You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly!
Let’s start with the
basics. After all, this is Lent
101.
Lent is a season of the liturgical
calendar (that’s preacher speak for the church year). It is the forty-day period before Easter. It
begins on Ash Wednesday (which was this past Wednesday) and ends the night
before Easter (which is sometimes called the Easter Vigil because people used
to (and in some churches still do) keep vigil (or keep watch), waiting for the
first rays of the sun that mark the coming of Easter morning.
However, don’t get your calendars out
just yet because Easter really is not 40 days away. What?
You see, when we count these 40 days of Lent, we do not count Sundays. We skip Sundays because every Sunday we
commemorate the Resurrection, which is what Easter is all about. You could say that every Sunday is a “little
Easter.” But back to Lent….
Lent is a season of soul-searching and repentance. Remember how Jesus was
preaching John the Baptist’s message:
“Repent! The Kingdom of God is on
its way!” Lent is the time
we set aside in the church year to formally take stock of ourselves and of our
lives and see how close we are to being ready to help usher in God’s Kingdom
here on earth, that new way of living in community firmly grounded in
compassion and justice. And so we ask
ourselves questions like: How
compassionate are we – really? How
committed to justice are we – really?
Lent is a time to actually do the personal self-reflection that we all
say we do not have time to do during the rest of the year.
Lent is tied into the Bible through the
story of Jesus spending 40 days in the wilderness or desert (depending on the
translation that you read – some say wilderness and some say desert). That is why we talk about Lent being a
journey. Just as Jesus journeyed into
the wilderness, so we journey into the wilderness of ourselves.
This Bible story is really about Jesus
doing his own form of soul-searching. He
was taking stock of his life and his calling.
He was working through his fears and concerns about just who he was
called to be. In the story, these
conversations, debates, and arguments happen between Jesus and Satan (as two
separate beings), but I believe that it was more like a conversation in Jesus’
own head.
Lent originated in the very earliest
days of the Church as a preparatory time for Easter. During Lent, the faithful rededicated
themselves, and converts were instructed in the faith and prepared for baptism.
It used to be that new converts to Christianity were baptized at the Easter
Vigil we talked about. In short, by
observing the forty days of Lent, the individual Christian (that would be you
and me) imitates Jesus’ withdrawal into the wilderness for forty days. Theologian Frederick Buechner puts it this
way:
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In many cultures there is an
ancient custom of giving a tenth of each year’s income to some holy use. For
Christians, to observe the forty days of Lent is do the same thing with
roughly a tenth of each year’s days. After being baptized by John in the
river Jordan, Jesus went off alone into the wilderness where he spent forty
days asking himself the question what it meant to be Jesus. During Lent,
Christians are supposed to ask one way or another what it means to be
themselves. (During Lent, we ask the really hard questions – like these:)
If you had to bet everything
you have on whether there is a God or whether there isn’t, which side would
get your money and why?
When you look at your face in
the mirror, what do you see in it that you most like and what do you see in
it that you most deplore?
If you had only one last
message to leave to the handful of people who are most important to you, what
would it be in twenty-five words or less?
Of all the things you have done
in your life, which is the one you would most like to undo? Which is the one
that makes you happiest to remember?
Is there any person in the
world, or any cause, that, if circumstances called for it, you would be
willing to die for? If this were the last day of your life, what would you do
with it?
To hear yourself try to answer
questions like these is to begin to hear something not only of who you are
but of both what you are becoming and what you are failing to become. It can
be a pretty depressing business all in all, but if sack-cloth and ashes are
at the start of it, something like Easter may be at the end.
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There are three activities that are
traditionally connected to the season of Lent.
These are prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
Lent then is a season to purposely set
aside time for prayer – not just in church but everyday. It is a season to create a discipline of
personal devotions, consciously setting aside time to simply “be with God.”
Lent is also traditionally a time of
fasting – giving up food, again reminding us of the story where we are told
that Jesus had no food for the 40 days he was in the wilderness. We have never gone quite that far, but, for
centuries, it was customary to fast by abstaining from meat during Lent.
Over time, of course, fasting morphed
into the concept of giving up something for Lent. Some people give up chocolate or desserts,
but if you want to give up anything for Lent, think about giving up the fear
that keeps you from being more generous, or the fear that causes you to dislike
African- Americans, or homosexuals, or Muslims, or giving up your need to cling
to the “old ways” that keep you opposed to change.
Finally, Lent is a season for
almsgiving, that is, a time for being more generous than you might normally
be. However, it is a
time for not only remembering the poor with a small gift of money here and
there, but for also creating strategies that will do something concrete to
alleviate their poverty. Lent is a time for reflecting and thinking, but it is
also a time for doing, for action. Just
as fasting is giving up something negative, almsgiving is doing something
positive – even something as small as increasing you financial giving or
volunteering in a charity or non-profit.
Just to finish up here with the basics,
let’s talk for a minute about what happens just before the start of Lent. This last day before Ash Wednesday (which is
called Mardi Gras, Shrove Tuesday, Carnival, or Fasching) has become known as a
final fling before the solemnity of Lent.
Think: the great Mardi Gras festival in New Orleans. Remember how I said it was customary to fast
by abstaining from meat during Lent?
That is why some people call these pre-Lenten festivals “Carnival.” That is Latin for farewell to meat.
However, if you cannot make it to New
Orleans, you can still celebrate Shrove Tuesday, that day before Lent
begins. You see, it is traditional in
many churches to have a pancake supper on Shrove Tuesday. Pancakes are
associated with that particular day because they were a way to use up rich
foodstuffs such as eggs, milk, and sugar, before the fasting season of the 40
days of Lent.
There are numerous symbols of Lent that
point to its deeper meanings. These symbols touch on all of your five senses –
things you hear, see, taste, touch, and smell.
We mentioned one already during the Youth Message – no more singing
alleluia until Easter because alleluia is a word associated with joy, and Lent
is a more somber season when we focus on Jesus’ life and what he did that led
to his crucifixion.
Now, I’m going to end this Lent 101 lesson
by suggesting that we be a little interactive.
And so I am going to ask you to point out some of the things in the
sanctuary that are different – or some of the parts of the worship service that
have changed. You point out these
symbols, and I’ll try to answer why we have them:
1. Black
Birds
2. Color
purple
3. Lenten
candles
4. Banners
5. No
prelude
6. No
responses
7. Silence
8. Forgiveness
prayer
9. Less or
no flowers
10.
Ashes
11.
Pita bread for communion
12.
Lent altar cloth with crosses
13.
Hymns – more somber and often minor keys
In conclusion, Lent is a time of
dissonance and self-reflection. Lent is
a journey. And as we make that journey –
each in our own way – let’s take with us these half dozen quotes from Pope
Francis:
1.
"Lent comes providentially to reawaken us, to shake us from our
lethargy."
2.
"Fasting makes sense if it really chips away at our security and, as a
consequence, benefits someone else, if it helps us cultivate the style of the
good Samaritan, who bent down to his brother in need and took care of
him."
3. “A little
bit of mercy makes the world less cold and more just.”
4. “Wretched
are those who are vindictive and spiteful.”
5.
“The confessional (or for us Protestants this self-reflection and our
forgiveness prayer) is not a torture chamber, but the place in which the Lord's
mercy motivates us to do better.”
6. “We all have the duty to do good.”
by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church, U.C.C.
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