Given at: Trinity
Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois; Sunday, February 26, 2012
“HAPPY LENT!”
Happy Lent,
everyone!
At first
hearing, “Happy Lent” sounds a lot like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? (Credit for this saying must go to my wife,
if the truth be known.)
Happy….Lent?
Isn’t Lent
a time to put on our sad faces, to look dismal?
Isn’t it a time to bewail our manifold sins and offenses (as the Prayer
Book says)?
Well, yes,
Lent is a time for reflection, for sacrifice, for introspection. It is all of these things. It is also a time of preparation for Easter.
But I am
getting ahead of myself.
Let’s look
at the business of Lent, first from the perspective of liturgy, and then from
the perspective of its relationship to Easter.
We should also look at the biblical foundations that form the background
of our Lenten observances.
We begin
with the liturgical aspects of Lent.
Liturgy is
a word which comes to us from two words in Greek which mean “work of the
people”. So liturgy is worship which
involves not only the person leading worship, but everyone who’s present for
worship. There can be no private Masses,
if we are serious about doing liturgy correctly. The celebrant or preside at worship isn’t the
only one worshipping while others simply watch. There are no observers during
worship, for everyone is a liturgical participant in creating worship.
Liturgy
serves several wonderful purposes:
1. It allows us to experience not only the
heights of celebration, but also the depths of introspection as we prepare for
the times of celebration. That’s what
the season of Advent is for, and – even more so – what the season of Lent is
for. As a liturgical Church, our Sunday
celebrations (though they are all celebrations of the Lord’s resurrection)
exhibit the ebb and flow of the seasons of the Church Year. Now, in Lent, we find ourselves in a “violet”
(purple) season, the color indicating a time of penitence and preparation. There’s a richness to this ebb and flow, a
richness not found in traditions in which nearly every Sunday celebration is
pretty much the same (OK, I will admit that I’m boasting just a little about
our wonderful Anglican tradition here.)
2. The liturgy forces us to do the “tough
stuff”: Each Sunday, a set table of
Bible readings is put before us.
Sometimes, the readings force us to face hard teachings and to hear tough admonitions. They “hold our feet to the fire” of Christian
living. Although no method of reading
Scripture is perfect, this method is preferable to a method in which the pastor
or preacher selects the readings for Sunday worship….under such a system, it’s
too easy simply to select favorite passages, over and over again, and maybe to
select only those things that are pleasing to the ear and which fall easily on
the soul and mind.
3. The liturgy saves us from the priest: If liturgy is being done properly, Sunday
celebrations will cease to be a “one man show”.[1] The celebrant or presider has no need to try
to invent clever schemes and to make use of gimmicks to keep some sort of an
“edge” to worship in order to titillate the senses of the worshippers. Liturgy allows the historical roots and depth
of the Church’s worship has it has come down to us through time to carry the
weight of coming into God’s presence to worship and adore Him. Worship should never look or sound like
entertainment.
4. Lent as a liturgical concept: “You won’t find the word ‘Lent’ in the
Bible,” you may hear some one of your evangelical friends say. True enough…the word won’t be found there at
all. But Lent[2] is
a liturgical concept, and, as such, is a tool to assist us in our worship of Almighty
God. Frankly speaking, everything we do
in liturgical worship is simply a tool to allow us to express our adoration for
God, and to enable us to see Him more clearly.
Perhaps
this is a good place to turn our attention to the matter of the function of
Lent as it relates to Easter. Some good
comments can be made about that connection:
1. A balanced approach to/from Easter: Lent is 40 days long (not counting the
Sundays in Lent, which are always celebrations of the Lord’s resurrection). So is the Easter season from the Day of the
Resurrection until Ascension Day, 40 days later (see Acts 1: 1 – 3). Easter is approached by a 40 day season of
preparation, and it is followed by 40 days of celebration.
2. A time
in the wilderness: Our collect for this
Sunday mentions Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. Our gospel reading from Mark, chapter one,
also mentions the period of temptation.
Mark also mentions a period of 40 days, a period of time upon which Lent
is based.
Having
mentioned the wilderness as the place of temptation, we ought to turn our
attention to the biblical implications of being in the wilderness.
Of course,
one memory of the wilderness that will spring to mind is the wandering of the
ancient Israelites in the wilderness following their exodus from Egypt. There, the period of wandering is 40 years
long. The people of God, as they
followed Moses out of Egypt, make a water crossing by passing through the Red
Sea. (Notice that today’s gospel text
begins with an account of Jesus’ baptism, a water crossing.) There, the people of God face temptations
(hunger, thirst, threats to safety from serpents, etc.) All along the way, God provides for them
(manna and quail, water from the rock, a bronze serpent to heal the bites of
the snakes that attacked the people).
Similarly,
as we look at Jesus’ temptation – and here I must rely on Matthew’s account of
it, for Mark’s account is very brief (see Matthew 4: 1 – 11[3]) –
we see that Jesus is tempted in very similar ways: A temptation to take away His hunger by
changing a stone into bread, and an appeal to safety by having angels bear Him
up if He were to thrown Himself down from the pinnacle of the temple.
The
wilderness is a place to meet God, for it is a place with few
distractions. In the Exodus period, it
was in the wilderness – on Mt. Sinai – that God gave the Law to His
people. The wilderness was a place where
one could concentrate on God, for there were fewer things there in the
wilderness environment that could take away one’s ability to concentrate on
divine things.
In the
wilderness, God provides sustenance. In
ancient times, it was the manna, the quail and the water which sustained the
people. As Jesus undergoes His
temptation, angels come and minister to Him.
As we enter
the holy season of Lent, we, too, find ourselves in the wilderness.
It is a
time for us to set aside the distractions which can so easily cloud our vision
of God. It is a time to be sustained by
God’s word, by God’s Holy Spirit.
It is a
time to face squarely our own mortality, and especially the threats to life and
living that separation from God often entails.
It is a
time to see that we are dependent on God, dependent for our spiritual
wellbeing, dependent on God for our material wellbeing.
Welcome to
Lent, welcome to the wilderness.
AMEN.
[1] Our Clergy Prelenten Retreat leader recently
quipped that priests should be careful not to regard the altar as their
personal possession…he said that the altar isn’t “your personal, pietistic
playpen”!
[2] The word Lent comes to us from the Old
English, where it meant “to lengthen”, as in the lengthening of the time of
sunlight as spring approached.
[3] For a comparison, see also Luke’s account of
Jesus’ temptation, Luke 4: 1 – 13.
