Collect for Lent:
Almighty and everlasting God,
you hate nothing that you have made
and forgive the sins of all those who are penitent:
Create and make in us new and contrite hearts
that we, worthily lamenting our sins
and acknowledging our wretchedness,
may receive from you, the God of all mercy,
perfect remission and forgiveness;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Collect of the Day:
Almighty God,
whose Son Jesus Christ fasted forty days in the wilderness,
and was tempted as we are, yet without sin:
Give us grace to discipline ourselves
in obedience to your Spirit;
and, as you know our weakness,
so may we know your power to save;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
There’s a joke that I know has been making the circuit in Adare recently, and perhaps farther afield. It is this: “For Lent this year, I’ve given up going to the pub.”
Sometimes we have our Lenten disciplines imposed on us from the outside.
We have just begun the church season of Lent, that time of self-examination and repentance that is meant to help us die to old, unhelpful ways of life and prepare us for new life with Christ at Easter. Sometimes for Lent, people give up something. Chocolate or booze seem to be two popular choices. Sometimes for Lent, people take on something: a new practice, something that will help us wake up to that new life Christ offers us, something like adding a bit of prayer to our daily life, or doing something each day for another person. The trick is, whether we give up something or take on some new practice, our choice is meant to remove something that comes between us and God. In other words, we are choose a practice that gets to the root of some part of us that needs to change.
There’s a word to describe all this, but it is an unpopular word. The word is discipline. After all, we talk about having a Lenten discipline. We use the word because “discipline” implies that you have to work at it, that it might not be easy, that you have to overcome some inclination to stick with an old habit — but that the effort is worth it.
That’s what we are doing: changing an old habit for the sake of a better one. Some people say that you need forty to sixty days of regular practice to make a new habit “stick” — otherwise, you’ll just fall back into old patterns.[1] Conveniently, Lent is 40 days long — just long enough that we might get used to this new pattern. After all, if we are trying to get to the root of something that needs to change, then why would we go back to old patterns when Lent is over? If we do, we have not awoken to new life at all.
“Discipline” may be an unpopular word, but actually we have all sorts of disciplines. A simple example is personal hygiene. I remember years and years ago, I preached a sermon on discipline. It was in a church with lots of families with young children, and the parents all talked about not wanting to give their kids too much direction — they wanted the children to develop “naturally,” they said. So in my sermon I said that it is not particularly “natural” to brush our teeth, but it’s something that needs to be done, and therefore we train our children how to do it, and it’s a practice we do ourselves. Personal hygiene involves a discipline of daily practices, for the sake of good health and not offending other people, to name a few benefits.
Another example is sports, especially team sports. Sports involve lots of discipline. We have to subject ourselves to the rigors of practice, we risk pain and injury, we make personal sacrifices, and we might just be asked to give up personal glory for the sake of the team, such as when a teammate is in a better position to score than we are.
And a third example: I have heard a number of wry comments this past year, as we have endured one lockdown after another because of the pandemic, that we are in a long season of Lent. It is now almost a year long. What we mean, I suspect, is that we have been stripped of pleasures, we have had to give up things. It has been a time of self-sacrifice. And yes, in these ways, our lockdowns have been like Lent. They have forced us to take on a discipline of strange practices, like wearing face masks, and keeping a distance between ourselves and other people, and staying home. And all for the sake of the team, so to speak — for the sake of others around us, even people we do not know.
Discipline. Have you taken on a Lenten discipline of some sort? Is there something in you that needs to change, and is there a practice you can take on that would get to the root of it? Are you willing to try?
Discipline is meant to help us overcome temptation. To avoid changing what we need to change is to fall prey to some temptation. The heart of our Gospel reading today tells of Jesus being in the wilderness for forty days, right after he has been baptized by John the Baptist, and right before he begins his ministry. There in the wilderness he is tempted by Satan. We always read about the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness on the first Sunday in Lent, because our 40 days of Lent comes from his 40 days in the wilderness. We all face temptations — different ones for different people, perhaps, but all temptations are hard to face and deal with.
We deal with temptations through a combination of personal effort and divine grace. As our collect for today prays,
“Almighty God,
whose Son Jesus Christ fasted forty days in the wilderness,
and was tempted as we are, yet without sin:
Give us grace to discipline ourselves
in obedience to your Spirit;
and, as you know our weakness,
so may we know your power to save.”
So may we know your power to save. Probably the simplest Lenten discipline of all is to say a prayer each day about whatever it is you are trying to deal with. It’s the simplest to actually do — it won’t take very long — but perhaps not the simplest in that you don’t know what the effect will be. God responds when we pray, but we don’t know how. Divine grace helps us when we make the effort.
Or we can say the psalm for today, Psalm 25. It is an appeal to God for help in following the right path. Here is a portion:
“To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul;
O my God, in you I trust; …
Make me to know your ways, O Lord,
and teach me your paths.
Lead me in your truth and teach me,
for you are the God of my salvation…”
To follow the Christian path, to practice the Christian faith, is to follow a discipline. It means purposely taking on certain practices; it means letting go of various ways of life. And why? So that we become who it is God wants us to be, a person far greater than we could ever be if just left to ourselves, and so that we discover the abundant life that Christ offers us if we follow him. There are various books that can help. I’ll list a few on the website at the end of the text of this sermon.
I’ll close with two quotes. The first from G. K. Chesterton:
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”[2]
The second quote is from C. S. Lewis:
“We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.”[3]
I invite you to try a holiday at the sea. You don’t have to wait for the summer, you don’t have to wait until the pandemic is over. This holiday, this abundant life, is available each and every day. God grant you the grace to make the effort and undertake the adventure.
*******
Footnotes to the quotes in the sermon:
[1] Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies, p.8.
[2] G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World?, Part I, Chapter 5.
[3] C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, p. 26; quoted in DeYoung, Glittering Vices.
*******
Below is a list of books that can be helpful in finding new ways of living and growing in faith.
Mere Christianity, by C. S. Lewis
The Screwtape Letters, by C. S. Lewis
Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton
Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth, by Richard J. Foster
Practicing Our Faith: A Way of Life for a Searching People, by Dorothy C. Bass
Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies, by Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung