Sermon Preached at Bexley Seabury
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Saturday, March 22, 2014
“Let us begin the Fast with joy. Let us give
ourselves to spiritual efforts. Let us cleanse our souls. Let us cleanse our
flesh. Let us fast from passions as we fast from foods, taking pleasure in the
good works of the Spirit and accomplishing them in love that we all may be made
worthy to see the passion of Christ our God and His Holy Pascha, rejoicing with
spiritual joy."
This is the Hymn on the 1st day of Great Lent as it
is celebrated in Orthodox churches around the world. According to Fr. Nicholas Ceko, Dean of St.
Steven’s Serbian Orthodox Cathedral in Alhambra, California, “In the Tradition of the Holy
Orthodox Church, the first day of lent is known as ‘Clean Monday.’ It is the
day on which we, the Church, joyously begin Great Lent. The happy, springtime atmosphere of Clean
Monday sets the tone for the Lenten spirit of repentance and self-control, as
described by Jesus our Lord in the Gospel.”
He continues to describe “Clean Monday” as a day in which many Orthodox
Christians go “out to parks with their children, fly kites, and spend time
outdoors in the natural beauty of God’s Creation” - a custom that “serves to break through our
routine in order to take time for the simple things of life and see the
goodness and beauty in all that God does for us!”[1]
Growing up, I hardly recall my Lenten experiences as
“joyous” – give up chocolate or, when I was a bit older, give up caffeine (talk
about non-joyous deprivation!) – and this while I was yet a Presbyterian – a
fairly austere lot to begin with! But
even in the Episcopal Church, our Lenten observance is marked by a somewhat
somber tone – flowers and other decorations removed from our places of worship;
colorful vestments set aside as the non-descript Lenten array drapes over
pulpits, lecterns, altars and clergy alike; and the ‘a’ word replaced by
‘paralegal’ or another 4-syllable word in choir rehearsals leading up to the
celebration of Easter [sing the Celtic Paralegal].
But a few years ago, through Facebook, I learned of a
movement in the Church of England called “Love Life, Live Lent” – a movement
which since 2007 has encouraged nearly half a million people to take part in
daily acts of generosity and caring, building deeper relationships with our
neighbors, our communities and with God.[2] This year, I discovered another UK Lenten
movement called 40 Acts: Do Lent Generously – forty days of giving back, doing
good and living generously.[3] What I’ve enjoyed about both of these
movements is that they really help me to remember the point of Lent: self-examination
and repentance? Absolutely. Deprivation
and austerity? Absolutely not. Norman
Wirzba , Professor of Theology, Ecology, and Rural Life at Duke Divinity
School, writes,
“The time of Lent is
not about saying ‘No’ to anything made or provided by God. It cannot be,
because everything God has made is good and beautiful, a gift and blessing that
God has provided. . . If there is a ‘No’ that has to be said, it will be a ‘No’
directed to the distorting and degrading ways we have developed in appropriating
these gifts.”[4]
*****
“Jesus said, ‘There was a man who had two sons.’”[5] So begins our gospel story this morning. The younger of the two sons says to his
Father, “I want right now what’s coming to me” and upon receiving his
inheritance, he “packed his bags and left for a distant country. There
undisciplined and dissipated, he wasted everything he had” (that’s the way
Eugene Peterson tells the story in The Message).[6]
I had to look up “dissipated” – it means
“to spend or use up wastefully or foolishly.”[7]
With our critical eyes - some of you
perhaps, with the wise eyes of parenting – we look at this young man and shake
our heads knowingly. How stupid. How
foolish. How careless. How wasteful. And then, perhaps if we are willing to be
honest, we might look into our own critical eyes in a mirror and quietly
whisper, “how like me.”
No, most of us haven’t squandered away all that we’ve
been given, we haven’t been completely undisciplined and dissipated, throwing
caution to the wind. Perhaps we are
carefully saving for a rainy day, perhaps we are giving a percentage of what
we’ve received to our church, perhaps we are living, on the whole, quite
responsibly. And yet, might there be
some ways in which we too are blind to the consequences of our actions? What choices do we make each day that have an
impact on others in our global community?
Do you know if the stores you shop at treat their employees well? What choices do we make each day that have an
impact on others in our own households?
How much time in your calendar is blocked off for your family? How
willingly do we allow other appointments to encroach upon those precious
minutes or hours of time? Lent – a time
for self-examination and repentance, to be sure. And such an honest look at ourselves can be
painful – something we’d rather avoid. And perhaps that is where our Lenten
practice can feel a bit devoid of joy. And yet, what is the promise of that
honest look?
For the undisciplined and dissipated son, such a
willingness to look at his situation honestly was enough to turn him around, to
send him back home to his father. And
he went back home, expecting very little – hoping beyond hope that perhaps his
father might bring him on as a hired hand so that he would at least get three
meals a day. He even practiced his speech on the way home: ““Father,
I have sinned against heaven and before you;
I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your
hired hands.”[8]
Perhaps he recited it as a mantra to guide his steps. “Father, I have sinned. . . . I am no longer
worthy. . . . Father I have sinned. . .
.”
But before he even had a chance to say
these words to his father, “while he was still far off, his father saw him and
was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed
him.” The son began his practiced
speech, “’Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you’ . . . But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly,
bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and
sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and
celebrate; 4for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was
lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.”[9]
How stupid. How foolish. How careless. How wasteful.
How absolutely undisciplined and dissipated of our God. Thanks be to God!
“Let us” continue our Lenten “Fast with joy. Let
us give ourselves to spiritual efforts. Let us cleanse our souls. Let us cleanse
our flesh. Let us fast from passions as we fast from foods, taking pleasure in
the good works of the Spirit and accomplishing them in love that we all may be
made worthy to see the passion of Christ our God and His Holy Pascha, rejoicing
with spiritual joy."
May this be a season when we take time to go
outside to fly kites, to spend time in the natural beauty of God’s Creation, a
time when we break free of our routine in order to take time for the
simple things of life and see the goodness and beauty in all of the
undisciplined and dissipated things God does for us not because we deserve
them, but because God loves us and wants nothing more than to run out to us,
put his arms around us and kiss us.
[2] Love Life Live Lent,
accessed online March 20, 2014.
[4] Norman Wirzba, “Preparing
for Joy,” Lent, vol. 46 in Christian Reflection: A Series in Faith
and Ethics, (Waco, TX: Baylor Universtiy Center for Christian Ethics,
2014), 12.
[5] Luke 15:11, NRSV.
[6] Luke 15:12-16, The
Message.
[8] Luke 15:18b-19, NRSV.
[9] Luke 15:20b-24, NRSV.
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