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Lent 1_21.02.2010
| 26.02.2010, 09:13 | |
| Rev. Tatiana Cantarella Psalm 91: 1-2, 9-16; Luke 4:1-13; Deuteronomy 26:1-19 1 Sunday of Lent/February 21, 2010 A Time of Grateful Sacrifice On Wednesday several of us gathered together to reflect on Lent, which begins this week. We also reflected on what meaning it might have for our lives in contemporary society. We discussed how in the tradition of the Church these seven weeks before Easter for many centuries have been considered the highest point of the church year. But some say, "But in the Bible there isn’t any Lenten fast, so all of this is just unnecessary human tradition.” Human tradition? Maybe. Unnecessary? That’s debatable. Barbara Brown Taylor, one of my favorite preachers, describes the genesis of the tradition in the following way: ""There is some evidence that early Christians fasted 40 hours between Good Friday and Easter, but the custom of spending 40 days in prayer and self-denial did not arise until later, when the initial rush of Christian adrenaline was over and believers had gotten very ho-hum about their faith. When the world did not end as Jesus himself had said it would, his followers stopped expecting so much from God or from themselves. They hung a wooden cross on the wall and settled back into their more or less comfortable routines, remembering their once passionate devotion to God the way they remembered the other enthusiasms of their youth. Little by little, Christians became devoted to their comforts instead: the soft couch, the flannel sheets, the leg of lamb roasted with rosemary. These things made them feel safe and cared for -- if not by God, then by themselves. They decided there was no contradiction between being comfortable and being Christian, and before long it was very hard to pick them out from the population at large. They no longer distinguished themselves by their bold love for one another. They did not get arrested for championing the poor. They blended in. They avoided extremes. They decided to be nice instead of holy, and God moaned out loud.” That is when several Christians decided that the time had come to wake up and remember what it really meant to be a Christian. To do so they turned to the Bible. In Scripture they discovered how Israel spent forty years in the wilderness learning to trust the Lord, how the prophet Elijah spent forty days before he heard the quiet voice of God on the same mountain where Moses spent forty days listening to commandments from God. They also found the story about Jesus, who spent forty days in the wilderness, tempted by the devil before he began his earthly ministry. The process was difficult for them all: difficult, but absolutely necessary. They all confirmed once more that a person can be committed to God. And so the Church announced the forty day Lenten Fast a special time -- kairos -- a Greek word that means a time of decision and possibilities, a time intentionally set apart. We live in a world ruled by greed and lust for things and for people; in a world where we continue to desperately cling to our addictions, all the time failing to notice how deeply bound and impersonal we really are. Taylor could have been speaking about us when she said, "they were hard to pick out from the crowd. They were no longer noticed for their bold love for one another. They did not get arrested for championing the poor. They blended in. They avoided extremes. They decided to be nice instead of holy....” That is exactly why the Lenten fast is just as important today as it was then for Christians who don’t want to grow cold. During the Middle Ages in many countries the name of the "Great Fast” took on the colloquial term "Lenten,” an English word that means "spring time,” a word that not only indicates the season, but also invites us to an awakening of the soul. The Lenten fast was an invitation to purify one’s life from the things we so rely on and to discover what is left when all our comforts disappear. These forty days were intended to make us remember what it means to live by God’s grace alone and not by all of the things that we can provide ourselves with on our own. Therefore, contrary to all our stereotypes, we are called at the beginning of this forty day journey to see ahead of us not a time for exhaustion and torment, based only on negation, like giving up a certain type of food for example. Rather we are called to see a time for the discovery of new liberty, a liberty which allows us to leave behind a life founded on the principle of what "I want” and to discover a life founded on the principle of what "I need” in the physical and spiritual sense of the word. God invites us on this journey in order to know him more and to be renewed, to enter into a spiritual spring and true liberty in God. It isn’t surprising then, that our first Lenten lesson of true liberty and life in God begins with the lesson about the "sacrifice of gratitude” and is connected to the idea of returning everything we have back to God in gratitude. At the very beginning of Deuteronomy Israel’s forty years of wandering in the wilderness has come to an end. The people are standing on the bank of the river Jordan and are on the verge of entering the Promised Land. As I said earlier, that forty years of wandering in the wilderness was about the necessity of learning to rely on God alone, not about making them suffer for something. Now that they are about to enter the Promised Land, the land "flowing with milk and honey,” they must not allow themselves to forget about who they are, where they’ve come from, who led them out of slavery in Egypt and led them into this bountiful land. That is way the Old Testament decreed that in the new land Israel must yearly bring God a tenth part of all that the land produced: "Be sure to set aside a tenth of all that your fields produce each year” (Deut. 14:22). The word "set aside” literally means "give” and in this one chapter we see it at least eleven times! More than anything it is used in relation to God, who "brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey” (9). The author repeats this in almost every verse so that the people don’t forget how they ended up there, from whose hands they have received everything they have! But there is one usage of the word "to give” that, unfortunately, can easily get lost in translation. In verse 6 Scripture says that when the people were in slavery in Egypt the Egyptians "mistreated us and made us suffer, putting us to hard labor.” The word "putting” here is the same word that is translated everywhere else as "giving.” In contrast to God, who generously gave them a beautiful new land, Egypt gave them only mistreatment and back-breaking labor. These two completely different meanings of the usage of the word "to give” tells us a lot about the essence of gratitude. It is impossible to fully understand Israel’s gratitude for the land God gave them without thinking about the hard labor to which the Egyptians had put them in slavery. For the God Who had "brought them out of Egypt with a mighty hand” (26:8) is the same God Who had brought them "into the land and given it to them as an inheritance” (26:1). True thanksgiving is always rooted in a memory of salvation and cannot only be built on what one has now. Amid the wealth and success of their present life the people were called to remember that they are part of a community that had once wandered in the wilderness, had once been in slavery, but that had always been preserved by the faithfulness of the one God. Reminding themselves almost in every verse of Who had given them everything that they have, the people are called every year to bring God a tenth part, the best part of what they received. And that part symbolized the whole: by returning to God the first fruits of what he had given to them, the Israelites called on God to bless the whole harvest. In the same way they acknowledged that the land belongs to God, and that we are only stewards of His gifts, and that means that when we give our tithe we, as an expression of gratitude, are giving to Him what already belongs to Him. The people of Israel have always viewed this act of "returning” not as a loss, but as an acquisition!! The Festival of the Harvest was a time of joy and satisfaction: "And you shall rejoice in all the good things the Lord your God has given to you and your household” (26:11). Early Christians applied this idea of bringing their tithe to the Lenten Fast, which was viewed as a tenth part of the year given to God in gratitude. By setting apart this time for a spiritual spring we bear witness to the fact that our whole life, from beginning to end, and every moment in between is given to us by God. By dedicating this part of our life to God, we call down His blessing on all of it. So the Lenten fast symbolizes a sanctification of our time, it calls us to understand that time is not just under our control, that we can selfishly use it however we think best. Time belongs to God; we are only stewards of time, not its masters. In the eastern liturgy there are some beautiful words that reflect this thought: "Your own from Your own we offer you, in all things and for all things”. These words are also a wonderful reminder of how the Lenten fast is really a returning to God of something that really belongs to Him in the first place. The Lenten fast can be the same sort of time for us, a time of joyful and true sacrifice for God. We are bringing a tenth of the year to God as a sacrifice, and through that sacrifice we are bring our very selves, our whole life, all of its days and hours. And if we want this offering of ourselves and our time to be meaningful, it has to cost us something. Once King David wanted to bring God a sacrifice and someone offered him as a gift the oxen, a cart, and the wood but David answered: "I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing” (2 Samuel 24:24). Look at these things -- they are an example of what people give to the church, and, probably, take pride in their generosity before God. But don’t be too quick to judge them, we often to the same thing, when the church asks us to participate in the collection of children’s Christmas gifts or clothing. When we are looking for stuff to give away, we often end up giving what we’ve gotten tired of, what we don’t need or don’t like, what doesn’t cost us anything. Let’s admit how often we act according to the principle of "Here God, I don’t need this”? This is a societal tendency. That is why scripture called the people of Israel to bring the "first fruits” of their harvest, i.e. not only the "first,” but the "best part!” If we want to the offering of ourselves to be meaningful, it has to cost us something and at the same time we have to do it with joy, not gritting our teeth. Like Bishop Kallistos Ware pointed out, "sacrifice is not primarily a matter of "giving up” but of "giving””. The emphasis isn’t on depriving ourselves of something, but on offering something to God and to our neighbor. When we bring God a gift, a gift that he accepts, we want to restore a personal relationship between us and Him through that gift, creating the illusion that our lives are in our hands and that we don’t owe anybody anything. The Lenten fast is prescribed for that sort of self-dependence, and can also become a medicine for it. I began the sermon today talking about how we all get used to our "comforts,” and we all have them. 99% of people are subject to habits and addictions that control them, be it food, shopping, gossip, talking on the phone, internet, smoking, television or something else. All of have something that does the same thing a pacifier (binky, plug, nook) does for a discontented newborn. An addiction is in essence anything with which we fill the inner vacuum intended only for God. That vacuum that we sense sometimes isn’t a sign of a problem. We all have this "holy of holies,” this empty room intended for our Lord God. And nothing can fill it but that doesn’t keep us from trying. As soon as we start to sense some inner emptiness we immediately grab our pacifier and stubbornly start sucking it. But, just like a pacifier, none of our addictions satisfy our hunger, they only stop up the hole for a while. And that is exactly why the Lenten fast gives us the opportunity to enter into the wilderness, to leave our addictions behind even if only for a time and to discover what time without them has to teach us. And there is nothing too insignificant. For some of the younger guys it might be video games. Do an experiment: during Lent pay attention to how often you think about your addiction during these forty days. Reflect on it: at what moments do you think about it and why? What happens when you irresistibly want to get your "pacifier”? Is it really so important? Or are you just feeling a sense of loneliness that you want to cover up? But is loneliness really always a bad feeling? Try to sit and experience the emotion instead of immediately satisfying it and examine yourself: what will you discover? It is entirely possible that you will hear a voice convincing you that you can’t do without your pacifier. "You’ll die of hunger. You’ll go crazy.” If you don’t give in, the voice may go to a different level: "What do you mean "pacifier”? Who are you listening to. It is your lawful right to use it, so use it!” And if you still don’t give in to that voice there is always a third level: "If God really loves you, he’ll let you do whatever you want. Why waste time on this stupid exercise?” If you don’t know to whom that voice belongs, just re-read chapter 4 of Luke’s Gospel. So try this exercise to find out more about your addictions and when you hear the voice of the tempter, send him on his way and decide for yourself what you’re going to do during Lent. Or even better, to whom you will belong. Jesus knew to whom He belonged and therefore denied himself of the same blessings that God gave Israel during their wandering in the wilderness: food, ownership of land and God’s protection. For He knew, that the problem is never in the blessings themselves, but in who offers them and at what price. Everything the devil offered had its condition: "to worship and serve” him, instead of God. Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.” Let these weeks of Lent become for us a tithe of time, a tithe of our life, brought before God as a proclamation about to Whom we desire to belong and Whom we desire to serve. Expect the best of God and of yourself. Remember, with God everything is possible. Why settle for anything less? | |
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