1 Lent
B February 18, 2018
Gen. 9:8-17 Ps 25:1-9
1 Peter 3:18-22 Mark 1:9-13
Lectionary Link
One of the things that I am sensitive about is when people criticize the church and the practices of the church as a bunch of rules to herd the sheep to require them to do things for the benefit of the institution and for the convenience of the church.
Why get baptized, confirmed, go to confession, Eucharist and get married in the church? Because that is what the Pope and Archbishop of Canterbury say that we have to do.
So as a clergy person, I hold the proverbial hoops that I require all of you to jump through for the benefit of the church and this parish.
In seminary, I learned a fancy phrase: The Sacraments are anthropologically sound. This is the arcane academic way of saying that what we teach and practice is normal, natural and unavoidable to reasonable human experience.
The goal of my ministry is to articulate how what we do and teach is "anthropologically sound," that is how it is natural and normal to human experience but human experience as it is informed about the knowledge of God in Christ.
And this brings us to the Season of Lent which we began on Ash Wednesday. Why the season of Lent? Is it anthropologically sound? Is it a reasonable human practice?
I would argue that the idea behind the practice of Lent is unavoidable in human experience. I would like for us to explore some of the features of our practice of Lent that might encourage us to value it.
Lent is on the Church Calendar each year. It is an annual period of special discipline that the church asks her members to embrace. So, first of all it is communal; it is something that we do together. In this season we are invited to give special emphasis to the practice of self control by strategies of delayed personal gratification. Why is self control good for us and how do we learn to practice self control?
Temptation and sin are mainly about mistiming in the deeds of our lives. There is a proper and an appropriate time to do everything in our lives but how do we achieve proper timing for everything? As babies we come into the world governed by the instincts of desire and we feel that we have freedom to instantly gratify anything that occurs for us to do. Our parents and our societies, in part, provide us the interdiction to teach us delayed gratification of desire. We cannot have everything that we want when we want it and that is for our own health and safety and for the appropriate sharing with all of the other people in our lives.
The rules of parents and our societies are laws and sometimes they are accompanied with the power to enforce these laws which force us to delay gratification. It is what we call the force of suppression. Suppression works and it can teach habits but it does not always result in personal contentment.
What is the answer for delaying immediate gratification and being content in doing so? The answer lies in learning voluntary self control in a program of discipline guided by what is good for us and for the people with whom we live and share this world.
This is not always easy because our desire and the impulse for immediate self gratification is often profound.
This is why we need help. Self control is regarded to be a fruit of the Holy Spirit. It is a gift of God. We learn to attain self control by having good models of self control in our lives. The best model of all was Jesus Christ.
The temptation of Jesus for 40 days in the wilderness by Satan is given to us an example of the heroic Jesus taking up a fast. Fast is the delay of gratification. Fasting is needed as practice to learn how to delay immediate gratification for the good stewardship of our lives and our community. Jesus had the power of self control. He had the power to acknowledge the timing of God his Father in his life.
The early church presented Jesus as a person who was tempted as we are but without the sin of mistimed deeds. Jesus was on the time schedule of God, his Father. The early church believed that the Jesus who was tempted in the wilderness became the Risen Christ to become present within the lives of all who wished to know the nature of Christ within themselves.
The Risen Christ within us is the power to attain self control; the power to delay and time our gratification for our own health and safety and for the health, safety and benefit our community and our world.
And even though Lent is on our church calendar as a corporate practice of the church when we do and learn penitential things together, each of us needs to personalize Lent.
How do we do this? First, we acknowledge our need to learn further self control. We need to learn better timing is what we do and say in our lives. And we learn self control as a way of sharing what we have with people who have the involuntary fasts of hunger, thirst and poverty forced upon them by the sad circumstances of their lives.
Lent is a season of reflection and practice of what better stewardship can mean for our lives, the lives of our families, our parish, our community and our world.
Let us embrace the discipline of the season of Lent by looking to the model of Jesus. Where the timing in our lives show patterns of selfish and lack of control, let us seek the higher power of the Risen Christ within us to help us avoid addiction and make advances in self control. And let us accept the fruit of the Holy Spirit, self control, to be the enduring character of our lives.
May God help us follow Jesus who did forty hard days of extreme Lent and now is the Risen Christ within us to teach us the way to find the perfect timing of God in our lives. Amen.
Gen. 9:8-17 Ps 25:1-9
1 Peter 3:18-22 Mark 1:9-13
Lectionary Link
One of the things that I am sensitive about is when people criticize the church and the practices of the church as a bunch of rules to herd the sheep to require them to do things for the benefit of the institution and for the convenience of the church.
Why get baptized, confirmed, go to confession, Eucharist and get married in the church? Because that is what the Pope and Archbishop of Canterbury say that we have to do.
So as a clergy person, I hold the proverbial hoops that I require all of you to jump through for the benefit of the church and this parish.
In seminary, I learned a fancy phrase: The Sacraments are anthropologically sound. This is the arcane academic way of saying that what we teach and practice is normal, natural and unavoidable to reasonable human experience.
The goal of my ministry is to articulate how what we do and teach is "anthropologically sound," that is how it is natural and normal to human experience but human experience as it is informed about the knowledge of God in Christ.
And this brings us to the Season of Lent which we began on Ash Wednesday. Why the season of Lent? Is it anthropologically sound? Is it a reasonable human practice?
I would argue that the idea behind the practice of Lent is unavoidable in human experience. I would like for us to explore some of the features of our practice of Lent that might encourage us to value it.
Lent is on the Church Calendar each year. It is an annual period of special discipline that the church asks her members to embrace. So, first of all it is communal; it is something that we do together. In this season we are invited to give special emphasis to the practice of self control by strategies of delayed personal gratification. Why is self control good for us and how do we learn to practice self control?
Temptation and sin are mainly about mistiming in the deeds of our lives. There is a proper and an appropriate time to do everything in our lives but how do we achieve proper timing for everything? As babies we come into the world governed by the instincts of desire and we feel that we have freedom to instantly gratify anything that occurs for us to do. Our parents and our societies, in part, provide us the interdiction to teach us delayed gratification of desire. We cannot have everything that we want when we want it and that is for our own health and safety and for the appropriate sharing with all of the other people in our lives.
The rules of parents and our societies are laws and sometimes they are accompanied with the power to enforce these laws which force us to delay gratification. It is what we call the force of suppression. Suppression works and it can teach habits but it does not always result in personal contentment.
What is the answer for delaying immediate gratification and being content in doing so? The answer lies in learning voluntary self control in a program of discipline guided by what is good for us and for the people with whom we live and share this world.
This is not always easy because our desire and the impulse for immediate self gratification is often profound.
This is why we need help. Self control is regarded to be a fruit of the Holy Spirit. It is a gift of God. We learn to attain self control by having good models of self control in our lives. The best model of all was Jesus Christ.
The temptation of Jesus for 40 days in the wilderness by Satan is given to us an example of the heroic Jesus taking up a fast. Fast is the delay of gratification. Fasting is needed as practice to learn how to delay immediate gratification for the good stewardship of our lives and our community. Jesus had the power of self control. He had the power to acknowledge the timing of God his Father in his life.
The early church presented Jesus as a person who was tempted as we are but without the sin of mistimed deeds. Jesus was on the time schedule of God, his Father. The early church believed that the Jesus who was tempted in the wilderness became the Risen Christ to become present within the lives of all who wished to know the nature of Christ within themselves.
The Risen Christ within us is the power to attain self control; the power to delay and time our gratification for our own health and safety and for the health, safety and benefit our community and our world.
And even though Lent is on our church calendar as a corporate practice of the church when we do and learn penitential things together, each of us needs to personalize Lent.
How do we do this? First, we acknowledge our need to learn further self control. We need to learn better timing is what we do and say in our lives. And we learn self control as a way of sharing what we have with people who have the involuntary fasts of hunger, thirst and poverty forced upon them by the sad circumstances of their lives.
Lent is a season of reflection and practice of what better stewardship can mean for our lives, the lives of our families, our parish, our community and our world.
Let us embrace the discipline of the season of Lent by looking to the model of Jesus. Where the timing in our lives show patterns of selfish and lack of control, let us seek the higher power of the Risen Christ within us to help us avoid addiction and make advances in self control. And let us accept the fruit of the Holy Spirit, self control, to be the enduring character of our lives.
May God help us follow Jesus who did forty hard days of extreme Lent and now is the Risen Christ within us to teach us the way to find the perfect timing of God in our lives. Amen.
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