Lent 1:  As the Journey Begins

Sermon preached by the Reverend Patricia Farris

February 29, 2004

Scripture:  Luke 4:1-13

The season of Lent begins, as it does every year, with Ash Wednesday and with the story of the Temptation.  This traditional season of repentance in preparation for the great Easter celebration has begun. There are forty days now until Easter.  Forty days to get right with God.   The question for each of us is whether we will choose to honor this time, to do some spiritual spadework, to repent and turn away from sin, preparing the ground of our soul for the gift of resurrection.    Will

we keep a holy lent this year?

 

You gardeners know that there is a time every season for turning the soil, with trowel and spade, tractor or backhoe.  Turning the soil to prepare it for planting.  Turning it to the air, breaking it open, loosening it up, and getting it ready to host new growth.  That’s what repentance is really.  It means “turning,” turning around, opening to something new, starting over.

This morning at the second service, we will baptize London Caroline Mills.  And as we do, in the baptismal liturgy, we will ask several questions of her parents and sponsors and to each they will answer: I WILL.  There is an older form of this liturgy once used in the church that asked the same questions but put the answer somewhat differently.  In response to each query, the answer came:  I TURN TO CHRIST.  And in the early church this turning was acted out in baptism, as the person to be baptized entered the font with their back to the darkness and emerged facing into the morning light of the eastern sky.  I TURN TO CHRIST.

What does it mean to say that we will turn to Christ?  For the newly baptized, it’s perhaps fairly clear.  A commitment is made, a vow taken.  There is a kind of intentionality at the beginning of a journey that is exciting and purposeful.  Whether it gets harder or easier as time goes on is, I suppose, a matter of debate and life experience.  For the beginning, after all, is just the beginning and no one knows what will lie ahead.  And so the church has offered a blessing for its new baptized members:  “May God, who has received you by baptism into his Church, pour upon you the riches of his grace, that within the company of Christ’s pilgrim people you may daily be renewed by his anointing Spirit, and come to the inheritance of the saints in glory.”

The conscious decision to turn to Christ in baptism is the same decision we are asked to re-new each Lent.  For generations and generations the church has said to itself:  wait.  Slow down.  Stop.  Consider.  Think.  Reflect.  Where are you going?  How are you living?  What are your priorities?  To what do you give your allegiance?  Stop, church.  Pray.  Watch and wait.  Repent.  Turn to Christ.

For this reason, the first Sunday in Lent always brings us the story of the Temptation of Jesus.  Jesus, who has been baptized by John.  Jesus, who has heard the voice of God at his baptism and again at his Transfiguration saying:  This is my Son, my beloved, my Chosen One.  This is now the moment, out there in the wilderness alone, when even Jesus takes time out for forty days and forty nights to ask:  Where am I going?  What are my priorities?  To what do I give my allegiance?  Pray.  Watch and wait.  And there, he is tempted to turn away from God.

But at the end of his forty days and forty nights, Jesus affirms:  We live by the Word of God, not by bread alone.  We worship God who gives power over the evil forces of this world.  We will not be so arrogant as to put God to the test.  Three times the devil tempts Jesus; three times Jesus asserts his allegiance to God.  Jesus turns to God, and in this turning, is the model for our Lenten journey as we now stop, take stock, and turn to Christ that we may turn to God.

I have a feeling that for many of us this Lent, our Lenten journey will include some grappling with Mel Gibson’s movie “The Passion…”.  Whether you see it or not, plan to see it or not, it’s everywhere—newspapers, magazines, TV specials, in almost every conversation I’ve had over the last couple weeks.  Because of the sheer force of its omnipresence in our culture at this moment, and because of the power of the visual image, this movie will effect our understanding of Christ, of his relationship with God, of his temptations, of the meaning and purpose of his suffering, and ultimately, of course, of the meaning of his life and of his death.  There’s no way around it. 

There are and will be many things to say about it over these weeks of Lent.  I will begin this morning and continue in upcoming Sundays and will also plan a time for us to just sit down together and talk through our feelings and reactions and questions. 

It helps to know that the movie is a form of the traditional passion play, most familiar to us, perhaps, in the version performed in Oberammergau, Germany since 1634.  Passion is from the Latin passio, meaning suffering. It depicts Jesus through his arrest, scourging and crucifixion.  The movie also includes a very brief resurrection scene.  To create his version, Gibson has drawn from the four gospels, and from imagination and embellishment, with a heavy dose of Hollywood, and unrelenting violence, some of it gratuitous.  This movie is not appropriate for children and parents—if you’re considering letting your young teens go, see it yourself first and then decide.  Everyone should read the Gospels before going and check them again after seeing the movie.  The movie is not the gospel, and we should do our homework to sort out the differences.

There is much more to say about various aspects of the movie. But for this morning as we begin our Lenten journey, let me emphasize that one of the limitations of any passion play is that it puts all the emphasis on the last hours of Jesus’ life on earth and on his suffering.  Some find this experience to be a transformative encounter with our Lord, Jesus Christ.  At the same time, let us also remember that the gospels themselves devote rather little space to this aspect of Jesus’ life and its meaning for our faith.  Those who shaped the New Testament chose to emphasize instead the whole of his life and, more importantly, all that happens after his resurrection.  And so, the question becomes:  after we turn to Christ, where do we turn next?

From Scripture we know that Jesus himself consistently shifted the emphasis away from himself to God and to the Kingdom of God. For Jesus, the journey inward always moved to the journey outward.  His emphasis was on the new way of life he was inaugurating for the children of God—based on love, grace, forgiveness, reconciliation and peace.  He came to transform the world and restore it to the fullness of God’s creation.  His suffering was just one part of his whole life—his teaching, his healing, his preaching—all to accomplish this.   

Our Lenten theme this year is “Journey Inward + Journey Outward”, taken from the book of that title by Elizabeth O’Connor from the Church of the Savior in Washington, D.C.  The individual Christian and the church, she asserts, always exhibits a vital balance between the journey inward and the journey outward.  The journey inward is about going deep in ourselves, with God and with those of our Christian community, the fellow travelers we know and worship and study and pray with.  The journey outward, then, is involvement with the needs of the larger community and the world.  And the repentance we are called to undertake, the turning to Christ, is found in both journeys, as we reach deep within and reach out more lovingly and compassionately.

The purpose of all this soul-searching is to find the new life God is offering each of us.  The purpose of repentance, of turning to Christ, is to re-energize our life with new purpose, new breath, and new focus.  Repentance, turning to Christ, is a life-giving move, in the service of forgiveness, reconciliation and re-orientation.  Turning to Christ turns us to the needs of our sisters and brothers, to a life of loving service in this world.    

The Holy Spirit will lead few of us into the wilderness for a forty-day trial with the devil.  But each of us has been tempted to turn away from God.  We have been tempted away by this vain world’s golden store.  We have been tempted away by our own self-reliant pride and arrogance.  We have been tempted away, taking the harvest for granted and neglecting the turning and the tilling of our spirit’s soil.  It is time to turn to Christ.  And if the movie for you this Lent is a factor in that turning, God bless it.  May it, and all the ways we observe Lent this year, help us become the Easter people God creates us to be.

“May God, who has received you by baptism into his Church, pour upon you the riches of his grace, that within the company of Christ’s pilgrim people you may daily be renewed by his anointing Spirit, and come to the inheritance of the saints in glory.”  Amen.

NOTES:

Richard Burridge.  Faith Odyssey:  A Journey Through Lent.  Eerdmans, 2000.   

Diane Bergant.  Preaching the New Lectionary Year C. Liturgical Press, 2000.

Elizabeth O’Connor.  Journey Inward, Journey Outward.  Harper and Row, 1975.