… if you’re hypnotized into thinking that you won’t be happy with this, that or the other thing, you’re stuck. What we need to do for you is not what so-called spirituality seeks to do- namely, to get you to make sacrifices, to renounce things. That’s useless…. What we need to do is to help you understand, understand, understand. If you understood, you’d simply drop the desire for it.”
Renunciation is not the answer.
The roots of Lent are, you know this, in the 40 day period of preparation Jesus entered into just prior to his public ministry. … a public ministry that led to a showdown between power and love. A show down that showcased, if you will, the power OF love. …but we still live in a world that loves power of a different sort.
…and renouncing was not the central aspect of what was going on with Jesus in the desert. What he was doing? …Not renouncing but embracing. Jesus was not giving up, but gaining an insight into God. The temptation is that if we'll just give something up, we've accomplished something… but it's much more than that.
I’ll put it another way… Jesus was discerning his best self. .. his highest humanity.
I mentioned the book “Awareness” and that it was compiled by a disciple of De Mello. Let me tell you what the compiler says in the forward. He tells a story that De Mello told, and then looked at the compiler and said… this is about you. Perhaps it is about us all and our efforts at discerning, or not, our best selves. Here’s the story. It’s brief: (From the Foreword of “Awareness”)
A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with a brood of chicks and grew up with them. All his life, the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air. Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day, he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in a graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings. The old eagle looked up I awe. “Who’s that?” he asked. “That’s the eagle, the king of the birds,” said his neighbor. “He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth- we’re chickens.” So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that’s what he thought he was.
So… how about us? And what about our best selves? What I think Jesus was doing in the desert, what I believe Jesus was focused on, was not renouncing, but gaining a clear perspective.
Which is where the ‘temptation narratives’ come in… They are our temptations, too. Do you remember them?
- The tempter came to him and said,
"If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread."
-Then the tempter took him to the holy city
and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. "If you are the Son
of God," he said, "throw yourself down.
-And again, the tempter took him to a very
high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.
"All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down
and worship me."
-Stones to bread -Miraculous landing -Power exchanged for subservience
A word first about ‘The Tempter’…. The figure of the Devil, or Satan, is a fascinating study in the Hebrew Scriptures all its own. Suffice it to say for now that this character functions as an anthropomorphic dialogue prompt… a literary device to move the story along. Is there a literal Satan running around tempting us? (I don’t think so.) That being said… are we tempted by a power that is almost overpowering. Well, yes. Happens everyday. You can read about it in the papers, hear about it in the neighborhood gossip, and, truth be told, know it in your own heart. We are tempted… and we succumb. …and if you don’t or never have, well, maybe folks will be gathering to worship you in a couple thousand years, too. We are tempted to follow lesser gods… and we do. We are tempted to be our lesser selves… and we are. It would be comforting if we could blame this on a persuasive pointy tailed red man with horns… or any other person or being for that matter. The real truth is, WE are to blame.
Temptation 1- If you are the Son of God, command this stone
to turn to bread. Jesus had been fasting for weeks. Exactly what that fast consisted of we aren't sure, but from a study of rabbinical law we can assume it was a very strict diet made up primarily of water and enough fruit to provide necessary nutrients. Why not a little nourishment now? Could Jesus have done so… turned the stones to bread? The Bible is full of stories about manna from heaven, feeding 5000 from a few loaves and fishes, famines broken by the refreshing rain of God…. What is wrong with a little bread from a lifeless boulder?
Let's back up a moment? Why is Jesus in the desert? Why is he fasting? …to focus on things of the spirit. To give into physical appetites at this point would have diminished the disciplines of the spirit. Is God a god who provides, first and foremost, physical comforts? Is this who God is? How many full bellied, lavish living, every material thing at their disposal human beings have you heard of, or met, who are sick unto death of life? How many beautiful people have self destructed in our own lifetimes? How many stars have fallen from the skies of the living, because something about the material world and appetites so quickly satiated brought no fulfillment… brought instead a consuming emptiness. Turn these stones to bread… "Here," says the temptation, "forget your spiritual hunger and fill your body with food, and wine and women (or men), houses and cars and clothes, delectables and collectibles, beautiful things, jewelry and rings, pensions and portfolios to care for you …forever." Well… almost forever. The Temptation to turn stones to bread is a temptation to define your highest self as a physical being proclaiming a God who will provide every physical need at every uncomfortable turn.
…and Jesus said no… No. Jesus’ higher self?…. Spiritual.
Temptation 2-
Jesus was led to the pinnacle of the temple. If you are the Son of God throw yourself
down, for it is written that "God will send the angels to protect
you." Perhaps this temptation is a little more obvious to us, even if it is a little less accessible. Deny your humanity, and embrace a God that will protect you from every evil, every stumble, every distasteful turn of fate… You are a puppet…. And God the puppeteer. "Show us Jesus… put yourself in jeopardy and watch the divine safety net be flung out for you." You want no problems? Come worship a god who takes care of everything, a cosmic magician who protects those who follow from all harm (even of their own making), a watchful wizard who delivers the children of the faithful from sickness, turns tornadoes from god-fearing communities, and provides parking spaces for those who pray to him. Never mind the communities of faith that are ripped by winds and fires of fate, the child who dies at age 10 of leukemia, the toddler trampled by his father…. Obviously, these are all children of a lesser god?…
"Jump from the
But evil does exist, and tragedies do happen, and we are not immune.
…and Jesus said "No." Jesus was not a magical messiah, but a Servant, even a suffering one, for all who would see.
Temptation 3- (This is from Matthew. Luke has a slightly different order.) Jesus was shown all the kingdoms of the world and all their splendor. "Take these Jesus; take these as a means to fulfill your purposes." You want to change the world, right? Here is a quick and easy way. Legislate morality. Force the peoples to worship. Subdue the world into a common Christian nation.
The will of any government equated with the will of God. …and as tempting as this particular god may have been for Jesus, who found himself among a people subject to the foreign power of Rome, Jesus proclaimed that this kind of forceful god was more foreign still.
God is not a god of patriotic passion, of political prowess, not a god of force at all… Jesus then, is not a Prince of Power but a Prince of Peace, following a God who chooses to come to us …in love.
Stones to bread…. No. Miraculous landing… No. Power in exchange for subservience… No.
Thus we have the Temptation narrative…. It is the beginning of Jesus' ministry… and he is struggling with his highest self. It is spiritual. …with responsibility to proclaim the power of love… and to promote peace through service…. Even sacrificially so.
And God? God, proclaimed Jesus, is- … not a god who is a first and foremost provider of material goods (not stones to bread) but the God who fills our Spirits … not a god who is a divine safety net to guard us and keep us from all harm, but the God who sees us through. … not a god who chooses to coerce humanity by force and power, but the God who suffers for us, who embraces and loves us.
The season of Lent is upon us. What you do with it is up to you. Give up all you want… but I’m hoping in the process we’ll gain much…in an effort to seek God, and our highest selves.
40 days in the wilderness of priorities and prayer… Who is God?… Who is this Jesus?… Who are we? Really? Amen.
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