Worship & Prayer
Giving it up for Lent: Is the practice of Lent a matter of giving things up?
Of all the traditions associated with Lent, probably the best known is the practice of giving something up for the 6 ½ weeks from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday. The most common things people give up are chocolate, alcohol, coffee and sweets and this was well illustrated by my brother in law last week. He found himself at the Cinema with my sister and their 16 year old son Ben, and whilst waiting for the film Avatar to being, he took a handful of chocolates from the Mega Family Packet of Minstrels that they had bought. 1 of the sweets missed his mouth and instead of falling straight to the floor, it fell on to his tummy and balanced there quite comfortably on the slightly expanded area since Christmas. My sister laughed, where upon my brother in law grabbed the Mega Family Packet of Minstrels, leaned over her and said to Ben, “Here you are son, your Mother and I have decided that we are both giving up chocolate for Lent!”
My sister protested that God might be speaking to him, but that so far, God hadn’t said anything to her on the subject. There is clear evidence that for at least 1500 years the Church has kept a period of fasting during the weeks before Easter. The fast has several purposes – to remind us that daily we depend on God for everything, to draw us closer to God in prayer and to help us to follow Jesus’ journey through the wilderness and on to Jerusalem. But for me it can be all too easy to give up some treat or other during Lent and not really engage with the deeper meaning of the season.
Helpfully our gospel reading for today, challenges us to a deeper level. The story of Jesus temptation by Satan can be seen as fundamentally about giving up or resisting short-cuts to gratification or short-cuts to achieving a greater goal.
So let’s look at the story, here we have Jesus, having been baptized, filled with the Holy Spirit, and now turning away from the crowd at the Jordan River to wander alone in the wilderness. Led by the Holy Spirit, he is tempted by the devil for 40 days.
Famished with hunger he is teased by the Devil – if he really is God’s Son he could surely turn one of the stones that litter the desert, into a loaf of bread.
“Humans do not live by bread alone,” replies Jesus quoting from the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy. This is to say that if the Devil means that as God’s Son, he could perform this miracle to save himself, Jesus prefers to align himself with human beings in general, rejecting any privilege that might separate him from us. He will not demonstrate super human power - being God’s Son does not enable or require him to turn away from the normal conditions of human life. Such a short-cut might meet his immediate need but detract from his connection with our humanity.
Next the Devil invites him to take control of all the Kingdoms of the world. Jesus insists that he worships God alone – his mission is not political in the ordinary sense and certainly not at the cost of selling out and consorting with the Prince of this World. Such a short-cut might deliver him authority over the world, but not based on mutual love and service.
Finally the Devil invites Jesus to jump from the Temple in Jerusalem, relying on the angels to catch him. Jesus again refuses. God is not to be put to the test in such a way. God’s faithfulness to his son does not have to be tested! Such a short-cut might deliver a spectacle of the power of faith, but would be a denial of the trust he already had in his Father.
For those of you who are steeped in your Old Testament stories, you will see resonances with the story of Israel in the wilderness. Israel came out of Egypt through the Red Sea, with God declaring that Israel was his son, his firstborn. There then followed the 40 years in the wilderness where Israel grumbles for bread, flirted disastrously with idolatry (– remember the Golden Cow) and puts God continuously to the test. In their hunger the people had to learn that they did not live by bread alone; painfully they had to be taught not to run after other Gods and finally they had to learn not to put their God to the test.
Now Jesus as God’s unique Son symbolically travels the same road and he succeeds where they failed. And what he grasped that they failed to........that God is faithful and will guide us if we put our trust in Him.
If Jesus is the new Israel, Luke also wants to say that his mission is wider than Israel. For Luke, Jesus represents the human race as a whole. It is an interesting thing to note that between the stories of Jesus’ baptism and Jesus’ time of testing, Luke inserts 15 verses full of family tree beginning with Jesus the son of Joseph going right back in time to.. the son of Adam, reminding us of the divine origins of the human race.
Unlike Adam, Jesus accepts the limitation of created humanity and demonstrates his dependence on God – not seeking to go it alone. It is clear that is all 3 temptations the Devil attempts to split Jesus from God; to get Jesus to use his divine power in his own selfish interests, to ally himself with the devil and finally to shock God into rescuing him. But Jesus rejects arbitrary power over nature; power over the human world – the political powers and power over God.
So what is the challenge for us within the context of the first week of Lent and what we are being challenged to give up?
Well it would be this – doesn’t our idea of what the Son of God must be able to do seem remarkably like the devil’s idea? Don’t we find that we too are inclined to think that it would have been great to see him turn stones into bread – If you really are the Son of God – couldn’t you turn those stones into bread - for the people of Haiti? Show you care?
Similarly, don’t we think that it would have been great, if he had taken control of the Roman Empire or Helmand Province or the politics of the Middle East? Jesus are you really the Prince of Peace? Show you can bring reconciliation.
Wouldn’t it be great to see him leap from the topmost pinnacle of the holiest building in the city or to see some spectacle – If you really are the Son of God throw yourself from the top of Methodist Church House and let the angels catch you – now that would stop our churches from declining? We wouldn’t need to wrestle with Circuit boundary changes then making sure they are compatible with Diocesan Boundaries for when we cease to be a separate denomination! Increase our faith!
Aren’t we sometimes tempted to equate being divine with magical powers, arbitrary all powerfulness and stunning shows of Super hero behaviour? All short-cuts with huge perils.
And please don’t misunderstand me – we often have the best of intentions. We want to see compassion – we want to see the people of Haiti helped. We want to see peaceful resolution – and the end of conflict in the Middle East. We want to see the church flourish. Like Jesus, testing and temptation often attack us at our strengths – not our weakness.
But Jesus time in the wilderness points in a different direction from the short-cuts that might appear to achieve the desired result but fail to make change enduring or part of the bigger picture.
Yes, doubtless, Jesus could have turned stones into bread – he fed the 5000. Yes, doubtless, Jesus could have brought the kingdoms to follow him – Jerusalem was at his call when he entered on Palm Sunday. And yes, doubtless, he could have leapt off the temple and been caught by angels – he walked on water - didn’t he?
But first, before all of those wonders – in the wilderness – Jesus shows us the true order of things. He shows us that first we need to be aligned with God and his purposes. We need to recognise he is God and not seek to be God, like Adam did. And who are we to think we have the right to test God like Israel in the wilderness.
Jesus, the Son of God, in the wilderness himself shows his own submission to God’s purposes and in Lent we are called to the same. Not to give up chocolate (although it is an excellent metaphor for the quick fix short-cut), but to give up our focus on our wants, needs and desire for power and status in their own right and instead to become God-guided – and as Jesus own ministry showed, the rest will follow
Julia Monaghan 21.02.10