Lenten Blog Series, #5

In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.

As we come to the last days of Lent, our season of preparation for the Great Easter Feast, I would reflect upon these lines from the Lord’s Prayer paraphrased from the New Zealand Anglican Book of Common Prayer:

In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.

From trials too great to endure, spare us.

These words make clear that temptation and test are a part of living. I know that not everyone would agree with me, but I am convicted that God does not temp us and, also, that God doesn’t test us. Well-meaning people often say, “God won’t give you anything you can’t handle.” I have trouble with this on two levels.

First, it would seem to imply that when we face difficulty it is because God has given the challenge to us. I don’t see this in God’s nature, and I believe that living as we do in a broken world, we encounter difficulty and challenges that are simply a part of living and for which we may turn to our God for strength and sustenance.

My second issue with the statement is that it seems to imply that we will not face ‘more than we can handle.’ My experience both of life and faith is that I do encounter times when that which comes at me is more than I can handle. I like to say that there are times when the world is bigger than we are, and this is why we need and have a saviour and are called to a community of faith where we find strength, support, and sustenance in difficult times.

It is good and right to ask that God’s presence to be known to us and for God’s aid in being spared from those things which seem to be and/or are more than we can endure.

From the grip of all that is evil, free us.

I delight in the wording of this phrase because it has the nature of a ‘catch all’, asking protection and aid from ALL THINGS that are not of God, things of which we may be aware and those which we cannot see or even imagine. We live in a world in which evil exists. To deny this, as the great writer C. S. Lewis suggests in the ‘Screwtape Letters’, is to play into the evil one’s hands. Hear me, I don’t see a devil hiding behind every lamppost, but I know that we regularly encounter things in our lives which are not of God. We cannot even begin to imagine all of the ways in which we might be assaulted by evil and all of the ways in which we can in “thought, word or deed” slide into things which are not of  God, and so we are right to pray ‘from the grip of all that is evil, free us’.

This brings to mind a favorite passage from the letter to the Romans (chapter 8) where St. Paul writes:

“Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? …in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

As we approach our celebration of Easter and Christ’s great victory for us, may we know and celebrate that nothing, NOTHING, can separate us from the love of him who died and rose for us.

It is the second day of Lent, the day after Ash Wednesday

 My head is spinning a bit after a whirlwind, and lovely, day of celebrating Ash Wednesday. Yes, I do say “celebrating” as contrary to popular belief Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent is a time of hope and, not unlike Advent, eager anticipation, as we prepare for the celebration of Christ’s victory at Easter.

Yesterday we celebrated the beginning of Lent in four formal liturgies with over 600 of our members, friends and visitors. We stepped out in our inaugural “Ashes to Go” offering and informally helped bring to mind for over 200 downtowners that Lent was beginning and that “we are but dust and to dust we shall return.” You can see the story here.

Yes, we celebrated! I am convinced that we, the Church, have often turned people off, and worse, turned people away by presenting Ash Wednesday and Lent as times when for some unknown and unexplained reason God wants us to feel bad. I cannot count the number of times I have spoken with someone who when asked why they were “giving something up” for Lent had no idea why, but were doing so simply because they had been told to do so.

This brings to mind Matthew 23:1-7: “Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, ²‘The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; ³therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. ⁴They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. ⁵They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. ⁶They love to have the place of honour at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, ⁷and to be greeted with respect in the market-places, and to have people call them rabbi.”

Sounds an awful lot like the Gospel lesson appointed for Ash Wednesday, Matthew 6:1-6,16-21, in which we are also told not to put ashes on our heads – but that is an entirely different blog! In both cases, Jesus was speaking to the “religious” of his day and suggesting that they had some things wrong.

While we must keep in mind the need for serious self-reflection, confession, repentance and amendment of life, we must also keep in mind why we would do such things. We do them that we might be set free; free as we say from the “bondage of our sins”. The Gospel lesson appointed for this Sunday, the First Sunday in Lent, is about Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. It also includes the topic sentence of Mark’s Gospel, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

My Lenten determination is to remember that the Christian faith is about good news! And the Lenten call to self-examination, confession and repentance is there for us that we may know the freedom of absolution and new life in Christ.

Two phrases which jumped up at me as I presided and preached at three Ash Wednesday liturgies were: “Almighty God you hate nothing you have made…” (The first words of Lent from the collect for Ash Wednesday) and “…God desires not the death of sinners…”

 This is what Ash Wednesday and Lent are truly about; God’s love, hope and new life in Christ.

 A good friend sent me the following quote from Orthodox British Metropolitan Bishop Kallistos Ware:

 What did people use to do in Greece on this day (Ash Wednesday)?

They would go out into the countryside, go out onto the hills, in the open air, in the wind, and they would fly kites in the sky. Is that not a good symbol for the spirit in which we should embark on Lent?

Lent is a time to open our hearts to the fresh air of the Spirit, to open up all the cupboards and closets that have remained closed, dusty and murky. And it is a time to fly kites, a time to be imaginative, a time to explore, a time to be adventurous.

On our Lenten journey, may we indeed look within, confess, repent and accept with joy God’s absolution…

and, may we also make time to fly kites, spiritually and literally.

The Rev. David Boyd