Why Lent? (Sermon March 3, 2013)

Sermon March 3 2013

Isaiah 58:1-12;   Martin of Tours and Pope Gregory I

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                How’s your Lent goin’? I hope it’s going well. Is that the right compliment? How do you compliment somebody’s Lent? “Oh wow, you look hungry!” “Oh, you sure do… look like you haven’t eaten chocolate except on Sundays for a few weeks!” I dunno. Are any of y’all giving anything up, taking anything on, doing anything different? Maybe? A few of ya? Is it helping your spiritual life? Have you found yourself more connected to God? More connected to other people, maybe? More loving and compassionate? Maybe, maybe not? When I was a teenager, I tried the whole gamut of Lent-ideas: I gave up TV once; I gave up sweets a few times, not that it ever stuck; I’ve tried fasting, and praying through devotionals. I gotta say, some years, even some weeks, the Lent stuff just didn’t do it for me. Sometimes I felt closer to God, but sometimes, I just felt hungry and annoyed.

                It’s tough, isn’t it? It’s tough to make the practice really tie to the spirit, isn’t it? I get that. And we’re near the halfway mark for the Season, so if you are doing something for Lent, I know right around now is the time that you’re starting to wonder if it’s worth it, starting to wonder why you’re doing this, starting to think that God wouldn’t mind if you had that beer, watched that TV show, or whatever. And frankly, I don’t think God would mind if you broke your Lent Agreement. Really, are you doing it to please God? Or could there be some other reason? Could there be some other legitimately good spiritual-devotional reason to give something up, other than because it directly makes God happy?

                Consider Lent Madness. I were counting the list of things that count as devotion and praise to God, I don’t think that “voting in an online contest to see which holy servants of God are the coolest” is really near the top of the list. So why are we doing it? How is it a devotional tool? How does it make us closer to God?

                By way of answering, consider the two saints that are being pitted against each other tomorrow: Martin of Tours and Gregory the Great, aka Pope Gregory the First.

                Well before he was the Pope or The Great, Gregory was a Roman monk in the 500s. As one story about him goes, he was walking through the forum one day and saw an auction. A slave auction – young boys brought from the newly-conquered territory of Britain were on the market. Gregory paid for the boys and took them to a monastery to live, to be cared for, and to receive an education.

How’s that for giving something up? Gregory lived in a culture where you could buy and sell people. Especially conquered people – Rome decides to take another territory, and the people who live there are carted all throughout the Empire to serve as slaves for Roman citizens. It was a way to #1 – get them out of the way in their home, just in case they stir up any trouble; and #2 – break their spirits, humiliate and shame them so thoroughly that they would never consider running away, never consider defying their owner or the Empire. So it wasn’t just okay to own slaves, it was a vital part of participating in the Roman Empire. If you were a person with some cash, it’s just about your duty to participate in the slave economy. And Gregory, a monk with very limited means, worked to have these young men freed, cared for, and educated. Amen.

Now, I’ll have to admit, that story probably didn’t truly happen in history, at least not in that way. There are other versions that tell things differently, but frankly, I’m not concerned with what the historical truth of what really happened with some Italian monk fifteen hundred years ago. What gets me about Gregory, about the stories from a lot of these saints, is that they’re parables that lift up moments when a follower of Christ really and truly nailed it. I mean really got it right. Truth be told, I’m not all that convinced that Gregory was what I would call a good person – by all accounts he was really strict, kind of a jerk, and what he’s mostly known for is vastly expanding the power of the Church, giving the Church political clout and wealth like it had never seen and using it to pressure faraway territories into converting. That’s not good. That’s not how we live out the Gospel, how we bring love and light to a tired and hurting world. So even if the slave story is true, I don’t know if that moment outweighs the bad stuff and the questionable stuff he did with a lot of his life. I don’t know if this guy is worthy of Sainthood, if he’s exalted and special in the eyes of God. I sort of doubt it, but the point is that his story, a story of breaking bonds, can push us further into the path of Christ. If nothing else, releasing captives and caring for people who are abused and oppressed, when you could just as easily take advantage of them and exploit their misery? That’s a saintly move. That’s Christlike. That’s holy.

I think we can draw particular instances from people’s lives, from people’s stories, and see God in those moments and those stories. Gregory’s opponent, Martin of Tours, has a lot more of those inspiring stories than Greg did, but there’s one in particular I want to hold up. You see, Martin had explored Christianity as a teenager – this was the 300s, when it was still very much a tiny minority religion - but before he could really make any commitments or anything, he was required to serve in the Roman cavalry. He served in the military for some time, but as the story goes, one day he was in the territory of Gaul – France, basically – and as he was approaching a city, he met a beggar, wearing torn-up rags. On an impulse, Martin took his military cloak –a big wool cloth – and cut it in two, gave half to the beggar. That night, Martin had a dream, and in this dream he saw Jesus wearing his cloak, and Jesus said to the angels, “Here is Martin, the Roman soldier who is not baptized; he has clothed me.”

Two men, venerated for a thousand plus years as saints. One a veteran churchman who may have occasionally freed slaves and given them a good life, the other a soldier whose impulsive act of care for the poor garnered him a special connection to God. Martin’s vision is a pretty strong parallel to the words of Jesus in the book of Matthew. Jesus is speaking about who gets God’s favor and who doesn’t, and Jesus is pretty clear that the people God wants are the people who clothe the beaten and torn people of the world, who feed the hungry people of the world, who actively care for the people in our world that nobody else cares for. And this isn’t just the path of Jesus – it’s truly the overwhelming thrust of all of Scripture, especially the words of the prophets. Have you ever listened to Isaiah? The book of Isaiah is all over the place, probably because it was written by generations of people all working in the same tradition, but his words about how we live our lives stay pretty consistent. Hear with me some of his word from Isaiah chapter 58, verses 1 – 12. I’m reading from the Common English Bible. 

Shout loudly; don’t hold back;
    raise your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their crime,
    to the house of Jacob their sins.
² They seek me day after day,
    desiring knowledge of my ways
    like a nation that acted righteously,
    that didn’t abandon their God.
They ask me for righteous judgments,
    wanting to be close to God.
³ “Why do we fast and you don’t see;
    why afflict ourselves and you don’t notice?”
Yet on your fast day you do whatever you want,
    and oppress all your workers.
⁴ You quarrel and brawl, and then you fast;
    you hit each other violently with your fists.
You shouldn’t fast as you are doing today
    if you want to make your voice heard on high.
⁵ Is this the kind of fast I choose,
    a day of self-affliction,
    of bending one’s head like a reed
    and of lying down in mourning clothing and ashes?
    Is this what you call a fast,
        a day acceptable to the Lord?

⁶ Isn’t this the fast I choose:
    releasing wicked restraints, untying the ropes of a yoke,
    setting free the mistreated,
    and breaking every yoke?
⁷ Isn’t it sharing your bread with the hungry
    and bringing the homeless poor into your house,
    covering the naked when you see them,
    and not hiding from your own family?
⁸ Then your light will break out like the dawn,
    and you will be healed quickly.
Your own righteousness will walk before you,
    and the Lord’s glory will be your rear guard.
⁹ Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
    you will cry for help, and God will say, “I’m here.”
If you remove the yoke from among you,
    the finger-pointing, the wicked speech;
¹⁰     if you open your heart to the hungry,
    and provide abundantly for those who are afflicted,
    your light will shine in the darkness,
    and your gloom will be like the noon.
¹¹ The Lord will guide you continually
    and provide for you, even in parched places.
    God will rescue your bones.
You will be like a watered garden,
    like a spring of water that won’t run dry.
¹² They will rebuild ancient ruins on your account;
    the foundations of generations past you will restore.
You will be called Mender of Broken Walls,
    Restorer of Livable Streets.

                This isn’t just about our acts of devotion. It’s not about what we give up for Lent – really, it’s not about us at all. If you’re in a position where you’re able to give something up, then you have plenty.  Fasting, praying, bowing down, putting ashes on our faces… these can be things we do to try and curry God’s favor, but is God truly that petty? What could God get out of us looking silly and making ourselves miserable on purpose? Isaiah is pointing out to people in his own time something that could just as easily be said of many religious people in our time – our practices are only a shadow of the love that we’re supposed to share for one another for all of God’s creation. God doesn’t care how we express devotion to God – God cares that we show love to the people around us who need it, because God loves them, cares about them, God wants their joy and their fulfillment as much as anything else in the universe.

                If we fast, if we give stuff up, if we deny ourselves, it has to be just one piece of a larger worldview that permeates our whole lives. If you, like me, grew up hearing that such-and-such cereal is healthy as long as it’s “part of a balanced breakfast”, then you know what I’m talking about. If you deny yourself something you want, it only matters if it causes you to do two things:

                #1 – Recognize the respect the pain and the experience of everybody else who has to do without things that they want, things that they need, and

                #2 – Give from our abundance to help other people’s need. If we can choose to not eat something, then we have the luxury to feed the hungry. If we can choose to put aside our gifts and our hobbies, then we have the luxury of using our talents to lift up other people from the suffering of oppression and pain. If we can choose not to do something with our time, then we have the luxury to serve other people in God’s name.

                It’s not about currying God’s favor. It’s not a this-for-that scenario, where our self-inflicted sacrifice makes God like us more. But, as Isaiah tells us, God’s grace is such a strong part of our lives, such a strong part of our universe, that when we live out our love of other people…

“Then your light will break out like the dawn… The Lord will guide you continually and provide for you, even in parched places.
    God will rescue your bones.You will be like a watered garden,
    like a spring of water that won’t run dry.”

Amen.