Lent I by Neil McIntyre
‘God at work’ Lent series, Sermon One
I’m taking a risk this morning.
When Fr Jack asked me if I’d like to preach, two options came to mind. One was to take the theme God At Work quite literally, and describe to you how I discern God at work in my professional life as a primary school teacher. It would hopefully have been interesting, personal but relatable, and I would have been following the sensible saying, write about what you know.
The other option was the slightly more complicated question of how during Lent we might clear the way for God to be at work in our lives by making the right sacrifices for the right reasons, and that’s the option I’ve chosen. I have very definitely bitten off more than I can chew. Instead of writing about what I know, I’ve chosen to talk about something I certainly don’t know. So despite the fact that I’m a teacher, this sermon is not meant to be instructional or didactic – it really can’t be – and I’m not suggesting that anyone else’s sermons are usually like that – but it’s more of an invitation to reflect together on some of the thoughts people have had about what we give up during Lent as an offering to God, and why. The common thread, it seems to me, that runs through all of these thoughts is a radical reordering of priorities.
Christians have been observing Lenten sacrifices probably from the fourth century, perhaps even earlier, and traditionally it took the form of fasting. The first and perhaps most obvious reason for this was outlined in the Gospel reading we just heard – giving things up during Lent emulates Jesus’ forty days of voluntary privation and temptation in the wilderness. When we feel the absence of what we have given up, we remember that Christ gave up glory and comfort and his very life. There is this fantastic creative tension isn’t there in Christianity in that we believe Christ has entirely saved us and redeemed us from our sin, but we don’t just get to feel grateful and relax, we’re also called somehow to follow his example and pick up our own crosses and struggle uphill alongside him. And so our small sacrifices during Lent unite us—however humbly—with His great sacrifice. They remind us that love costs something. Giving up some of our small comforts or desires reminds us that they are not the priority; being prepared to follow Jesus into suffering and even death is the priority.
Now this might seem obvious, but what do we spend the vast majority of our time doing? Indulging in fairly harmless habits and creature comforts – the kind of things we might give up during Lent – or contemplating how we can embrace suffering like Jesus did? I know what the answer is for me. And that brings us to the second potential reason for giving things up during Lent: it creates room. Time is so precious, and if we want to know what our priorities really are, we can do a lot worse than look honestly at how we spend most of this finite resource, time. I know for me that the time I spend in prayer or reading Scripture is a tiny fraction of the time I spend watching chains of videos on Youtube. When we give something up—whether it’s certain foods, social media, television, or a daily luxury—we are not rejecting the pleasurable things of creation, we are freeing up space in our day. Space for prayer where doom scrolling on a news website once filled the time; or reading the Bible when watching a TV programme used to dominate our attention; or making contact with someone we know is suffering in the time we’d usually spend making a rather large meal. We cannot reorder our priorities without reordering how we spend our time.
Thirdly, our habits and actions go deeper than just taking up our time – they change what we are in an uncomfortably literal sense. We hear more and more don’t we about having a healthy gut microbiome. When we eat sugary foods, for example, we know that that encourages and multiplies the micro-organisms in our gut that will make us crave more of those kinds of foods. Similarly we know more and more now about neuroplasticity, and how our brains are almost literally rewired by certain habits. Which neural pathways, which habits of thought do I want to be lightning fast in my brain – the ones that are formed by, and crave more of, the constant little dopamine hits that I get from looking at social media, or the ones that are involved in thinking about how God is at work in my life? Our rational decision-making powers are probably not as strong as we’d like to think, and giving up certain habits that might seem fairly innocuous can help break that cycle and prevent us from being possessed (in a way) by habits of thought and action that we don’t even realise are controlling us.
Finally, perhaps we give up so we can give more. In many Christian traditions, fasting is always paired with generosity. If we give up buying takeaway coffee, can we give that money to a worthy cause instead? If we give up an hour of entertainment, can we give that hour to serve? If we give up frustrated criticism, can we give encouragement instead? In Isaiah Chapter 58, the prophet says that to engage in true fasting is to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free… to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood. So the sacrifices God desires are not just a private exercise in willpower; they always flow outward in love for others.
Thank you for indulging me and my rather undergraduate musings. I don’t know how many of us here have chosen to make Lenten sacrifices (of course people make resolutions and exercise self-discipline at other times of year too); I don’t know exactly what I’ll gain during this season of Lent, but I hope alongside me that you’ll find it helpful to chew on these thoughts, that if we are going to reorder our priorities so that we think more of the things of heaven than those of earth, then abstinence, sacrifice, might be a useful tool because:
Firstly, we are emulating the example of Jesus Christ himself;
Secondly, we are freeing up time in our busy daily lives;
Thirdly, we are freeing ourselves from habits that we perhaps don’t realise have a hold on us until we challenge ourselves to let them go;
And fourthly, we free ourselves to show more generosity and reflect something of God’s love in the way we serve other people.
Amen.