A TEST, NOT A QUIZ
A sermon by Rev. Dr. Jack E. Skiles

February 21, 2010

Lent is back!

Lent is an old, old tradition to those of us who have long roots in Christianity and a very strange, unknown, nonsensical “why do we even bother” non-reality to those of you who did not grow up in the church.

Do not bother looking for Lent in your Bible dictionary. There was no such thing in biblical times. But, there are reasons why this liturgical time of the year developed and why it remains as a time of significant spiritual development for us today.

Do you happen to remember the death of someone to whom you were and probably still are deeply attached? I do. I was deeply attached to my grandfather Noah Skiles who died at his 50th wedding anniversary party when I was ten years old. His death was unexpected and traumatic to be sure. What surprised me in the aftermath was how in the next year my grandmother Mary started to get depressed in the late summer as she anticipated reliving her husband's death that had occurred in October the year before. I remember my mom telling me, “This is how we are as people, we remember and anticipate having to feel again pain that was so horrible a year earlier.” That was forty six years ago and I still get sad in the fall as I remember the death of my best friend, my grandfather.

This is the genesis of this season that is called Lent. Several of us gathered here on Wednesday evening to be marked with ashes from last year's Palm Sunday plants. I remember after the Palm Sunday service last spring laying my palm here on the floor with many of yours. Palm Sunday is a day where we go from celebrating Jesus' entry into Jerusalem with high hopes, and then we also remember, as we lay our palms down, how the tide of events turned quickly and led to the death of Jesus and expectations about him withered.

My grandmother Skiles took many of the gifts that they had just opened at the 50th wedding anniversary and hid them away in her attic. When she died we found them.  I have the gold embossed sugar and creamer marked, “50th Wedding Year .” They are like Palm Sunday greenery, both a sign of happy times and a reminder of a great enduring loss of hope.

There is some evidence that early Christians fasted 40 hours between Good Friday and Easter, but the custom of spending 40 days in prayer and self-denial did not arise until later, Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us, when the initial rush of Christian adrenaline was over and believers had gotten very ho-hum about their faith.

When the world did not end as Jesus himself had said it would, his followers stopped expecting so much from God or from themselves. They hung a wooden cross on the wall and settled back into their more or less comfortable routines, remembering their once passionate devotion to God the way they remembered the other enthusiasms of their youth.

Little by little, Christians became devoted to their comforts instead: the soft couch, the 300 thread count sheets, the leg of lamb roasted with rosemary. These things made them feel safe and cared for -- if not by God, then by themselves. They decided there was no contradiction between being comfortable and being Christian, and before long it was very hard to pick them out from the population at large. They no longer distinguished themselves by their bold love for one another. They did not get arrested for championing the poor. They blended in. They avoided extremes. They decided to be nice instead of holy, and God moaned out loud.

Hearing that, someone suggested it was time to call Christians back to their senses, and the Bible offered some clues about how to do that. Israel spent 40 years in the wilderness learning to trust the Lord. Elijah spent 40 days there before hearing the still, small voice of God on the same mountain where Moses spent 40 days listening to God give the law. There was also Luke's story about Jesus' own 40 days in the wilderness during which he was sorely tested by the devil. It was hard. It was awful. It was necessary, if only for the story. Those of us who believe it have proof that it is humanly possible to remain loyal to God.

For those of you who ponder the written text, we are presented in Luke's account, this first Sunday morning of Lent, with a story about the temptation of Jesus. Luke is the third written of the three gospels and dates from around the year 90 CE. Mark first wrote about this account but used only two short verses to describe it. Matthew and Luke both greatly expand the story in a way that the eminent biblical scholar Walter Bruggeman calls active and holy imagination.

What we know is that we don't know much about Jesus' life before he shows up on the scene being first baptized by John the Baptist. What we are told by Luke is that Jesus didn't go out to the wilderness on empty and alone. It is a theme of Luke's gospel.... Jesus, we are told, went out into the wildness filled with Holy Spirit. And, if you float to the end of the story, Luke says that Jesus left the wilderness filled with the Spirit of God. As ones who follow in the footsteps of Jesus, we could assume we are similarly endowed with the same Spirit of Holiness, and have access to the same resources in our own tests and temptations in life.

So the early church announced a season of Lent, from the old English word lenten, meaning "spring" – not only a reference to the season before Easter, but also an invitation to springtime for the soul. Forty days to cleanse the system and open the eyes to what remains when all comfort is gone. Forty days to remember what it is like to live by the grace of God alone and not by what we can supply for ourselves.

I think of it as an Outward Bound for the soul. No one has to sign up for it, but if you do then you give up the illusion that you are in control of your life. You place yourself in the hands of strangers who ask you to do foolhardy things, like walk backwards over a precipice with nothing but a rope around your waist, or climb a sheer rock face with your fingers and toes. But none of these is the real test, because while you are doing them you have plenty of people around and lunch in a cooler.

The real test comes when you go solo. The strangers put you out all by yourself in the middle of nowhere and wish you luck for the next 24 hours. That is when you find out who you are. That is when you find out what you really miss and what you are really afraid of. Some people dream about their favorite food. Some long for a safe room with a door to lock and others just wish they had a pillow, but they all find out what their pacifiers are – the habits, substances or surroundings they use to comfort themselves, to block out pain and fear.

Without those things, they are suddenly exposed, like someone addicted to painkillers whose prescription has just run out. It is hard. It is awful. It is necessary, to encounter the world without anaesthesia, to find out what life is like with no comfort but God. I am convinced that 99 percent of us are addicted to something, whether it is eating, shopping, blaming, or taking care of other people. The simplest definition of an addiction is anything we use to fill the empty place inside of us that belongs to God alone.

That hollowness we sometimes feel is not a sign of something gone wrong. It is the holy of holies inside of us, the uncluttered throne room of the Lord our God. Nothing on earth can fill it, but that does not stop us from trying. Whenever we start feeling too empty inside, we stick our pacifiers into our mouths and suck for all we are worth. They do not nourish us, but at least they plug the hole.

To enter the wilderness is to leave them behind, and nothing is too small to give up. Even a chocolate bar will do. For 40 days, simply pay attention to how often your mind travels in that direction. Ask yourself why it happens when it happens. What is going on when you start craving a Mars bar? Are you hungry? Well, what is wrong with being hungry? Are you lonely? What is so bad about being alone? Try sitting with the feeling instead of fixing it and see what you find out.

Chances are you will hear a voice in your head that keeps warning you what will happen if you give up your pacifier. "You'll starve. You'll go nuts. You won't be you anymore." If that does not work, the voice will move to level two: "That's not a pacifier. That's a power tool. Can't you tell the difference?" If you do not fall for that one, there is always level three: "If God really loves you, you can do whatever you want. Why waste your time on this dumb exercise?"

If you do not know whom that voice belongs to, read Luke's story again. Then tell the devil to get lost and decide what you will do for Lent. Better yet, decide whose you will be. Worship the Lord your God and serve no one else. Expect great things, from God and from yourself. Believe that everything is possible. Why should any of us settle for less?

In this morning's scripture story Jesus is victorious in his temptation account, but not by force of arms. Jesus wins by resisting temptations regarding power, and in his prayer before his arrest he resists the temptation to avoid suffering. In the end, he dies as the nonviolent victim of the forces of violence. The temptation story is thus part of a larger pattern of God's victory over evil, over those who use force, who use intimidation, lying and manipulation. Jesus succeeds, ultimately, as you and I are called to do, through non-coercive means. Jesus was subject, just like us, to all the vulnerabilities of human existence.

Jesus takes a test, not a quiz. Jesus takes the test and it prepares him for what he is about to do, says Richard Swanson, “he will turn the world right-side-up again.” This is a big job and it ours today. Turn your part of the world right side up.