First Sunday in Lent February 21, 2010 “Practice Your Faith” Reverend Michael D. Powell Luke 4:1-13

In Ecclesiastes 3:1 we read, “for everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven: a time for sowing, a time for reaping, a time to be born and a time to die,” and that “God has made everything good in its own appointed time.”

We Christians are rather schizophrenic about time.  We straddle two worlds, two different ways of marking time. The names of our months are rooted in the mythology of antiquity. For instance, January was named for Janus, the Roman god of gates and doorways, who is depicted with two faces looking in opposite direction. February was named after Februa, the Roman festival of purification, and March was named after Mars, the Roman god of war.  March was originally the beginning of the year, and also the time for the resumption of war.

But Christians add another layer to the meaning of time, called the liturgical year, or the Christian year. The months are still the same, but the liturgical cycle divides them into a series of seasons, each with its own mood and theological focus.  There are different colors and themes for each season. Appropriate scripture passages for each Sunday are specified by a list called the lectionary.  Just as last Sunday’s story of Jesus being transfigured on the mountaintop is always read on the last Sunday of liturgical season of Epiphany, so the story of Christ being tempted in the wilderness is always the lectionary scripture for today, the first Sunday in Lent. 

Our word Lent comes from an Anglo-Saxon verb which meant to lengthen, because it’s at this time of year that our days begin to lengthen noticeably. But, liturgically speaking, Lent is a season of preparation for the most holy day of the Christian year, the celebration of Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday. Lent was originally a time of preparation for baptism and instruction for new members of the church. The whole reason for the season of Lent is to increase our spiritual discipline and reflection, and the goal is spiritual growth. In short, it’s a time to practice our faith.

We make jokes about going on a diet, giving up candy or a bad habit for Lent but, ideally, it’s far more serious than that. Lent is an opportunity to begin some serious spiritual practice that just may change your life. Many people make use it as an opportunity for entering into a time of serious bible study, or for making a fresh start at a regular devotional life of prayer and meditation. Some people actually do fast during Lent, not to lose weight but to increase their spiritual hunger, their sensitivity and awareness of God’s presence.

One way to read the story of Christ’s temptation in the wilderness is in order to help us identify with his struggle and gain strength from his victory over temptation. But maybe, just maybe, what we really need is the assurance that Jesus is able to identify with our struggles and our temptations! But the struggles we’re confronted with seem so different than what Jesus was dealing with. Our personal temptations are not to turn rocks into bread, worship the devil or cast ourselves down from tall buildings in order to test God. What did Jesus know about the temptations faced daily by the recovering alcoholic, for instance, or the unhappily married or the lonely divorcee? What did the temptations of Jesus teach him about how it feels to be someone who loses their job, or a teenager who desperately longs for peer acceptance and will do almost anything to get it? How does identifying with Jesus bring real comfort to real people with real temptations and real problems? What does his wilderness struggle have to do with your life or mine? Perhaps more than we at first imagine - if we view his temptations as symbols and metaphors rather than taking them literally.

You've never been tempted to turn stones into bread, but you have been tempted to doubt that God cares about you personally when you're feeling empty, hungering and thirsting for assurance in the midst of a crisis. You haven't put God to the test by leaping from a high place, but you have been tempted to question God's relevance or helpfulness when you’re feeling on edge, when things go wrong in your life. I doubt that you've been tempted to get down on your knees and worship the devil, but who among us hasn't been seduced by a lifestyle that continually turns us away from God? Maybe the way Jesus dealt with his temptations has more to do with your life than you might at first imagine.

And we've all experienced the wilderness as well. The wilderness is where we get lost, confused and disoriented. Feelings like fear, anger, disappointment and depression dwell in the wilderness. When we feel alienated from someone whom we really care about, it's a wilderness experience. Divorce is often accompanied by feelings of being lost and alone. There are similar feelings of grief and despair we experience over the suffering or death of a loved one. We've all had those times when the temptation was to feel alone and abandoned by God. Mostly, we do everything we can to avoid the wilderness!

But, the season of Lent is a time to purposefully enter into and examine our own wilderness, because wilderness is an inevitable part of the human experience, and we need to learn that there’s a presence there, as well as a way out. The season of Lent is designed as a time for practicing prayer and reflection, for practicing the spiritual awareness that ultimately brings us to the realization that God’s healing, redeeming, comforting presence comes to us precisely when we’re in the midst of those inevitable wilderness experiences.

The season of Lent is a time for practicing spiritual maintenance and repair, and that's what I want to challenge you with this morning. I challenge you to think of Lent as a spiritual/emotional tithe. There are 12 months in a year, 365 days. Lent is roughly a tenth of that time. So these next 40 days are an opportunity and a challenge for you to practice your faith. You don't have to practice spiritual disciplines during Lent, but if you don't you’re missing an opportunity for growth and new life. And you will experience temptations during this time. The greatest temptation is to do nothing, to simply ignore the challenge and the opportunity that Lent provides for spiritual growth. We don't have a whole lot of choice about entering the wilderness. We all get lost and feel alone at times. But Lent is the season when we are offered the opportunity to discover that Christ meets us in the wilderness, that we are never alone.

What do you want to be different in your life? Do you want to be more positive, more hopeful, more loving, generous or disciplined? The opportunity and the challenge of transforming old, self-destructive habits of spiritual laziness and neglect into new and positive, life-affirming habits of meditation and prayer demands a transitional period of discipline, and it's interesting to note that those who have studied human behavior say that new behaviors take about 3 months of regular practice to become habitual. The forty days of Lent is an excellent time to start a new spiritual discipline.

            Welcome to Lent. Take time to be holy!  Take time to practice your faith.  And may Christ be your shalom. Amen.