Lent: Getting Ready to Live as a Citizen in the New Creation

Sermon delivered on Ash Wednesday, February 22, 2012, at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Columbus, OH.

Lectionary texts: Isaiah 58.1-12; Psalm 103; 2 Corinthians 5.20b-6.10; Matthew 6.1-6.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of a 40 day season we call Lent. It is a time for confession, self-denial, and repentance. But why do we do these things? What’s the point? Is it because Christians are inherently masochistic or are there better reasons? I suspect that many who call themselves Christians couldn’t answer these questions and so tonight I want to lay out for you why we observe a season of Lent. To do that, we are going to have to go back to the beginning to see God’s intention for us and his creation and then look quickly at what happened instead. Then we are going to have to look at God’s promised future for those who love him, for those he calls in Christ, so that we can be reminded what we are here for and where we are going.

In Genesis 1-2 we read the creation stories. While they are doubtless familiar to most of us, I suspect we miss a critical piece of information regarding how God works and his intentions for his human creatures that are contained in these narratives. In these stories, we read that God created humans to be wise stewards over his creation (cf. Genesis 1.26-31; 2.19-20). That is what it means to be created in God’s image. To be wise stewards and rule over God’s good creation requires that we be obedient to God’s will for us. If we don’t obey God, how can we possibly reflect his glory and be wise stewards of his creation?

This, then, is how God intended things to work. God still does. And as we read in the creation narratives, this is indeed how things worked until human sin entered the picture (cf. Genesis 3ff). The essence of human sin is an unhealthy focus on us and our needs and desires, rather than a single-minded focus on God and obeying his will for us. That is why one of the biblical terms for sin, hamartia, literally means to miss the mark so that when we repent, we turn around and change course. In other words, when we really repent, we stop being essentially self-centered creatures and become God-centered creatures so that we can once again be his true image-bearers and wise stewards.

And we can all think of examples of good and poor stewardship. Think of the advances in science, medicine, and education that have improved the quality of our lives and allowed us to treat each other and God’s good earth wisely. Then think of hate-mongers like Hitler or the unbridled greed that led to the stock market crash of 2008 that wiped out billions of dollars of hard working folks or the terrible abuse of humans and animals that we read about on a regular basis, and you can quickly understand how badly we have strayed from God’s good intentions for us and how grievous it is to God. This is also what our OT and gospel lessons are about. God is telling his people Israel what he expects of them as his called-out (holy) image-bearers. They are to pursue justice and righteousness so that the poor and oppressed are cared for because they too are God’s image-bearers. Moreover, both Jesus and Isaiah are reminding us that God does not so much care about our religious activities as he cares about why we do what we do in God’s name. In other words, God cares about our inner motivations. We must therefore always ask ourselves whose glory are we seeking, our own or God’s? If we do not seek God’s glory in all we do we are missing the mark, i.e., we are sinning, and being less than fully human.

To summarize, then, when human sin entered the world, we got ourselves kicked out of paradise, became alienated and estranged from God, and lost our full measure of humanity. When that happened, death entered the picture because when we are separated from our Source of life, we must die. This is the cost of our disobedience to God. It is a sad and terrible picture. We all know what it is like to live in a fallen world because we all have been afflicted by the evil and consequences of sin, both our own and others’. When we start to understand this dynamic, we are ready to understand why we need a season of Lent because Lent is a time when we are called to be quite intentional and work on the things that dehumanize us and make us miss the mark of being God’s image-bearer and a wise steward of his creation.

But thankfully human sin and death are not the end of the story. God loves us and intends for us to enjoy life with him in the manner he intended when he created us. That is why God called his people Israel to be agents of his healing love and redemption. But Israel turned out to be as badly flawed and broken as the people God called them to help redeem. Instead of being his image-bearers and wise stewards so that God’s mercy, justice, righteousness, and love could reign and bring healing and restoration, Israel turned inward on itself and became essentially self-focused. That is why God is so implacably opposed to idol worship, both for his people Israel and for all humans. The desire to worship is built into our genes. We will inevitably worship something and we will become what we worship. It’s an ironclad spiritual law.

This wouldn’t be a problem if we did not have free will and could only worship God. But we do have free will because God created us for relationship and real relationships can only happen if both parties choose to enter into them freely, our relationship with God included. But too often we end up choosing to worship ourselves and when that happens things get ugly (and scary) in a hurry. Israel’s idol worship helped turn them inward on themselves so that they failed to be the wise stewards and God’s image-bearers to God’s broken and hurting world. In other words, they disobeyed God’s calling to them. If you want to understand why God got so angry with his people in the OT and ultimately brought judgment on Israel, you have to understand this dynamic. Likewise with us. When we are more interested in focusing on ourselves instead of on God, how can we ever hope to have a real relationship with God, let alone enjoy life with him?

But God in his eternal mercy and wisdom understood and foresaw all this. None of this caught God by surprise and so as Paul reminds us in tonight’s epistle, God became human in Jesus and bore his own righteous judgment on our sins, the very things that make us estranged from God and prevent us from having our lifeline reconnected, so that we could live. Or to use Paul’s language, we have been reconciled to God. That’s why we call the day Jesus was crucified Good Friday. The whole history of the human race indicates we cannot be the people God created us to be without some radical help and in Christ’s death we got that help.

Moreover, Jesus’ resurrection announced that God had made good on his promise to usher in God’s new creation. We need to keep this hope in Christ firmly in our minds because this is our future and it serves to both remind us of what awaits us and to motivate us. Jesus’ death and resurrection remind us that God has overcome evil, sin, and death and promises to bring in a new age, the new heavens and earth, where all evil is banished forever and we will be given new resurrection bodies that are impervious to decay and death. We won’t be floating around on clouds playing harps forever—how dreadfully boring that sounds. No, we will be living in a recreated world in the manner God intended for us in the first place. Whatever that looks like, and none of us really knows, it will be glorious beyond our ability to think or imagine because God’s glory is beyond our ability to imagine. We didn’t do anything to deserve this mind-boggling gift from God, nor can we earn it. It is ours by faith and our faith will always produce a response that anticipates the promise. But one thing we do know. To live in God’s new creation means we will need to learn to act accordingly. Just like being a citizen in any country demands certain norms of behavior, so it will be in the new creation. To live in God’s sin- and evil-free world means that we will not be turned inward but God-ward. It means we will want more than anything to be obedient to God’s will for us so that we can truly be human and reflect God’s image outward in God’s new creation. And this, of course, is where Lent comes in.

Lent is a time where we announce our intention of becoming fully human and obedient to God in the manner God created us and intends for us. In the death of Christ, we have been reconciled to God and so this is in loving and grateful response to what God has done for us in Christ to end our alienation and exile from him, to reconnect us to our life support system, so to speak. We respond to God’s love in Christ for two reasons. First, as we’ve seen, we believe Jesus’ resurrection has ushered in God’s promised new creation and so we are called to the task to be his agents of new creation. In other words, we are called to be obedient humans who reflect God’s image out into the world so that we can be his true image-bearers. This means we have to root out everything in us that is hostile toward God and which dehumanizes us and makes us turn inward (or worship things that make us turn inward). But because we are so profoundly broken, we have no hope of accomplishing this on our own. Thankfully, however, as Paul reminds us in tonight’s epistle lesson, we don’t do this on our own. We do this in and through the power of God because we have been given the Holy Spirit to help us with deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus. This is simply another way to describe the process of becoming fully human and obedient once again, just the way Jesus was.

The second reason we respond to God’s love in Christ is related to the first. As we have seen, living in God’s promised new creation demands that we have a heart and desire that are focused on obeying God, not ourselves. When we identify those things in us that are preventing that from happening, we are developing the needed character to live in the new creation. When we turn inward and worship ourselves by our greed, selfishness, pride, and abuse of our bodies (to name just a few) we are behaving in ways that are contrary to God’s good will for us so that we can live as fully human beings. We don’t have to find the temptations to do these things. They find us and every one of us knows how easy it is to develop bad habits and bad character.

But there will be no room for these character habits in the new creation. Instead, if we hope to be fully human and obedient to God (even though that is virtually impossible this side of the grave because we are weighed down by our body of sin), we have to work on developing the habits of heart and mind that are conducive to being fully human and obedient to God—love, faith, patience, kindness, compassion, and a passion for justice (to name just a few). That means, of course, that we must work at these things because they do not necessarily come naturally to us. In other words, we must develop the discipline to develop the necessary habits of heart and mind that will be demanded in the new creation. The good news again is that we don’t do this on our own, either. We do it only by the power of God through the Holy Spirit living in us. That is why it is a good idea to take up a discipline in Lent that is related to developing these godly character habits, things like prayer and fasting (here is where those prayer beads can help us) and regular reading and study of the Bible (here is where we can help the Spirit help each of us by helping each other keep on task).

What is it in you that you need to put to death (or continue to work on putting to death)? Think deeply on the things we have talked about tonight and ask God to show you what is dehumanizing you and causing you to miss the mark of being fully human and God’s image-bearer. Whatever it is, and whatever you give up for Lent, it should be directly related to that which is making you worship yourself or which prevents you from working for God’s righteousness and justice. And if you do give up something for Lent with the attitude that you can hardly wait for Easter so that you can resume what you’ve given up, you’ve missed the point completely because doing so is effectively telling God you want to continue to worship and obey yourself, not him.

This Lent, we all have to decide whom we will worship. Our natural human tendency is to turn inward and worship ourselves, which, as we have seen, will lead only to our further dehumanization and alienation from God. Sadly, this will result in God’s final judgment and our eternal death and permanent separation from God. That, by the way, is why there is such an urgency in Paul’s epistle lesson tonight. Not only do we not know the day of our death (when it will be too late for us to turn around), if we don’t act decisively to turn around and stop missing the mark, there may come a day when we pass the point of no return where we are unable to correct our course because we have become too hardened and dehumanized.

But when, by God’s grace, we choose to worship God and seek to be obedient to his will, we are laying the groundwork not only to cooperate with God here and now, but also to live with him in his new creation forever. We have this hope because we have seen his cross and believe in his promise to heal and be reconciled to us, which of course means we have Good News, now and for all eternity. May God grant you a holy Lent this season so that you come to know fully what it means to love God and be truly human.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Season of Lent: It’s Not About Self-Help

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.

–Hebrews 12.1-3, 14 (NIV)

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

–Luke 18.9-14 (NIV)

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of a 40 day season we call Lent. It is a time for confession, self-denial, and repentance. To many in our contemporary society, Lent has become something of an anachronism because many do not see the big deal about confessing sin. In an “I’m OK, you’re OK” culture, we have forgotten that sin is terribly grievous in God’s eyes, that if something is not done about it, our sin will continue to separate us from God’s Holy presence and keep God and humans alienated forever. As the writer of Hebrew’s tells us in the passage above, without holiness, no one will see God.

For you see, God is perfect and holy. God cannot and will not allow any kind of evil to live in his direct presence. Unless something is done to take away all the evil and sin that remains in fallen humans, we have no hope of ever living in God’s direct presence. And while at first blush this may seem harsh to us, if we think about it seriously, it should make sense. Whatever your conception of heaven and the New Creation is, do you really want to spend an eternity being plagued and bedeviled by evil? Do you really want to spend an eternity living with your own foibles, fears, and weaknesses, not to mention the foibles and weaknesses of others?

But here is the rub. Because we are so thoroughly infected with sin and brokenness, we have no hope of fixing ourselves. We have no hope of ever living forever in God’s Holy presence because there is nothing we can do to eradicate our fallen human condition. Sure, we can decide to change our ways and work hard to do good things to and for others, but that is not going to help us because we will inevitably fail. Our sin still remains in us and we remain thoroughly infected. We have an inoperable cancer and no human power can change this. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself how many New Year’s resolutions you’ve kept over the years. Ask yourself about all those good intentions you’ve had that have fallen by the wayside. Ask yourself why no self-styled utopias ever succeeded. If you are honest with yourself, you will not like the answers you give.

This is what the Bible calls the human condition. You can read about it in Genesis 3. It is not a pretty picture nor do we like to think about it because frankly, it is very painful to do so. But not thinking about it or trying to wish away our condition does not change reality. Sooner or later each one of us will get smacked in the face with our own mortality and the mortality of those whom we love, and when that happens, the awful truth sinks in and the hopelessness that ensues can overwhelm us. Without some radical help, we and our loved ones are toast. We have no hope for the future beyond the living of our days and that is a terrible, terrible thought to contemplate.

But take heart and hope because God has some very Good News for you. It’s called believing what God has done for you in Jesus. Jesus the divine surgeon can operate on you and rid you of the cancer of your sin that must otherwise keep you permanently separated from God, the Source and Author of all life. The Christian faith does not advocate self-help. Far from it. No, the NT advocates putting your whole hope and trust in what God has done for you in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. In his death, Jesus has borne the just punishment for our sins and because of his death, we have been made holy in God’s sight. I’ll let better minds than me explain how precisely this works; I confess I do not know how precisely this works other than it does.

Does this mean we sit back, relax, pop a beer and let Jesus do all the work in our lives? Hardly. When we put our faith in Christ, it changes us. He comes to us and lives within us, changing us over the course of our life. We still have to struggle and sweat in our faith journey, but we are confident that Jesus is helping us become the beings he created us to be. Having the Spirit living in us also reminds us not to make life about us. Instead we make it about loving and serving God for making it possible for us to live in his direct Presence forever.

In other words, having Jesus living in us keeps us humble. He reminds us of our need to come to him each day for guidance and strength. He reminds us that if we are to show our love to God in part by our loving service to others, we are going to need his strength. This, in turn, helps us to avoid the myth of self-help or that we can somehow ever be acceptable to God based on our own merits. We realize that we cannot be good in God’s eyes without Jesus’ help and his work on the cross. This keeps us from being like the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable above, which is a good thing because it is so easy to fool ourselves into thinking we can possibly be good in God’s eyes based on our own merits.

But that is not true and that is why we have a season of Lent. Lent reminds us of the impossible plight of the human condition. It reminds us about the deadly seriousness and consequences of our sin. It reminds us that we cannot fix ourselves and our fundamental problem of life, that we need God’s grace and mercy to survive. Lent reminds us that we need to confess our sins to God and put our faith in Christ so that we can be truly forgiven. As the psalmist reminds us:

When I kept silent,
my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
For day and night
your hand was heavy on me;
my strength was sapped
as in the heat of summer.
Then I acknowledged my sin to you
and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, “I will confess
my transgressions to the LORD.”
And you forgave
the guilt of my sin (Psalm 32.3-5).

Our confession, repentance, and self-denial are necessary for us on a daily basis because they help us keep our minds right, they help us remember our human condition. The cross of Jesus is necessary to give us our present hope for a future and to ensure that living directly in God’s Holy presence is possible.

Repentance simply means we are working hard, with Jesus’ living Presence in us, to turn away from doing the things that separate us from God (think selfishness) and to turn toward those things that are pleasing to God (think selfless love and service to others). Self-denial is all about actively working to put to death those ugly things in us that prevent us from living joyfully in the manner that is pleasing to God. It is not about killing our core personality.

And when we repent, we are assured that God will forgive us because while God’s holy justice will not be denied, we remember that God is a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and full of steadfast love for his broken and rebellious creatures. This is not unlike parents who continue to love their wayward children who rebel against them. For a poignant and beautiful picture of God’s love for you despite who you can be, read the parable of the prodigal son.

Lent is the season where we get real with ourselves and with God. We acknowledge the seriousness of our sin and we work at putting to death all that is within us that keeps us hostile toward and alienated from God. That is why Lent is all about confession, repentance, and self-denial. It’s not a pretty or fun thing to do, but it is an essential and life-giving thing to do. But as the writer of Hebrews reminds us, we are to struggle not as individuals but together as the people of God, the Church. We remember that we are in this together and that God intends for us to draw on each other for help and support as we seek to follow Jesus and be faithful disciples of his.

Lent also reminds us of the wondrous grace, love, and mercy of God manifested in Jesus. It is a time when we get intentional about following Jesus and all that that means to us and to others around us. Lent is a time when we can really focus on getting healed so that we can live our life with meaning, purpose, real hope, and joy. Lent is the time to remember that we really do have a hope and a future made possible by Jesus and him alone.

If you are struggling with things that weigh you down or are looking for life-giving meaning and purpose, then take a chance and give yourself to the God who loves you more than you dare to hope or dream. And if you are already following Jesus, then renew your commitment to him and ask him to help you lose yourself in him so that he can use you to bring the glorious Good News to his broken and hurting world that desperately needs to hear about the wondrous love and mercy of God in Christ.