PROPERS: 1 LENT, YEAR C
TEXT: LUKE: 4:1-13
PREACHED AT HOLY TRINITY, PENSACOLA, ON SUNDAY, MARCH 10, 2019.
ONE SENTENCE: The purpose for us in Lent is both more simple and complex than we think: It is to eliminate the barriers which separate us from a more full relationship to God.
First of all, please accept my heartfelt thanks for your understanding, support, and prayers during my recent surgery and convalescence. The card and emails I received from you were heartwarming, and I am deeply grateful.
It is good to be back with you in one piece.
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We have embarked on the great season of Lent – the 40 days and 40 nights (plus Sundays) which precede the Easter celebration.
We Episcopalians have a love-hate relationship with Lent. We faithfully attend Ash Wednesday service, we wear our forehead crosses with a sense of pride, yet we grow tired of the tediousness of penitence which the season emphasizes.
Not to mention, we miss our chocolate and alcohol, too.
But, if truth be known, Lent has become a caricature of its original place and purpose. It has been separated from the practice of the early church – a practice deeply rooted in the faith of the church.
Today, Lent is about what we are going to give up. Typically, that means chocolate, sugar, alcohol, desserts, fried foods, or other things which we recognize we need to minimize in our lives – Lent or no Lent.
Another contemporary practice is to take onsome behavior which we have neglected. Typically, that includes exercise. Or fasting. It may include meditation, Bible-reading, and prayer.
I have seen other manifestations of Lenten exhortation. Doing good and charitable works. Reaching out to the poor and lonely, the ill and grieving.
All this is good and right. But how does it connect to the earlier purposes of Lent?
Here I begin my liturgical history lesson. I hope it helps you understand – and grasp more fully – the power and purpose of this season.
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In the early church – think in terms of the first few hundred years – the service was structured much as we structure this Eucharistic service. There were the two primary portions of the service – the Word of God, and the Liturgy of the Table. The line of demarcation between the two was The Peace.
The Word of God was in a form that would be familiar to us. It included the gathering of the people, opening prayers, the lessons from scripture, an exposition on the scriptures (we would call a sermon), a statement of belief (later known as the Creed), and additional, all-encompassing prayers. The Peace would follow.
Now I don’t want us to think that we could walk into a Cyprian, Coptic, or Eastern Orthodox Church and feel right at home. It would feel strange. But the essential elements would be very similar.
This first part of the service was instructional in nature. It was meant to illumine those in attendance. And it was a preface to what was to come next – but not for all.
That is because this portion – the first part of the service – was meant for all people. All people included two groups which would not participate in the Eucharistic feast which was to come – the portion known as The Liturgy of the Table or The Great Thanksgiving.
See, the first portion of the service was known also as The Liturgy of the Catechumens. It was portion of the service aimed especially at those who were being prepared for baptism at the Great Vigil of Easter. These were “the people in waiting.”
But, there was another group who would not be joining in the Liturgy of the Table. That group included people who had been separated from the faithful by egregious and public sins. Lent, for them, was a time of true, deep, and profound penitence. They were assessing their lives. They were amending their ways. They were turning back toward God.
For both of these groups – the catechumens and the penitent sinners – coming to the Holy Table was not something that was done flippantly. It was something that came at the conclusion of a significant journey.
So. They waited. They reflected. They assessed. They studied. They turned fully toward God.
After the Peace – when the kiss of peace was exchanged – the unbaptized and the penitent sinners would be ushered out of the service.
Giving up chocolate or alcohol… or deciding to fast or meditate… or committing to exercise… was not part of the equation. The journey of Lent had profound impacts of the lives of the faithful.
It had a purpose and it had an end. When the great season of Lent was ended, the catechumens would be baptized and the penitent sinners would be welcomed back into the community of faith. And there would be a great celebration – and all would share in the Eucharistic feast.
It was not a purposeless, liturgical version of Buck Owens and Roy Clark: “Gloom, despair and agony on me…”. It had purpose, meaning and power in the lives of those who took the journey. Their lives would never be the same.
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So, what does this say to us? How do we make Lent truly meaningful in our lives?
Luke tells us of the original Lent, when Jesus went into the wilderness for 40 days and nights. I have seen the Wilderness – it is not an inviting environment. Bishop James Pike, a controversial Episcopal bishop in the 1960s, went there himself, for insight and solitude. And he perished there.
Luke tells us of Jesus’ temptations there. They were not insignificant – power, autonomy, a life free of God’s demands. Jesus resisted.
The analogy for us?
We, too, like Jesus, must be in the world. We journey among many temptations. There is much demanding our allegiance, our loyalty, our worship. We are given the latitude to break free of a life of faith, to take on a way of life that is grounded in our own interests, desires, and appetites.
Like Jesus in the Wilderness, the call of Lent is to a call of responsive faithfulness. We are to turn daily toward our source of life… our source of wholeness… our source of meaning.
That is challenging. It requires more steadfastness than giving up chocolate. But it can transform our lives.
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