The beginning of Lent: what's it all about?

1st Sunday in Lent : 13th February 2005

Gen 2.15-17; 3.1-7  |  Rom 5.12-19  |  Matt 4.1-11

An explorer in the deepest Amazon suddenly finds himself surrounded by a bloodthirsty group of natives. Upon surveying his situation, he says quietly to himself, “I'm done for!" 

A ray of light breaks forth from the sky and a voice booms out
“No, you are NOT done for. Pick up that stone in front of you and bash in the head of the chief.”

So the explorer picks up the stone and proceeds to bash in the head of the chief. He is breathing heavily while standing above the sprawled out-chief. Surrounding him are the 100 native warriors with a look of shock on their faces.

The voice booms out again
“Okay...NOW you're done for!”

Sometimes I suspect that we Christians attribute things to God that are actually nothing to do with God; or we get hold of the wrong end of the stick; or we deliberately chose to misunderstand God in order to justify a particular course of action or attitude - whether that is to punish ourselves or to make ourselves appear holier than thou...

Today’s the first Sunday of Lent and I want to suggest that Lent is an opportunity to look realistically at our lives; to take our responsibilities seriously and to sort out the stuff which may be holding us back but which is not our responsibility...

40 days of doom and gloom?

Traditionally Lent is a sober time of denial - in the popular mind a terrible time of deprivation, it represents all that is bad in religion - religion is all about “no” and “don’t”... 40 days of unremitting gloom, depression and deprivation...

But there’s no reason why that should be so... Lent is a time of preparation for Easter ; it’s a time of self examination and growth in spirituality; it’s a reflective time; it’s a time for putting our house in order; it’s a time of recognising our own failings and so is a humble time and a penitent time (saying sorry), it’s a time for amendment of life - in other words, turning away from what we know to be wrong (repentance) and rotating ourselves, our lives, our habits towards God.

It’s not just about giving up chocolate or gin for the sake of it; it’s not a miserable time; it’s not a time for self recrimination; it’s not a depressing time;

Giving up or taking on?

It is a joyful time, it’s a grateful time, it’s a time to get ourselves in proper perspective; it’s a time for rejoicing in how much God loves us.... it might well be a time for DOING something extra - a particular devotion, reading a book, committing to the Lent Course, taking on an activity, using a particular prayer.

We start Lent by reflecting particularly on the way in which Jesus struggled with temptation and sin - this is where the idea of discipline comes in. St Paul, writing to the Corinthians likened the Christian life to running a race and going into training, like an athlete - it requires discipline and at times is hard work...

As part of our Lenten discipline we “give up” using the word “Alleluia” in our worship, and we don’t have flowers in church - as a pale reminder to us of what Jesus gave up - not just in the desert in preparation for his ministry, but in coming from the glory of heaven in the first place.

We may choose to give something up to echo what Jesus gave up; and each time we are reminded of what it is we want - chocolate, coffee, gin, meat, sugar in tea etc, the emotional or physical reminder acts as a spur to turn that discipline into prayer.

Lent is also about being honest about ourselves... not pretending we’re any better than we are; acknowledging our short comings... but it’s also about rejoicing in our strengths and gifts.

Our view of God...

It’s about seeing ourselves in the right perspective; and in particular it’s being realistic about how God sees us... And understanding how God sees us depends a great deal on how we see God...

...is God with us?

Sometimes we can get the idea or image that God is permanently cross with us... we hear a lot about ‘the wrath of God’, about how God is indignant with us... and if we’re not careful God becomes pictured like an impotent (because the wicked don’t seem to get struck with thunderbolts as we think they should), grumpy, chair-bound, old uncle who rails against everything and shakes his fist at us...

And to be fair there are images of God as being wrathful in the bible. Just as there are images of God weeping over his creation, and there are images of God laughing and delighting... In technical terms these things are called anthropomorphisms - ways in which we put human characteristics onto (in this case) God: so God walks in the garden of Eden, God laughs at his enemies, the arm of the Lord is bared.. etc.

In whose image?

We engage in anthropomorphism partly because it makes sense to us, or it’s handy shorthand, but also because in the past human beings have looked at the evidence and worked backwards - not always a foolproof method of doing theology... And so when there have been thunder storms or wrecked crops we’ve assumed that this means we’ve upset God... When there has been victory in battle, we’ve said that God must be on our side, we’re on the right track, God is pleased with us...

The trouble with this approach is that God merely becomes a “super human” - endowed with the best things we can struggle to articulate and observe in our own condition. And ultimately we make God in our image, rather than realising that we are made in his.... So we limit God to being the very best of what we can achieve; rather than seeing God as holy and “other” and loving, and ourselves as pale imitations, flawed likenesses of him...

So anthropomorphisms are best understood as exactly that - words and images which we strain and stretch and use as metaphor and simile and parable and illustration, not literally.

Of talking mice and men...

We seem happy to live with massive anthropomorphisms in other areas of our life, especially when it comes to children’s literature and culture - think about talking animals: for example nursery rhymes and fairy stories: the whole Walt Disney Experience from Mickey Mouse and Tom & Jerry through to Shrek, Bambi and Garfield. We know that mice can’t speak to us - despite what the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy might suggest - and we are able to distinguish between metaphor and image, parable and representation on that level.

But when it comes to the bible we seem to have this rather strange desire to take the whole thing absolutely literally, without applying the same kind of questions and criteria that we are happy to use in other areas of our lives.

So when the bible talks about God being wrathful, we don’t just see that as expressing in human terms something of God’s reaction to things which mar and spoil his perfection in Creation, the sort of reaction you or I might have - we take it to mean that God is literally angry with us... we are - or should be - the recipients of God’s wrath...

The cross and 'punishment'?

One way - not a way I find helpful - some Christians have understood how Jesus’ death on the cross brought about our salvation is to say that Jesus was being punished instead of us - that God was wrathful and needed a sacrifice to appease his wrath: it should have been us, but Jesus took the rap, the punishment, in our place.

You may be aware that Baptist minister Steve Chalke was in the press a few months ago because he rebelled from this line of theology - which is popular amongst most evangelicals - and he called it a form of “cosmic child abuse”.

It may be one way of explaining the cross, but it is not the only way, nor ultimately the most satisfactory way, nor the most helpful way of developing our thinking about how God regards us.

Sinners or sinned against?

Another facet of adopting this model of atonement is that we tend to see ourselves as completely responsible and to blame.. which, when you stop and think about it is quite a middle-class assumption! - it suggests that we have the power to make all the choices about what happens to us; and we chose wrongly so we should be punished...

This is the flip side of the gift of Free Will we were thinking a lot about in the aftermath of the tsunami... Part of seeing ourselves as we truly are is being able to sort out those things which are within our power to make decisions over - in other words the extent of our Free Will and the responsibility that goes with it - and the things which happen to us, the actions of others, the limitations that surround us: the way we have been sinned against...

There are many things, parameters of my life, over which I have very little control: I am not a millionaire. I suppose if I’d chosen a different career path I might have been. I am not black, or Asian, I happen to have been born a male and I happen to be heterosexual - there is nothing I can do about these things. I am not as musical or as artistic or as good looking as I’d like to be; I’d like to be able to survive on less sleep. I am powerless to affect how my parents brought me up, or what other people said to me or the way they treated me...

I do have some choice as to how I deal with some of these things and their effects now, but identifying how I have been sinned against is part of a realistic understanding of who I am and a true perspective of how I stand before God.

For example: someone's lack of ability to perceive God as a loving Father might be because of a violent alcoholic abusive father who beat them and stamped that image with some very different associations... My ability to love myself might be severely curtailed because my partner said all sorts of terrible things to undermine my confidence, then left me... - these are not sins in me: I am affected because I have been sinned against...

Temptation = Sin + Choice

So what has this to do with our reading? - of Jesus in the desert for 40 days being tempted? Well maybe we need to recognise sin just a little differently: temptation merely highlights the choices we have. If Lent is about getting ourselves into a more realistic perspective, maybe part of that is recognising the sin to which we are tempted; and also the ways in which we still carry the hurt and wounds of the sin inflicted on us by others.

The right remedy for the right situation

Maybe part of our discipleship this Lent is about identifying the correct remedy: the remedy for a headache is paracetemol, not anti-depressants - the remedy for sin is forgiveness. If what we suffer is as the result of the actions of others, maybe seeking forgiveness for ourselves is not the answer, the right remedy...

Make no mistake about it: I am not trying to diminish sin or make it unimportant, or say that actually it’s OK... Sin needs dealing with by repentance and forgiveness - it may be difficult to do, but the treatment is simple.

But I suspect that many of us are burdened with things that aren’t our sin; I suspect that many of us labour under the oppression of what other people have dumped on us; I suspect that many of us are kept captive by somebody else’s cruel words or malicious selfish actions...

Maybe this Lent our challenge is about looking more clearly at our lives and working out where our responsibilities lie - and where they don’t...

Clearing space to hear God

Jesus didn’t pop into the desert to loose a few pounds or try the Carol Vorderman detox diet, but to clear a space for God, to sort out his approach to his ministry and life, to work out his responsibilities.

And as we think about how Jesus was tempted - real temptations, because they were real choices about whether to do things God’s way or the world’s way - let’s ask for grace to be realistic about our lives; to identify those things of which we need to repent, and to name those situations where our experience is actually about the effect of the sin of others...

Fr Andrew J Perry
Rector, St John the Evangelist, Pevensey Rd, St Leonards on Sea