In one of J.D. Salinger's stories, a character named Teddy has been converted to Zen Buddhism and believes that in a previous life he was a holy man in India. He thinks he must have done something terrible in that life and is being punished for it by being reincarnated in an American body, because, he says, it is very hard to meditate in America.
I think it’s true that in some respects Americans find it hard to sit still, meditation and worship do not come easily to us. American workers labor longer hours than those of any other industrialized nation—six more weeks a year than the British, months more than the average German. We greet one another by saying "What have you been doing?" In America we don't meditate on life, we race through it.
Early on, the church recognized that in the spiritual life there needed to be a time a quiet time, a time to stop and meditate not on what we are doing, but on what Christ has done for us. A time set apart to concentrate on our spiritual life. I think we as modern American Christians need this time perhaps even more than it was needed in the early church.
Lent is a kind of spring training. The word, Lent, means spring. It began originally for catechumens in preparation for baptism. In those days new members were baptized and confirmed on Easter Sunday morning. The time of preparation for baptism was before Easter. But it soon developed into a season of renewal for all Christians, when the whole Church got back to the basics.
In the season of lent believers recognized that Christianity is not something for spectators. It's something for participants. It's a way of life that requires learning patience, what the Christian saints called "waiting on the Lord, " a kind of meditation.
The length of the season of Lent was extended to forty days to match the forty days and forty nights that Jesus spent in the wilderness, in the desert. So it is not an arbitrary time these forty days. It's an intentional time. It's patterned after our Lord's preparation for his ministry in the desert wilderness. It was felt that if to be a Christian means to follow Jesus, then we ought to begin to follow him there, in the desert, where he began.
In the Bible the desert is not just a geographical place. The desert in the Bible is a spiritual place. It began with Israel escaping from bondage in Egypt, crossing the Red Sea, putting itself together as a nation, and entering into freedom. But the escape was something like getting out of the woods and into the quicksand. For them it was getting out of slavery and moving into forty years of deprivation and sacrifice. And for some of them it was a miserable time in their life. The people thought that freedom was worse than imprisonment. They begged Moses to take them back to Egypt. They nearly starved out there.
Out there in the desert life was reduced to its bare essentials. They learned that out there you live one day at a time. They didn't know where they would be the next night. They didn't know if they would have enough food to eat the next day. In the desert life is moment to moment, day to day. In the desert they were forced to discipline their lives. They were forced to change some things. They were forced to say no to certain other things so that they could survive as a people. Most of all, they had to learn how to be patient and to trust the future, to trust that God would give them tomorrow, trust that the food for this day, our daily bread, will come as a gift.
It was a miserable time as far as the comforts of life were concerned. They were better off in Egypt. They were better off in slavery when it comes to the comforts of life. But in later years they looked back on that time in the desert, and they said it was the best time of their life. The desert came to symbolize the way they were supposed to live. The desert came to be for them a model of what the good life is all about.
So the desert came to be the symbol of the renewal of life. And whenever the nation became flabby, its institutions decadent, and its leaders corrupt, the people once again looked to the desert for renewal. They knew that God would send them a prophet and they knew the prophet would come from the desert. Elijah, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah--all of them came from the desert, even John the Baptist, the last of the prophets, a contemporary of Christ, tramped out of the desert to preach the word of repentance. Every last one of them, sent into the desert for preparation, and returned from the desert to renew the nation.
So its no accident that Jesus went into the "wilderness" more accurately translated "desert" for forty days and forty nights. If a savior is to come, they knew this, if a savior is to come he will come from the desert. So Jesus spent 40 days and 40 nights tempted in the desert.
During the temptations of Jesus, the devil tempted Jesus to use his own power to prove who he was. But he refused, the desert experience taught him to trust God and be patient, because all things would be given in God's time.....and the wait will make you stronger.
There is no one who doesn't need from time to time to go away to the wilderness. Sometimes the circumstances of our lives place us in the desert, other times we simply need to stop the busyness and make time to reflect on the heart of our faith. These forty days can be that time.
The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Paris was preaching from the pulpit of Notre Dame Cathedral. He told about three young men who had, years before, banged their way into that sanctuary in alcoholic irreverence, daring each other to make a false confession to the priest. One of the boys accepted the bet, but the old priest to whom he went saw much deeper. My son, he said, you have made your confession. I now impose the penance. Go into the chapel and look into the face of the crucifix hanging there and say these words: All this you did for me, and I don't give a damn. The young man went out to his buddies and tried to collect on the bet, after all he had made the false confession. But the others refused to pay up until he had done the penance. And so he went into the chapel. He stared into the face of the crucifix and said: I don't give a...and he couldn't finish, because he was on his knees. The Archbishop closed his story by saying "I was that young man."
In some sense that's where we all are - kneeling at the foot of the Cross in all of our cockiness, all of our self-assurance, all of our indifference, all of us with our I-don't-give-a-damn-attitudes, but knowing that this is what we need. Undeserved love is what God offers, and we come to the lenten season knowing this is what we need, and this is what we want most in life. We want to be forgiven, to live forgiven. We want to find the discipline to change some things, and say no to other things, so that we can say YES to the life we want to live. Most of all, by learning the patience of "waiting on the Lord," we want to receive each day as a gift from God.
I knew a man who spent a spiritual time in the desert, Al was a member at the first church I served in Orange County. Everything he had counted on changed. His wife left him, his only child was dying of AIDS. He felt he could no longer face old friends, and had no energy for new ones. Women had always approached this man, they asked him out - he was handsome, well off, and to outward appearances stable. But a relationship was the farthest thing from his mind. Inside him there was a volcanic turmoil of major proportions. He could not sleep, he said he felt everyday like you do when you wake up in a strange place and you don't know where you are. For almost a year he simply didn't feel comfortable in his own life.
As his son came close to death, it was like the walls came down between them. They began to talk, my friend would sit in awe at how wise his son had become - at how mature he was. Here was his own child, lying weakened in bed who explained to him where his marriage had gone wrong. Oddly enough, in death, his son gave him new life. A new measure of peace, and a way out of the wilderness. He spoke of that time in the desert as the time when he began a new walk w/ God.
When his son died he began to give. I told you all on Ash Wednesday that in this season of Lent we were going to spend some time in our sermons and worship to focus on giving. It has been my experience that giving helps the giver almost as much if not more than the place or the person to whom the gift is given. This was a man who was changed by giving. Going through a divorce, his son dead, Al had worked all his life but was not sure why. The first thing he did was settle the divorce and give his ex-wife more than what she had asked for. Then he asked me what he could do.
I told him about Lutheran Social Services and our food pantry and he started shopping. Every week he used coupons and went to stores with deals after work and brought the food to church. We had a pre-school at that church and it needed a new play yard, Al designed it, and donated all the costs for it – over $5000. The week it was completed the senior pastor asked him if he wanted to name it after his son, and he said no. It’s for the church, he wouldn’t even let us publicize his work on it. I had lunch with him shortly after that, he told me he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Oh, Al, I said, I am so sorry. Well, he said, I am going to have surgery and chemo, and the doctor says I will be fine, but I want you to know I called my lawyer as soon as I found out, and in my will, I left my house to the church. I am so grateful for all that I have been given.
If you find God more closely and more dearly in the Lenten season it is because God has always been there. Giving of yourself and your time and your money, is not important because God wants to know what you can do for the Divine cause. It is important because God is interested to know if you see what Christ has done for you, and will do through you, for others, Amen.