After what feels like months and months of winter; cold, dark and miserable both outside and in, bringing endless disruption from snow and ice and inducing colds and flu to fill our lives with coughs and sneezes… finally some signs of hope, that things may be improving. The birds are singing again, the spring bulbs are bursting into life, the days are getting noticeably longer and the sun finally has a modecome of warmth in it.
And so it is, just as spring is beginning to show its face, that I find it frustrating to now be plunged into the austerity of Lent. Just when things couldn’t get any worse, Lent comes round again. Laden with expectation, it is a season where we walk some kind of tightrope between the virtue of self-denial and the guilt of failure. Why do we do it to ourselves?
Why? Well perhaps like me you will have had the story of Jesus’ 40 day fast in the desert and subsequent temptations drilled into you from an early age. Out of context however, this is nothing more than a feat of endurance. This vision of Jesus paints him more as a forerunner to David Blaine than the saviour of humanity. Out of context, Jesus performs a superhuman feat of self-denial, which in Lent we strive to emulate by giving up chocolate. Or gin. And even such a paltry offering can be hard to maintain. As Oscar Wilde famously said, ‘I can resist anything but temptation’.
But, in setting up Lent as some vision of asceticism, where we strive to emulate Jesus by practising self-denial, we are setting ourselves up for a fall. Either into the guilt of falling off the wagon at some stage, or into the smug vanity of the Pharisee when we make it to Easter Sunday having not eaten meat, or used Facebook for six weeks. In doing that, we risk reducing Lent to a diet, and Easter Sunday to a meeting of WeightWatchers where success is rewarded with a spiritual pat on the back.
Because, the story of Jesus in the wilderness is not a story of asceticism. It is not of self denial, but of sign to what is to come. We heard the devil saying to Jesus, ‘If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.’ Jesus resists, stating that one does not live by bread alone. But that is not the end of the story! Jesus goes on to live this out, throughout his ministry and teaching he provides nourishment with the Word, proclaiming himself the bread of life. Yes, Jesus shuns the material of the world, but not for the sake of it. ‘Those who come to me shall never hunger.’
Next Jesus is tempted with power and authority over the kingdoms of the world. He resists, of course, refusing to worship the devil, refusing to enter into the murky world of earthly politics and power games. But this is not the end of the story. He goes on to live this out too, spending his time subverting the status quo, spending time with prostitutes and tax collectors alike, upsetting the ruling elite and even entering into Jerusalem, heralded as the Messiah, the King of the Jews, while riding on a donkey. Refusing the temptation of earthly power and influence is not an empty gesture for which he received a pat on the back, but a sign of the life he was to lead.
Finally, from the pinnacle of the temple, Jesus is asked to throw himself down, allowing the angels to bear him up and away from harm. Not to be fooled, Jesus refuses to put God to the test in that way. Yet this too is not the end of the story. By the end of his ministry, Jesus had thrown himself into the temple, denouncing the Chief Priests and the Pharisees, overturning the tables of the money-changers who worked within its walls and preaching a message so radical that they crucified him. Jesus’ words in the desert were not empty, he did not praise himself for having resisted temptation, but rather led his life shaped by these experiences. He was not borne up by angels, forcing some kind of intervention to prove earthly power, but rather suffered death and hell to be raised up heralding cosmic grace. He ‘put an end to death by dying for us, and revealed the resurrection by rising to new life’.
So, this is not a story of simple self denial, of empty signs, of ‘cheap grace’. For Jesus, temptation and self-discipline was not an end in itself, not something which in itself brings us closer to God. Rather it was a commission of what was to come. Can we say the same thing? Have we entered into the one-upmanship of Lenten discipline? It’s all too easy. It’s all to easy to make Lent a distraction, to make discipline an end in itself, putting out of our minds the fact that Easter is coming, new life is on the horizon, and ultimately that does not depend on whether or not you have not had a kit-kat chunky for six weeks.
This is not new, not a modern phenomenon, but rather something deeply human. In Isaiah God is heard to complain… ‘these people say they are mine, they honour me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.’ The Jesus of the Gospels has endless patience with those who are grappling, struggling with the big questions of life and death, but with those who claim to have the answers, whose hearts are hardened, he gets angry.
Picture a man, who brings home flowers for his wife. She, in delight spends a while arranging them in a vase, setting them in a prominent position and admiring their beauty. She thanks him.
“I’m your husband,” he says, “it’s my duty.” Or,
“Oh I just saw them and they were on special offer, it’s no big deal. They were cheap.” Or even,
“Well I thought you needed them.”
Does she even want the flowers any more? God wants the thoughts of our hearts, not simply words from our lips.
So. I suggest, that one of the greatest temptations of Lent is to get so obsessed with temptation, so bound up with self-denial… praising ourselves when it goes right and demonising ourselves when we fail… that the point of it all becomes obscured by not eating chocolate, by giving up alcohol, or by trying to avoid saying the word ‘alleluia’ in all situations. Lent becomes a sacred cow, focussed not on a deepening relationship with God but on our own personal journeys.
And so we pray for God’s help, that we may remain focussed on deepening our relationship with him, rather than being distracted with the earthly temptations that Jesus shunned.
God of the desert; as we follow Jesus into the unknown,
May we recognise the tempter when he comes,
Let it be your bread we eat, your world we serve
1 comments:
Storming sermon.
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