Back to our first love
Readings: Joel 2. 1-2, 12-16, Matthew 6. 1-6, 16-21
Well here we are, Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. Christmas, despite being only a few months ago, feels long gone from our rear view mirror. And here we are, beginning our journey to Easter.
Lent, despite what it’s become in the wider mindset, isn’t New Years mk 2, another chance to have a stab at cutting down on chocolate (a resolution which you managed to break at approximately 2pm on January 1st). Lent goes much deeper than that. We can easily default to ‘Lent is about giving stuff up’ without really thinking any further about why. So what is Lent for?
It’s an annual trumpet call to return to God, to come back when we have wandered off. Lent is about coming back to our first love.
Look at what the prophet Joel says in our Old Testament reading: ‘Stop everything’ he says, ‘return to the Lord, your God’. Not ‘stop doing bad things’, not ‘stop everything and start doing good things’, not even ‘pray more, read your Bible more, do a course’. No the core of what Joel is saying is a call to return to God. But so often our Lent is about trying to do more good things, or trying to stop doing bad things, or even choosing seemingly arbitrary things to give up. So what’s the difference?
Well if the core of our Lent is about doing more good or less bad we’re at risk of becoming what Jesus talks about in our New Testament reading today. We can get very good at the outward things; praying, giving to charity, giving something up, tackling that one sin you struggle with, all good things to do, but God isn’t interested in outward appearances, God looks at the heart. What are our motives in doing these things?
If our goal is to be seen to be very religious, to be seen as a good person, an upstanding citizen, then that’s the reward we are seeking, and we cannot expect further reward from God. It’s so common in our social media age; change your profile picture frame, or share an image to be seen to be on the right side of the debate, to be seen to be a good person so that others will look at you and know you’re a good person. But the heart is not in it, Jesus accuses those who do these things for the sake of outward appearance and applause, of being hypocrites, but we could just as easily say actor. It’s all an act, the purpose is the applause and nothing is happening inside.
Is our religious observance and good citizenship all an act? Designed to impress onlookers and God in order to get in their/his good books? The problem with approaching Lent when we start with activity is that it’s so hard to ensure our motives are pure. To avoid that little sense of satisfaction and accomplishment when we have to decline the hot chocolate because, as we explain to the person offering, we’ve given it up for Lent.
God isn’t concerned with outward activity but with our hearts. So what’s the heart of Lent? Returning to God.
But we haven’t gone anywhere, you may be thinking, we haven’t strayed from our first love, and God certainly hasn’t gone anywhere. And in the pace of our normal lives it feels true. But when we slow down, as we strip away the activity and business of our normal lives, and we start to examine ourselves, our priorities, our patterns, our hopes and dreams and fears, we start to discover that we have drifted, sometimes through major acts of rebellion but more often through small acts of compromise, small drifts which over time build up and compound until we discover we’re well off course.
Lent is a time to re-orient ourselves towards God, to move deeper into his presence. Not to gain approval from him, the aim of all that we do isn’t to gain the rewards but to gain the giver. Our fasting in Lent isn’t to gain God’s approval, to sway him to our side with how good or holy or rigorous we are and avert his wrath, we already have his approval through Christ, his wrath has already been redirected upon the cross.
No in disciplining ourselves outwardly and inwardly through fasting we confirm in ourselves that all we need is Christ and that all we have is under him in its place in our lives. We actively restructure our priorities and needs to ensure that Christ is at the top, with everything else worked around him.
As we examine our lives this Lent are we prepared to risk everything? To cut away everything that hinders our walk with God, that we might gain God himself? Are we prepared to risk everything that our world tells us is important, to gain everything; Jesus Christ, the one who truly satisfies?
On Sunday we’ll be hearing of Jesus’ time in the desert. Lent is about us entering the desert, but not for its own sake, not to attempt to endure the heat of the day and the bitter cold of the night, the barren landscape and the ruthless sandstorms in order that we might come out the other side battle hardened and rugged ready to face anything.
No, we enter the desert so that in finding everything else stripped away, we might be drawn by God to the oasis of his grace, and drink deeply of the waters of life. We enter the desert that we might be converted afresh, to rekindle that first love we had when we first believed, to allow God to revive us and renew us.
I pray that this Lent would be for us, that in examining our hearts and our lives and in striping away all that hinders us, that we would discover more deeply God’s love for us, draw closer to him, and allow ourselves to rest more and more on his strength. To not being looking for the admiration of others or even the rewards of God, but God himself. That come Easter our hearts would be realigned and we can truly say that our treasure is not of this world but heavenly, that our treasure is God himself, and that he is where our hearts are rooted.
Amen.