Sunday Sermon

Lent 1, Year C
February 21, 2010
St. Peter’s Episcopal Church
The Rev. Tom Purdy

We have entered the wilderness and our forty days of Lent. The 40 day length is an important number. Moses was 40 days on Mt. Sinai without food and water. Elijah journeyed 40 days without food. To see Jesus also go through a 40 day period without food is yet another tie between the three of them, which will resonate later in the gospel when readers hear of the transfiguration (which we just heard of last week).

40 days is a long time! Think about 40 days ago. Do you remember what happened 40 days ago? An earthquake devastated Haiti – an event that seems like a long time ago – and it was just 40 days. A lot can happen in 40 days!

The season of Lent is long enough to allow quite a bit to take place in our spiritual lives. It is enough time for us to take a really good look at ourselves and get a lot done. Frederick Buechner has discussed the length of this season and what it allows. He says, “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 to 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.”

In Luke’s version of Jesus’ wilderness time, it’s not so much a self directed retreat with Satan’s temptations and all, but it is nonetheless a time when Jesus, and the rest of us, figured out what kind of man he was. There was still this element of discovering identity in his experience. It is interesting to consider for a moment that we might not really know ourselves. We take a lot for granted in our daily life – things we simply assume about the world around us. Why wouldn’t it be also true that we take things for granted about ourselves – that we simply assume certain things about ourselves. I think it is fair to say that we do the same in our spiritual lives, just taking things for granted. To get to the bottom of our real selves and what we really believe, Buechner suggests a series of questions we should ask ourselves during Lent. These aren’t easy questions, but rather, the kind of questions we have to wrestle with and spend some time pondering. Questions such as:

“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 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?”

I admit, when I first saw the list, I thought those questions didn’t seem too challenging. The first one about God gave me a false sense of security – I knew right away how I would answer that one. But after that it became hard for me to come up with quick and easy answers. What don’t I like in the mirror? What would I like to undo in my life? Sum up what’s most important to me in 25 words of wisdom? These are difficult questions!

I like that Buechner puts the season of Lent into the language of Stewardship. It reminds me that I have a year full of days, and that to spend this season of Lent on this difficult introspection is an offering of sorts back to God. To wrestle with faith is a form of giving – it is an acknowledgment that faith is important enough to warrant introspection. Were it not of value, it wouldn’t be worth the effort. Stewardship is a way of handling the treasures we are blessed with, so why not with our reason and our self understanding?

Buechner says, “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 sackcloth and ashes are at the start of it, something like Easter may be at the end. ” It is true that the Lenten journey is not necessarily a feel good journey from start to finish. Those of us who were here on Wednesday know that, for we were reminded that we are dust and to dust we shall return. I suspect that’s why it isn’t celebrated with the vim and vigor of other season. But Lent is an important component of understanding who we are, especially in relation to God. It is a measuring stick in our church calendar that we pull out once a year to see where we are. We are never fully formed, but are always growing and changing. It’s like measuring your children’s height on a door frame every so often – Lent is a good way to take stock of what we are becoming and what we are not becoming.

Buechner’s questions are challenging, so we may not relish the thought of trying to answer them. Yet to take on just one of them will provide an amazing journey. We have put our Extreme Makeover banner back up for Lent because this is the season that naturally lends itself to this process of making us new. We too may go for 40 days without something that is important to us, our chocolate, our fast food, our Farmville on Facebook. We take things on, like the 4 in 40 Gospel challenge, or reading St. Peter’s Lenten devotionals. All of it works together to help us wrestle with who we are and who we are becoming. Not to take this time during these 40 days is to rob the rest of our year of meaning and understanding.

The Joy that waits for us on Easter morning is not quite as bright if we haven’t spent some dark moments with our real selves, our real struggles, our failures. It is only in seeing the growing edges and the low spots that we can celebrate the high ones – the triumphs. Before getting to the great joy of Easter – there is the process of preparation that precedes it. Without the preparations, the celebration might be lacking. I think Buechner’s challenge is one we can take on.

“During Lent, Christians are supposed to ask one way or another what it means to be themselves.”

“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 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?”

40 days is a long time. It is enough time for transformation to take place. Lent involves some hard work, yet, “It can be a pretty depressing business all in all, but if sackcloth and ashes are at the start of it, something like Easter may be at the end.”