The End is Here

I'm just learning how to do this, so please forgive me! The end line of the Lent sermon is supposed to be:

"Because then, friends, once we step through the crucifixion of our old nature, he doesn't leave us in death. He promised to walk beside us, remember? And he will walk us right into the resurrection with him."

Pardon My Lenten Smile

"Pardon My Lenten Smile" Lent 3 March 15, 2009 for Covenant Comm. Church Scripture: Matt.6:5-18

I don't know how familiar most of us here are with the practices that traditionally accompany the season of Lent. For that matter, I don't know how many of us here are familiar with the season of Lent, period. I know for some of us, if I were to say, "It's Lent!" you might say, "What did you lend? To whom? And for how long?"

So it might be useful to start with a little review. If this seems too elementary for some of you, you have my permission to doze off now. Just make sure to have your neighbor poke you in the ribs when I get to the good part, about sin and stuff like that.

This season of Lent developed gradually in the church. From what historians can tell, one of the earliest pre-Easter traditions was fasting for the 40 hours between Good Friday and Easter morning. Folks understood that Christ was in the tomb for 40 hours, so a period of fasting and remembering the sacrifice he made for us became part of the observance. Over time, the fasting was extended from 40 hours to all of Holy Week (only one small evening meal per day would be eaten). Then, as time went farther on, the practice of observing a period well beyond Holy Week developed, and by about the year 400, the church decided on a season of Lent lasting 40 days. The way of totaling the days was unusual - Sundays were not counted, since each Sunday was considered a mini-Easter celebration. Lent would begin on Ash Wednesday and end on Holy Saturday.

Other practices during Lent were established early in the church's history, too. Putting ashes on the heads of sinners, for instance, marked them during the period of Lent and banned them from entering the church until they had performed some prescribed penitential act. They could only return on Maundy Thursday and be reinstated into the church's good graces once the penance was accomplished. Later, in about 400 A.D., as it was realized that all people are sinners and have fallen short of grace, all believers participated in the imposition of ashes and the race for piety was on!

When I was a child our backyard had a chain-link fence down the side, and an alley adjoined it. In the afternoons I could see the little Catholic girls and boys in their school uniforms walking home from St. Phillip's, with smudged, dirty foreheads. Please understand-In our family, we were a very conflicted bunch of Protestants and Catholics – two or three generations had bucked the system and for whatever reasons we had many interdenominational marriages which led to all kinds of misunderstandings about the beliefs and practices of whichever "other" religion happened to be under discussion at the time. Some of the explanations I got about sin and the ashes were along the lines of the medieval banishment and so on. It made me wonder what other little kids just like me could've done that was so wrong that they'd be marked like that. So I don't imagine it's any wonder that Lent as a season gives some of us the willies.

In the words of that great theologian, George Carlin, Jesus didn't come to give us the willies. The public face of piety is what Jesus was talking about in the preaching recorded in Matthew 6. He mentions spiritual disciplines, not absolution from sin. You might want to poke your sleeping neighbor in the ribs now, because I'm going to talk about sin now. If we are praying loudly before others, hoping to become prayer celebrities in the eyes of other Christians, we are not using prayer to enter into a deeper relationship with God. We are putting on a theatrical production. And if we go about moaning instead of shaving, showering, and putting on a smile while we fast, we're not fasting to turn our attention toward God. We're merely dieting! Who are we fooling? Any of these things are destructive to our relationship with God and with others because they focus attention on ourselves, not on growing closer to Jesus, which is the entire point of such disciplines.

The word Lent comes originally from "lengthening" and speaks to the season of spring with its longer days and fresh weather. It doesn't mean that we lengthen our faces and invite our friends to admire how repentant we are! Far from it! One way to think of it might be to imagine ourselves spiritually "lengthening" our stride in order to try harder to keep up with Jesus, as we remember his approach to Calvary. Jesus is constantly on the move, and even though he always promises to walk beside us we have to pay attention or we are apt to lag behind.

Fortunately, in Matthew, Jesus gives us tools we can use in spiritual practices that keep us moving right along and help us to lengthen our stride. The ones from our passage today are prayer and fasting. If you read the surrounding texts, you will also discover his teachings on almsgiving and setting spiritual priorities.

Let's think about prayer first.

Anybody who is serious about walking with God comes to see that prayer has to be the main business in life, because it is through prayer that we are in communication with God and become increasingly sensitive to God's will. Of course prayer can be abused: it can be a showy public display of piety or a means of self-deception as we try to convince ourselves that our selfish desires are really God's doing. But abuses do not negate the practice. "In the morning, while it was still very dark," we read in Mark 1, "(Jesus) got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed." When the apostles were tempted to invest their time and energies in other very necessary and important tasks in the exciting days of rapid expansion in the Jerusalem Christian community, they determined to give themselves continually to prayer and the ministry of the word (Acts 6:4). And Martin Luther, when asked how he managed all his affairs, declared, "I have so much business I cannot get on without spending three hours daily in prayer." John Wesley spent two hours per day.

Obviously this investment in prayer is not just to praise God although it is for that; nor is it simply to ask God for mercies, while that clearly is important as well. Perhaps the most important part of prayer is to listen in God's presence, to be molded and formed by God so that we come to be more the person God intended us to be. This can bring genuine liberation and peace of mind to us. It also lays great responsibilities on us as we become more attuned to God's will for us. It can then be said that prayer keeps us in right relationship with God.

But then what about fasting? In our culture where the landscape is dotted not with shrines of Baal nor temples of Aphrodite but by Golden Arches, or Starbucks, fasting certainly seems out of place. Jesus says that fasting is not to be a show. It's not dieting, either, which has a physical motivation. It's not a hunger strike which has a political or public relations focus, nor even a planned famine to raise money for the hungry, all of which are good things, but not fasting. Fasting, which is found throughout the Bible, is to abstain periodically from food in order to focus one's time, energy, and being more fully on God. But because fasting involves a sacrifice, not of time, like prayer, nor of money, like almsgiving, but of food it does put us more in tune with our bodies, our inspirited selves. It reminds us of what we need, as opposed to what we want, and of what is good for us rather than what tastes good.

When we look at these disciplines, which Jesus assumes believers will practice, we cannot but be struck by something. Almsgiving brings us in right relationship with other people; prayer brings us in right relationship with God; fasting brings us in right relationship with ourselves, our own bodies. Does that remind you of any Bible passage from Sunday School days? How about Mark 12:29-31: "Jesus answered, 'The first (commandment) is, "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength." The second is this, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." There is no other commandment greater than these.'"

The fact that virtually anyone who even toys with the idea of Christianity -- and many who do not -- recognize these words as the two Great Commandments but are uncomfortable with the traditional spiritual disciplines of almsgiving, prayer, and fasting shows the extent to which our Christian faith has become very superficial. We think that we can assent to the Christian ideal without living it; that we can affirm the need to be in a right relationship with God, our fellows, and ourselves and not do anything about it. Not so, says Jesus. "Whenever you give alms, whenever you pray, whenever you fast." He didn't say, "If you give, if you fast, or if you pray." He assumed that we would-because he did, and we would want to be like him.

This scares Christians and non-Christians alike, you know. Consider this: we are looking at Lent from a long history of thinking in terms of self-denial, repentance, and gloom for the most part. And if we think of following the practices of Jesus, doesn't that mean we are following him right up to the cross? Friends, I believe that the idea of walking right into the crucifixion with him frightens more of us than we are willing to admit. It would certainly explain why many Christians live out only a superficial faith. Because to do more, to really attempt to live into his will for us, means that a part of us dies-the sin which we love so much dies. The desires, the indulgences, the things we really don't need-all those things that get in the way of loving God and loving others and being truly good to ourselves, they die.

So my question for us all is this:

What if we viewed Lent as a time of taking on those characteristics of Jesus that Matthew described? What if we really made it our business to grow closer to God during this season and what if, just if, those changes were so good, so positive, so rejuvenating that we get excited – so excited about being in right relationship with God, so excited about being in right relationship with each other, so excited about being in right relationship and in touch with ourselves…that we wouldn't want to stop after forty days? Wouldn't they be worth making lifetime changes?

What if Lent became a time when all people think of giving up is fear? And self-centeredness? And anxieties that we can't do anything about anyway?

What if it were transformed into a season of taking on? Taking on energy, and new life, taking on lengthening strides and a lighter step? What if instead of living in fear we lived in trust? Joy? Peace? Love? What if we faced the cross with Jesus?

Because then, friends, once we step through the crucifixion of our old nature, he doesn't leave us in death. He promised to walk beside us, remember? And he