Scriptures: Mark 1:12-13
I originally thought I would be taking a little different approach to the sermon this morning from what it turns out I am taking. I won’t bother to take any time telling you what that other approach was since that would mean that I was talking about this other thing that I decided not to talk about, if you see what I mean, but when I was thinking along these other lines, I began to go looking for hymns that would fit with that theme.
I started with the section in our hymnal that has hymns related to the season of Lent, since this is after all the first Sunday in Lent, and I can at least say that what I originally had in mind was something that was, you might say, traditionally Lenten in character. However, it must have been my mood or something, but after looking at several of these hymns I began to get depressed. These hymns are all so gloomy and heavy and so joyless, I thought to myself. Mourning, sorrow, sin, guilt, sadness, death,–I don’t know, it just seemed a bit much at the time I was doing the browsing. So I decided, as I say, not to go that direction and to reflect instead on the heaviness I was finding in the hymns and to explore my own reaction to that.
I have to say that I find these seasons of the church year—Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost—I find these seasons of the church year sometimes somewhat helpful. They do serve to point me (us, the Christian community) toward some of the different themes or facets or rhythms of the spiritual life, sort of a year round guided meditation—let’s direct our attention now in this direction or that.
Advent suggests themes of hope and longing and visions of peace and shalom; Christmas, the presence of God and the ways that God is embedded in our lives; Epiphany, the ways God is revealed to us; Lent, the wilderness experiences of our lives, times of wandering or testing, and maybe the importance of such things as prayer and discipline and repentance; Easter the gift of new life arising out of situations of death and hopelessness; Pentecost, the nature of spiritual gifts and the birth and building of community.
As I say, I have sometimes found these different seasons of the church year to be helpful in lifting up this aspect or that aspect of the life of faith, so that we don’t focus on some to the exclusion of others, and so that over a year’s time we are led to explore all these different aspects of our faith.
On the other hand, I also have to say that I don’t always interact so well with these seasons of the church year, such as Lent. At different times, in different moods, I find them to be not so much helpful to my spiritual life as contrived and artificial—phony almost. O.K. The church calendar says that last Wednesday was Ash Wednesday, so that means that we’re in Lent, and that means that we’re supposed to be contrite, or repentant, or sad, or some such thing—in any case very sober and serious. At least when we’re doing this church thing we do, we’re supposed to feign the long face and be quite serious. It’s Lent after all. God forbid that anything at all like resurrection should happen before April 20.
I don’t mean to be too negative about Lent, or other seasons of the church year. As I say they serve a purpose that sometimes I’m able to appreciate. They lift up and honor certain parts of ourselves that we aren’t always so good at honoring on our own. Different people have different things they need to deal with, but taken all together the different seasons of the church year get around to saying something to each of us that we probably need to hear, so that for instance a person who has come to be in love with worry to such an extent that it has become almost a way of life, will need to hear the scripture that says, “Therefore do not be anxious about your life…”, whereas someone else will need to hear a different scripture. And all of us need to hear both “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” and “Lo, I am with you always until the end of time.” So I do understand why we have seasons of the church calendar and lectionary readings, and so forth. But there are also times when I resist when the particular season we happen to be in doesn’t match my mood or my need. That, I guess, is what happened to me this last week. I had a moment of confrontation with Lent.
It’s not that I find myself with a particularly fluffy approach to life as Lent rolls around this year. Quite the contrary. With talk of war filling the airwaves and my brainwaves constantly, with a racist attack on a college student still weighing on me, with the reminder that we have already been attacking Iraq for some time now, just not as intensively as we are now proposing, with the reminder that whether or not there is an intensified attack on Iraq the world does not feel like a very safe place these days and is not likely to feel much safer any time soon and if I am feeling it that way, then what about the huge majority of the rest of the world who are in matter of fact a lot less safe than I am—with all of this, I feel pretty serious already. I won’t bother to continue with the rest of the litany of what weighs on me, but I will say that my spirit feels plenty heavy this year without the aid of Lent. So it’s not that Lent is so drastically out of step with my mood.
But I think it is drastically out of step with my need. Just because I come to Lent this year with a kind of a serious spirit, my need is not to be reminded of that side of myself but to be lifted somehow beyond myself, to be given the ability to transcend what weighs on me. My need is to be comforted. My need is not to be reminded of reality but for reality to be redeemed. My need is for a hopeful word, a healing word. My need is for some unburdening, some lightening of the spirit.
And so when I find myself, as I did earlier this week, rummaging through hymns and other worship materials that were seeming to me anyway to be offering me an invitation to enter the wilderness—Right this way, sir. Welcome to Lent, where you will enjoy forty and some odd days reflecting on sin, guilt, death, repentance, lostness, hunger, sorrow, grief and struggle.—well, it just have quite the right kind of ring to it. Wait, I wanted to say. I’m already there. I’ve been there—here—for a while. I’m not really looking for a way into the wilderness. I’m looking for a way out. Would you be kind enough to show me that path, please?
I didn’t choose any of those hymns I was looking at that all seemed to have such gloomy themes, but of course that doesn’t solve the problem. In fact it’s a pretty tricky thing, isn’t it, to try to get your spiritual bearings and keep your spiritual balance in times like these. Because while it’s no fun, and no help, and serves no good purpose to wallow in the wilderness, we also don’t find our way through the wilderness, or even find our way anywhere in the wilderness, by pretending that it is not a wilderness or that we are somewhere else.
That principle can be applied in lots of settings—the futility of denying or repressing things that are difficult or unpleasant—but let me apply it to church life. It is not the right thing to do to try to deal with the world’s sorrow by pretending it does not exist. So worship that offers up praise to God, and does not mention (as an example) the threat of war or the fears, the worries, the shame or repulsion or horror that accompanies it, does not help, does not offer comfort, is not redemptive. Putting on a happy face is no more helpful in the end than putting on an artificially somber face. Saying the name of Jesus a lot, or very loudly, does not reduce or redeem the world’s suffering. Talking a whole bunch about the cross of Jesus and not talking about all the other kinds of crosses there are in the world does not do the trick. It is not acceptable to God to do such things, and it is not good for our souls.
Using religion as a security blanket, a medicine, or a narcotic…using religion to falsely reassure me, to distract me, or insulate me from the troubles of the world is not what we’re supposed to be about. I’m not going to say it doesn’t work. Religion is used to make people feel better all the time, in all sorts of ways. But feelings are funny and elusive things, and it can’t be the point of religion to somehow manipulate our feelings. Surely it is not the point of religion to make us feel bad—about the world, about life, about ourselves. But surely neither is it the point of religion to make us feel good. Sometimes I think we fall into thinking that feeling better is the same thing as healing.
There has to be another way to think about these things. On the one hand we can’t be content with just confessing and acknowledging the heaviness we live with. It’s good to do that, but it doesn’t take us very far. On the other hand, we can’t be content with bromides, with offers of comfort or promises of healing that are temporary, superficial, illegitimate, or immoral. We can’t be content with a faith that seems to turn us toward God, if it means that we are turning away from the world or from our sisters and brothers.
The call, the challenge of Lent, this year especially, it seems to me, is to find ways to be and things to do that are life-affirming in spite of and in the face of and in direct opposition to those things that weigh us down and that are life-denying. As I say that I think immediately that there are some among us who are doing that in the natural course of their living. There are those among us who are awaiting and preparing for the birth of a child, others of us who are making wedding plans. There are life affirming things that take place naturally in and around us all the time, that are woven into our lives, and it seems simple and too obvious to say, but how important it is that what is life affirming among us not be lost amid the burdens we carry. How important it is that our prayers not be prayers alone of grief or care or worry, but also be prayers of joy and gladness and thanksgiving. How important it is that those simple human affirmations that transpire among us be given space, and be nurtured and multiplied. I don’t want to sound corny, but Lent this year especially may be a time to begin, renew, enrich, or appreciate some human relationship in some small but new way. It is good not to neglect nor take for granted all those natural human ways we have of being life affirming, and perhaps to seek out some way of establishing a connection with someone where none existed before.
I have another thought as well, a more theological one, I’m afraid, but maybe of some help anyway. It was helpful to me when it occurred to me. In the story of Jesus’ temptation one of the things the devil puts before Jesus is the suggestion that maybe he would like to turn the stones to bread. Jesus, you may remember, reminds Satan that people do not live by bread alone, and of course a common interpretation of this is that Jesus was pointing out that there is a kind of spiritual nourishment we humans need that is as important or more important than our physical needs. This year, in the context of what I’ve been thinking about and talking about this morning, another kind of thought occurred to me. One way to look at what Jesus did in the wilderness in refusing to turn the stones into bread is that he refused to be comforted. We may think we need to be comforted. Our need for comfort in fact may be quite real, as was Jesus’ physical hunger, no doubt. We may feel a real need for comfort. We may think we need healing. We may think we need to have our spirits lifted, to have a more hopeful or joyous attitude. But it may be that one of the most life-affirming things we can do is to refuse to be comforted. To refuse to be comforted while American soldiers and Iraqi civilians await the beginning of war. To refuse to be comforted while people in power at the University of Virginia deny that there is any real problem with racism at the university. Sometimes it may be that the most life affirming thing we can do is to refuse to be comforted.
I’m not sure, to tell you the truth, where that thought leads, because I do know also that I continue to feel a need for comfort and healing. Nevertheless, that is the thought I took away after reading the story of Jesus’ temptation this year, and it is the thought I leave with you this morning. Amen.
Jim Bundy
March 9, 2003