The Substance of Lent

PROPERS: SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT, YEAR B 

TEXT:       MARK 8:31-38                                              

PREACHED AT ST. JOHN’S, PASCAGOULA, ON SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2024

 

ONE SENTENCE:        Lent invites us into a deeper, more sacrificial relationship to God.

 

            It is easy, in a reductive way, to directly connect Jesus’ time in the wilderness with today’s season of Lent.

 

            It is easy for us, too, to feel that giving up chocolate connects us to the ancient practices of Lent.

 

            Not so.

 

            When we traverse the mists of time, and enter into the earliest stages of the church, we see something quite different from Lent today.

 

            The Ash Wednesday liturgy described it subtly but soundly:

 

“The first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord's passion and resurrection, and it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and fasting. This season of Lent provided a time in which converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism. It was also a time when those who, because of notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the Church.”

 

            The early Lents were a very serious matter to the early church.  We are speaking of the first few centuries – before Emperor Constantine’s Edict of Milan made being a Christian legal.

 

            Entry into the counter-cultural church was required much. Likewise, those whose mortal sins had shattered their connection to the church were challenged in returning.

 

            Each group had its own path toward entry or reentry into the community of faith, known by many as simply “The Way.”

 

            Those who aspired to join the underground church went through a very thorough process of catechesis. Allowed in only to the first part of the service, the Liturgy of the Word, they would be led out of the service as the second part of the service, Holy Communion, approached. They would undertake their study and instruction. In many cases, their period of catechesis would be three years. Three years before they were allowed into communion.

 

            Likewise, the notorious sinners. Lent was their time for penitence.  They, too, would be led out of the service after the first portion, and not allowed to receive communion. The second half of the service, leading to the receiving of Communion, was known as the Liturgy of the Faithful. Those who had sinned egregiously could not participate.

 

            Jesus told his followers:

 

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

 

Early Christians – and those seeking to be Christians, and those wishing to return to the Church – knew the meaning of Jesus’ words. Being a Christian required risk and commitment.  It was foundational to their identity.  They risked it all – for the sake of the Gospel.

 

Today, I am sad to say that we have lost the counter-cultural nature of Christianity.  It has been so reduced that Russell Moore, resigned president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (and native of Biloxi), told of a church member hearing Jesus’ words of the Beatitudes.  The man told Moore the church should not proclaim such radical ideas.

 

Being truly Christian has always been risky.  It is risky today.

 

            If we care to be Jesus’ presence today, we need to take up our cross and follow him.