Lent: A Time of Balance

There is a part of me that feels beginning Lent at the end of February is the church’s way of playing a bad joke on all of us. The timing of Christmas, after all, makes perfect sense. We celebrate the light of Christ coming into the world (in the northern hemisphere at least) when the days are most devoid of light. From the first chapter of the Gospel of John we read “the light of Christ shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” Light into darkness: makes sense.

Yet just as our bodies crave for more sunlight, fresh air and open spaces -- just as winter finally makes an appearance in this otherwise warm winter -- we get liturgically thrown into a season of denial, introspection, restraint and testing. What we get is no more saying “alleluia” as we break the bread at the Eucharist, the multi-colored flowers at the altar are replaced by simple greens, and the songs we sing are intentually subdued. These may not be hymns you will leave humming out the front door, and that’s O.K. Just as Jesus after his baptism was led by the Spirit out into the wilderness, we are led into this season whether we are ready or not.

For us here at the Cathedral, over these next five Sundays we are going to have the opportunity to learn about of the love of God that permeated the life of one of the great spiritual writers of our time, the late Henri Nouwen. We will marinate in his words and theology. This series for me could not have come at a better time. Each year the Education Committee tries to come up with a topic for the Lenten brunch series that will both inform and stimulate our minds and our faith. Last year you may remember we tackled ethics and such challenging topics such as stem cell research and end of life issues. This year will be kinder, gentler series. This is what Nouwen wrote only weeks before he died. “Lent offers a beautiful opportunity to discover the mystery of Christ within us. It is a gentle but demanding time. It is a time of solitude but also a community; it is a time of listening to the voice within, but also a time of paying attention to other people’s needs. It is a time to continuously make the passage to new inner life as well as to life with those around us.”

For us, this time is a chance to look at those parts of our lives that may have become enlarged, disconnected or tired. It is time to resize and focus, reconnect and refresh. Nouwen’s take on this season suggests to me that what is welcomed is balance – the ability to hold together pieces that may seem at odds. The sense that one does not have to embrace one side while rejecting the other. Lent is gentle but demanding, with solitude and community, when the inner voice and the voice of others can be heard.

For me, this way of living this season comes face to face with the challenge of navigating the “either/or,” “winner-take-all” rules that seems to dominate so much of what we know as religion, politics and economics today. When the rules are made by others, what matters most is which side we are on. Are you with us or against us? Are you one of us or one of them? Friend or foe? Traditionalist or revisionist? The conversation running through our society and church is becoming narrower and narrower. If one is against a war, wants peace, does it have to mean that one is undermining the troops or is unpatriotic? When voices on the edges are getting louder and more organized and skilled it becomes harder to hear what is being said, and people feel they have to choose one way or the other.

For much of our existence as a church, since the break from the Roman Catholic Church some five centuries ago, the Church of England and the churches it spawned in North America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the West Indies and elsewhere have been known as the via media – the middle way between the Roman Catholic and Reformed Protestant worlds. We saw as a value living in the middle. This has worked for centuries for many reasons, not the least being that what held us together were not the dictates of bishops but common prayer. We prayed together. We celebrated Holy Eucharist together.

As many of you read in newspapers, our fellowship of worldwide Anglican churches that share a common heritage is changing. The more I read and watch, I am coming to believe that trying to hold together the various voices and agendas may be too much and may be disrupting our ability as a church to faithfully live out the gospel as we understand it. Whether the Episcopal Church is excluded or walks apart from the Anglican Communion, it may very well be that we need to move forward in mission to the world, for there is much work to be done.

And if we do, what words of scripture might we hear? The apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome. (Romans 10:9-11) “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

Jesus and Paul lived in a world where people also were divided into camps and rival factions. Believers and pagans, Jew and Gentile, free and slave. This is what I hear in Paul’s words: God is big enough to confound our divisions. God is generous. If we come to God with open hearts and if we confess our need of God, we will be saved. That is the heart of the matter. We are not the ones who choose who is in or out of God’s grace, God almighty and merciful has already done that. God does not separate God’s children into first class and second-class citizens – we do. Native or foreign, black or white, First World or Global South, legal or illegal, straight or gay, majority or minority. Paul wrote that “no one who believes in him will be put to shame,” yet some still use shame to push others away.

The gospel reading for this first Sunday in Lent is always about the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. Just like we can’t get to Easter without going through Good Friday, we can’t begin Lent without reliving the time of trial and testing. Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.

Temptation is always around us as we try to discover or return balance into our lives, try to find time for our inner life as we think about the world around us, try to find peace far off and peace at home, time to listen and time to speak out. Being tempted can often be about wrestling with the voices that fill our heads -- coming to terms with what we’ve grown accustomed to hearing. What have we been told by people in authority? Your opinion does not really matter. You are not that special. You are not smart enough. You are lazy. You are ordinary and average. You will never amount to much. You are too sensitive or too difficult. You talk too much or speak before you think. You have a chip on your shoulder a mile wide. You are superficial, not that deep. We don’t have to spend 40 days out in the wilderness to be haunted and tempted by the outer voices which can easily become our inner voice and change how we feel about our selves. The world that God has made can look mighty stingy, harsh and full of judgment if it is not reclaimed. The antidote from Paul: the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him.

We are reminded in the collect prayed at the start of this service that God knows the weaknesses of each of us. What a relief! We can perhaps lighten up, stop running and pretending and posturing that we have everything we need, that we’re doing just fine, that we don’t need any help. Let us make this our Lenten project: when we ever feel tempted to start believing what the world says we should be, may we grow into the knowledge of who God would have us become. As the prophet Isaiah puts it (Isaiah 64:8) “Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.” And God’s work is good.