The discipline of Lent

 

Sunday 21^st February – 1^st of Lent.

Genesis 9: 8-17. What is significant to me is that the covenant, mentioned four times, is with all creation. God is not simply the God of human beings but the God of the entire created cosmos. This for theists, carries implications for how we treat both animals and the world around us. One way of dealing with human perversity is to try and destroy it (via the Flood) and the other is to wean the human race off of perversity towards a love of peace and justice- an example of God’s Grace, signified by the rainbow.

1 Peter 3: 18- 22. A common icon in Eastern Christianity, is of the risen Christ standing over the entrance to hell, using the cross to span the fissure and pulling up people either out of their graves or sometimes out of death itself into the light. This is a graphic illustration of this mysterious passage where Jesus reaches even down to the already dead (and presumably judged “in the time of Noah”) and pulling them to life and light. The forgiveness and Grace of God knows no bounds.

Mark 1: 9-15. The wilderness is a place of exile, distress and testing. The Jews wandered for forty years in the wilderness before alighting upon the promised land and Jesus was similarly tested for forty days before starting his ministry. A time of distillation of the essential message he carried for the world and a forging of his character and incorruptibility. A season of retreat, challenge, testing and growth remains with the church as a whole through the practice of “retreats” and the more widespread notion of an annual Lenten discipline.

 

Our Christian lives are shaped, if you belong to a traditional church like the CofE, Roman catholic or Orthodox churches by observing seasons that have their own internal logic and reason.

Every season concentrates on one aspect of our faith and concentrates on it.

So to use the most important season, Easter, as an example. For a Christian the resurrection informs our entire belief system 24/7 365 days of the year but we still reserve a special day – Easter Sunday and the weeks that follow it -to concentrate on the resurrection and what it means.

Similarly, with Lent. The practices we employ to come into a closer relationship with God is something we should also be engaged with 24/7 365 days a year but in the forty days before Easter we still have a special period where we concentrate on that particular job in hand.

And that is the job in hand. Fostering a closer relationship with God revealed in Christ.

The method you use to foster that relationship is not the important thing – the closer relationship is what counts and we are all different.

If fasting works for you do that. If intellectual stimulation works for you, read a spiritual book, engage with a course or Bible reading scheme.

Prayer and contemplation underpin whatever we employ to foster that relationship because in prayer we enter into that ongoing personal relationship with God. The form that prayer takes is not the important thing – it is the result of that way of prayer that is important.

As a part of that universal catholic church we encourage all forms of prayer but actively promote two main forms because they are tried and tested.

The cycle of liturgical morning or evening prayer recognises that people need rhythm, repetition and appreciate a tried and tested method that is given to them which takes away a lot of anxiety for many people. There is still space for your own prayers but there is a framework into which extempore prayer fits.  

Some respond better to complete silence and meditation is their thing.

Others find that too stark and prefer music, candles, icons or chant to concentrate your mind.

Others find that any set form puts them off and life is itself a prayer.

What works for you is what is important because the goal is the important thing and not the means of getting there.

Doing good works is what works for many and many people never feel closer to God than when they are helping someone less fortunate than themselves.

You don’t need to choose between all these different ways. You can and probably need to engage with a little bit of all of them in reality.

That’s why our weekly communion service is so important. There is a set framework – the liturgy, which changes with the seasons.

It has Bible readings, public intercession, reflections on God’s word, music, a time of confession and absolution, a demonstration of our peace with God and each other and the climax of each event is the taking of communion which is a public statement of fact and intent that we are in communion with God and each other through the body and blood of Christ

Our goal is communion with God and all things.

We do that every time we meet to worship but the season of Lent asks us to specifically think about that in a more structured and disciplined way.

There is a rich tradition spanning 2000 years, 5000 years with the Hebrew scriptures of different forms of trying to foster a close relationship with God in Christ so be curious and take time to explore them.

I hope and pray that the result of whatever you do and try will achieve the end it was meant to do and that its effect and practice will outlive the confines of this short season.