Readings:
Luke 4:1-13 for First Lent C
Date
The Rev. Mary Blessing
St. Jude the Apostle Episcopal Church, Cupertino,
CA
Does everyone know what today is? It is the First Sunday of Lent. It is "Oscar" night tonight. It is also Natalie Carpenter's birthday—she only gets one every 4 years! That's right, it's February 29, a "leap year" day. And there are 5 Sundays in February this year—that only happens every 28 years. So, I'm calling today bonus day!
Remember all those times you muttered to yourself, "If only I had another day" … to get this work done…to get caught up on my house projects…to spend time with my family. Well, here it is, a bonus day, an extra day added to our calendar every 4 years.
So what are you going to do with Bonus Day? I want to give you the "24 hour challenge." You have been given a bonus day, I challenge you to give those 24 hours to God.
Can you do it for 24 hours? Jesus did it for 40 days. And just what did Jesus do these 40 days?
The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, tell of Jesus' 40 days in the wilderness. John does not mention it. But here are 3 things the others agree upon in this story:
1) The Spirit moved Jesus to get away
2) He went into the Wilderness
3) The time lasted 40 days.
The gospels do not agree regarding just what happened during those 40 days. They indicate he was "tempted", or challenged, during this time. Luke says Jesus "ate nothing in those days", Matthew says he was hungry at the end of the 40 days, but Mark says nothing of fasting—in fact Mark indicates "the angels ministered to him" and the most common use of that word "ministered" in the Greek means "serving" as in serving food at a table. Mark gives no details of dramatic encounters with the devil, in which Jesus' power and allegiance to God are challenged.
What is common in the Gospels is that the Spirit led Jesus to spend time alone, communing with God, away from the crowds for a considerable time. During that time Jesus changed. Whether he ate or did not eat, whether he had particular temptations or not, we do not know—what we do know is: the Spirit took Jesus to be alone with God, 40 days, and he returns a changed person. Everyone can see it. Now he moves forward in his life, in his ministry, with purpose, fulfilling the mission God set before him.
Lent is that "40 day Wilderness" period the Church has created for us to remember that we, too, must allow ourselves to be so full of the Spirit that we will follow the Spirit away from our usual life patterns, seeking a deeper relationship with God, to discover God's will and make it our will. Lent is our Wilderness journey away from selfish desires to God's desires.
C.S. Lewis, the British Christian author, reminds us in Mere Christianity, that humankind's greatest temptation is to put "self" at the center of the universe. He says, it is as if we are "wanting to be God." We cannot be our own master, we cannot invent some sort of happiness for ourselves apart from God, says Lewis. It is a hopeless attempt. And, …all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery— the long terrible story of trying to find something other than God to make us happy, leaves us in a state of futility. Happiness without God is hopeless. ( p.59, A Year with C.S. Lewi, from Mere Christianity.) We torture ourselves believing we can make ourselves happy with our selfish desires, yet true happiness comes when we give up self and allow God to fill us with the Spirit.
How do we empty ourselves in order to let the Spirit fill us? Lewis says we start with our "ordinary self with its various desires and interests. We then admit that something else, call it "morality" or "decent behavior" or "the good of society" has claims on this self: claims which interfere with its own desires….Some of the things the ordinary self wanted to do turn out to be what we call'wrong': well, we must give them up. Other things turn out to be what we call 'right': well, we shall have to do them." (pp. 7-8, Foster's Devotional Classics, from Mere Christianity) In other words, left to our own devices, without the presence of God at the center of our lives, we are in constant turmoil trying to tame our "natural self".
The Christian way is different, says Lewis. It is as if Christ says: "Give me All. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your naturaul self, but to kill it….Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked…I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours." (Foster, p.8, from Mere Christianity)
To find happiness, we are invited to hand our lives over to Christ. We can offer God our ordinary, selfish desires to be transformed into Christ-centered desires. When we are empty of self, the Spirit can fill us, and we can be as Jesus was "full of the Holy Spirit"--ready to be led by the Spirit in all aspects of life. We don't even miss our old self.
How can you empty yourself these next 40 days, to allow time and space to give yourself completely to Christ? What Christ-centered things can you do to fill the space you have created?
Take the 24 hour challenge—imagine you have gained an extra day this Leap Year—give those 24 hours to God. I have some suggestions for what you can do with this bonus day:
You can divide the 24 hours up and:
attend Pastor Karen's Wednseday evening class on spiritual renewal: Renovare, that is 6 sessions of 2 hours each, leaving you with 12 hours to—
meditate 20 minutes a day, centering your listening on God
spend 20 minutes a day reading the Bible, perhaps memorizing meaningful passages
journal, 20 minutes a day, writing your thoughts to God
write your spiritual autobiography,
read C.S. Lewis' autobiography Surprised by Joy and discover how a church-going agnostic intellectual experienced a mid-life conversion to Christ,
do a religious fast for a day, taking note that each moment you feel the need to eat you can say a prayer asking God to fill you with the Holy Spirit—take the money you saved and buy lunch for a homeless person
or go a whole day without saying anything negative, start your day asking God to put a guard over the door of your mouth, as the Psalmist says (Psalm 141:3)
or go a day without saying anything even remotely dishonest, no "white lies", no slight twists of the truth, no double talk
Or, you can attend Pastor Karen's Spiritual Renewal Class because you were going to anyway, and use the whole 24 hour bonus day to try a spiritual discipline:
24 hour fast—no food, just water, maybe go from lunch time to lunch time,
24 hours when you tame your tongue, pray before you speak, that you speak with love.
24 hours with no television.
24 hours of no radio, no CD's, no DVD's and no TV
24 hours of self reflection, checking to see if there is someone you harmed, with whom you need to seek reconciliation, then take God's Spirit, and go to that person to ask forgiveness,
24 hours of quiet: deep, quiet prayer, with absolutely no distractions, listening to God.
Try doing what those in the Christian Holiness Tradition have done: "Ask God to purify your heart and mind by the workung of his Holy Spirit. The key to the effectiveness of your prayer will be your willingness to surrender the control of your life to God. Ask God to search your heart to see if there is any hidden evil in your life, any activity that God wishes for you to cease. Then listen. When you have a sense of what it is God wants to free you from, pray that the Spirit will purge that sin, even the desire for it—from your life." (Renovare, Spiritual Formation Book, p.29)
Can you do it? Can you be "led by the Spirit" wholly and completely for 24 hours? If you can give yourself to Christ for 24 hours, perhaps then you, too, will be "surprised by joy,"- - you will discover that you can give yourself to Christ 24/7, 365—or is it 366?—days a year.
AMEN
| Updated 3/1/2004 |
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