First Lent March 1, 2008

First Lent
March 1, 2008

Lent is one of those seasons where you don’t have to guess that something’s going on!
You just have to walk in the church door. The Stations of the Cross so bright and deceptively simple. The baptismal font at the door, open and full of water instead of semi-invisible over in the corner. Bare branches on the altar. The words and music—more solemn, more ancient. A little harder to wrap our lips around.
The Confession, which we don’t say as a body during the Christmas and Epiphany seasons, is back in spades. At the 9:30 service, no music during Communion.
All this is on purpose—the church with her colors, sounds, and rituals is inviting us into the journey of Lent.

Jesus’ Lenten journey started way back at the River Jordan.
When Jesus came up out of the water after being baptized by John the Baptist,“he saw the heavens torn apart and . . . a voice came from heaven saying these incredible words: ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; in you I am well pleased.’”
So what might you expect to happen next? Something pretty great, right? Choirs of angels, an easy life, salvation guaranteed?
Here’s what happened to Jesus,: “Immediately,” Mark’s gospel says, the Spirit drove him into the wilderness. (In the other Gospels, the Spirit “led” him—here the Spirit of God got behind him and pushed!)
One minute he’s the beloved child of God. The next he’s abandoned without food or water in a stripped down landscape of rock and sand.
He’s not quite alone. Wild beasts roam through the desert at night. And day and night, night and day Satan tempts him.

We’ve got to stop and notice something important here: Jesus’ Lenten journey goes in a particular direction. The direction is crucial.
What if Jesus had begun his journey in the desert, fending off Satan, and then on the 41st day emerged and strode triumphantly to the Jordan?
Then, when God called him “Beloved Son,” it would be a reward for his victory over temptation. He’d be like the victorious heroes of Greek myths, crowned by the gods with laurel wreaths.
If that was the direction of our Lenten journey in the Lenten landscape, here’s what we’d have to do: like good Christian soldiers we’d have to put on our armor and do battle with Satan in order to earn God’s love.
I’m afraid many of us think of Lent that way. We try to prove something to God and to ourselves.
Someone just told me of overhearing a pair of church people in an Orthodox church—where they take Lent pretty seriously—at coffee hour on Easter morning. One asked the other how his Lent had gone. “15 pounds,” he answered. “Wow,” the first one said, “I only lost ten. You really had a holy Lent!”



But earning God’s love by resisting temptation is walking the Lenten journey backwards.
Before he faced down Satan in the wilderness, Jesus knew in his blood and in his bones that God loved him. Then and only then was he ready to face temptation. Knowing he was loved made everything else possible.
I had a friend once who was determined to make the best of a bad marriage. For ten years she tried everything she could to make her husband love her. She changed her hair style, she gained weight, she lost weight. She dressed one way, then another way. She read books she didn’t like, she took a job she hated.
For ten years she tried to earn her husband’s love. For ten years she tore herself apart, forgot who she really was—and did it work? No, of course not. And when hard times came, the marriage split apart. It took her years to trust herself again.
But what if her husband had loved her to begin with? What if she had confidence in his love. Then she could have done exactly the same things: played with hair styles, fashions, jobs, she could make mistakes and start all over again—trusting that none of this would change his love for her. When the hard times came, then she could have confidence that he would be there with her and that together they could face them.
And that is human love. How much more confident can we be in God’s love. Like the psalmist we can say, “To you, O Lord, I life up my soul; my God, I put my trust in you.”

Imagine: as you walk out of church today the snow stops in midair and a rip appears in that gray blanket of sky and God says gently to you, to you: “You are my Child, my Beloved; in you I am well pleased.” Wow!
That’s what happens to each of us at our baptism and every time we receive Communion, and every minute of every day, God greets us as beloved children.
And surrounds us with that love, even as we face temptations and hard times every day.

I want to suggest a practice for the week: Begin your Lenten journey where Jesus began. Before you get up in the morning, or before you go to sleep at night, take a little time to hear the voice of God say to you: “You, Paula, Betty, Bill, Russ . . .. , you are my Beloved, my Child. In you I am well pleased.” It will probably feel strange—we’re so used to beating ourselves up before God.
But if we’re to match our Lenten journey to Jesus’, it’s the only place to start.