ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET
Sermon preached by Fr. Julian Browning at High Mass on the First Sunday of Lent, 21 February 2010.
Readings: Deuteronomy 26.1-11; Romans 10.8b-13; Luke 4.1-13.
Luke 4.1. Jesus was led by the Spirit in the wilderness.
Lent is the holy season of forty days of fasting, penance and devotion, from Ash Wednesday (last Wednesday) to Easter Day. And every year at about the same time, Lent sits there in the calendar like a roadblock and we don't know what to do about it. I think we should welcome Lent, not avoid it. It is God who leads Jesus into the wilderness, not the devil. In the wilderness the devil is defeated.
What is our wilderness? Well I'm afraid it's the mess we've got ourselves into. We want 'to lead a new life, following the commandments of God, and walking from henceforth in his holy ways'. But somehow or other, between one Sunday and the next, we can go to pieces. This is because we are driven by our emotions, our feelings, not by what our reason tells us is the right or sensible thing to do. In novels passions flare up; in real life they never simmer down. But I really wouldn't have it any other way. The rag bag of emotions, desires, lusts, hopes, and loves which we carry around, is God given, it is what connects the life of the mind, with the life of the animal senses, our physical needs. Our emotions get us into trouble, year after year the same mistakes, but they make us human, and connect us with each other. Oscar Wilde said the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Not perhaps the best maxim for you to take into Lent, but at least it describes what actually happens. God works with real people, not with those who are pretending to be someone else. We make ourselves real by telling the truth. The truth is that we please ourselves most of the time, and the life we lead is not the life of Christian discipleship.
If we are going to have a religion at all, we need one for all seasons, a religion which encompasses and channels all our emotions, the love and the sadness, the frustration as well as the fulfilment. We must put aside for ever that fantasy figure we want to be, the saintly attractive successful churchgoer for whom Lent is a breeze, because we are not that person. Lent is the time to stop daydreaming and to go ourselves into our own wilderness, our own murky mixed motives. That is where the road to glory starts, when we meet head on the temptations, not so much of the world, but of religion. The temptations which Jesus faced in the wilderness have been described as the temptations of 'upward mobility': the temptation to turn stone into bread is the temptation to be always relevant, to do something the world expects you to do, the action which proves who you are, not who God is; the temptation to throw himself off the temple roof is our temptation to be spectacular, to draw attention on every occasion to our own importance, the temptation to rule all the kingdoms of the world is the temptation to power. They are all the same temptation, which is to use our relationship with God for our own benefit. We pretend we're not putting ourselves first, but we do. It's such an easy contrick to play, and we get away with it time after time. Our religion should be an expression of who we really are, the truth about us and our God. But our Christianity can easily become a disguise over who we really are, in other words, a lie. The face we present to the world is not our face, it is not the person God has called us to be. That's why we find Lent so difficult. We don't want to change anything, we've got it taped. We know what we should give up, the self-deception and the deception of others, but we're not going to do anything about it, not now, not ever. And yet, and yet, hold on, there is a sign of hope. The little things we are giving up in Lent - the second martini - are not worthless, nor are the extra devotions or reading we take on. Far from it. Lent is a training period, the nursery slopes where we show that we can use our will to change our lives, and that we are not entirely governed by emotion and appetite. God isn't measuring our successes or failures in Lent; our desire for Him is enough. What we do in Lent, and that could be doing nothing more than finding a deeper silence, is ask God to fill our lives.
But we should know what we are getting ourselves into. If there is one lesson to be learnt from the Christian experience of Lent it will be this: there is no such thing as cheap grace. The grace of God means discipleship. Repentance precedes forgiveness. Shortcuts to Heaven don't work. In the market place of religion at the moment it's a buyer's market. There are any number of cutprice offers of salvation and total bliss, no questions asked. Beware a bargain. Christian discipleship, like the membership of all the major religions, is costly. It costs us our life as we know it. That is the price we are called to pay. There is no grace without the cross. In Lent we begin our journey to that cross. We've chosen a demanding religion, which is why we find ourselves back at square one at the beginning of each Lent. Christianity is demanding because the stakes are so high. On offer is the treasure hidden in the field, the pearl of great price, fullness of life. But when we realise that Christianity is actually quite hard on us, and a little beyond us, and often a thankless task, we can look at ourselves in a more forgiving light. We are not hopeless cases. If we find it difficult to be Christian, if we can not resist temptation in any form, if sometimes we can't see the point of it all, it's not because we're useless, it's not because we're inadequate or wrong or not cut out for religion, it's because we are Christians and human beings and the way of the Cross is hard, and can sometimes nearly destroy us. Christianity leaves scars. And we learn that we can't do it on our own.
Between our first and second lessons today we sung verses from Psalm 91, that great cry of trust in the protection of God. But we weren't the only people singing it today. This is the psalm which the devil himself quotes mockingly in today's Gospel against us and Jesus. God will command his angels concerning you, to protect you. So we and the devil sing today from the same hymn sheet, is that a little scary? The devil reveals himself to be a Bible scholar. Christ shows us how to turn the tables on him. We believe that under God's protection the wilderness of Lent, the wilderness of our lives will turn out to be a place of safety. The desert, our desert, becomes the silent place of our reconciliation and healing, far from the false values and deceits of the world. We can be proud of our calling to be Christians and go there. Lent is a season to be welcomed, it's our opportunity to shed our disguises, and, as the people we are, be led by God's Holy Spirit into the wilderness to become the people He calls us to be.