“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…”  (Romans 5:1)

The journey through Galatians that our congregation is taking during Lent has led us again and again to the doctrine of “justification by faith,” a teaching which is stated most directly in the letter quoted above, Paul’s letter to the Romans.  Justification by faith is a relatively simple concept.   To be justified is to be made right, to be accepted, to be approved by God.  To be justified by faith is to entrust ourselves entirely to God, whose decisive action in the death and resurrection of Jesus has made us righteous, acceptable and approved.  This simple teaching was at the heart of all of the letters of the Apostle Paul.  It was the central tenet of the Protestant Reformation.  It is preached regularly from pulpits and taught in Sunday school classes and small groups.  Still, this message is radical and revolutionary.   If God justifies us, it is no longer necessary or appropriate to go on justifying ourselves.  Self-justification and justification by faith are mutually exclusive.   

Here’s a simple discipline to practice during the season of Lent.  Begin to make note of the many ways you justify yourself.  Become aware of the times when you defend your behavior, even if you don’t really need to.   Pay attention to the times you brag just a bit in order to raise your approval rating with others.  Notice when you become defensive, as though something or someone has called you into question.  Be attentive to the times when you’re inclined to speak badly about another person because to do might raise opinions (even your own) about yourself.  As I have begun to pay attention in these ways, I’ve noticed that my knee-jerk self-justifying impulses fire many times every day.  To act upon those impulses, except when to do so is really necessary, is to act in ways that are inconsistent with the faith that justifies.   

Having made note of the ways you justify yourself, ask God’s help to let go of these habits, except in the rare cases when it’s really necessary to justify yourself.  (I am becoming more and more convinced that those occasions are actually very rare.)    Instead, whisper a prayer of gratitude to the One whose justification you have already received.  “I thank you that I am your child.”  “I entrust myself to your grace.”  “I am yours through Jesus.”   This simple discipline will, over time, simplify our lives, increase our gratitude and deepen our trust in the One whose grace is sufficient for us.

The journey we call “Lent” is a season of focused reflection on Christ’s movement to the cross and a time in which we intentionally practice giving up some of our attachments, or, as I prefer to say it, a time of “letting go.”  Our model here is, of course, Jesus himself.  Listen once again to these well known words of St. Paul to the Philippians:  “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death–even death on a cross.  Therefore God exalted him…”   Please note that I have emphasized that Jesus did not consider equality with God as something to be grasped.  I love this phrase because it illustrates precisely the kind of letting go that we wish to encourage during Lent.  Think of what your fist is doing when it is grasping hold of something: it is clinched, it is clinging, it is attached.  Now picture that same fist loosening its grip and letting go.  That is what Jesus has done, Paul tells us: he has let go of the temptation to anxiously cling to equality with God so that he might freely serve and suffer on behalf of God’s people.  It is this sort of “letting go” to which we are invited during Lent.

We are now about half-way through this journey of Lent.  This is about that part of the journey when you might be getting a bit weary.  It may be that you have identified some attitudes, practices or habits and you have let go–you have “given them up for Lent.”   Some in our congregation have been fasting  from food for 24 hours, one day each week, a way of letting go of their grasping hold on food that they might be more intentional about hungering after God and God’s justice.  Some have given up a cherished habit or attitude during the forty days of Lent, a way of letting go of that attachment in order to be freed up for other important commitments.  Some have given up their many little ways of anxiously justifying themselves,  a way of trusting the One who has justified them already.   I’ve heard quite a list of creative ways that different folks are letting go!  But  it may just be that right about now is the time when you’ve begun to grow tired.  Perhaps you’re beginning to realize that these attitudes, practices and habits that you’re letting go of have quite a hold on you!  The human brain is a fickle thing; it is extraordinarily committed to avoiding change.  It may be the just about now, it is sending you all kinds of self-sabotaging messages and complaints:  “This is too hard.”  “What is the point?” 

I’m writing today to encourage you to stay the course.   Remember that Jesus blazed the path of ‘letting go.’   Remember that this is a journey of freedom.  Remember that you let go of these little attachments in order that you may be more free to love God and to do God’s will.  And in the end, what could be more important than that? 

If it is true that A) a person might be described as ‘insane’ who does the same thing over and over, expecting different results; and B) the only person any one of us can change is ourselves; then it might be said that C) most of us are positively bonkers.   On many occasions when I have been frustrated with something in my environment, I have stepped back a bit and asked myself, “All right Steve, who in this situation can you change?”  My answer is always the same.  Me.  I’ve had occasion to ask that question of others many times, and their responses are virtually unanimous:  “I can only change myself.”  Armed with that bit of personal insight, I am aware of countless times when I and others whom I have watched have marched back into the fray and immediately set ourselves to the task of, sigh, trying to change the people around us.    Our strategies for trying to change others may include lecturing, nagging, manipulating, ‘preaching,’ threatening, blackmailing–and the list goes on.  On the other hand, we may try to fix the situation by enabling, comforting, sheltering and failing to follow through with firm and clear boundaries.  And this is so in spite of the fact that these efforts simply don’t work.   Our efforts to try to directly change another person are about as effective as trying to lose weight on an all ice-cream diet.  And yet, in spite of its ineffectiveness, most of us continue to put incredible energy into our efforts to change others.  Bonkers.

According to the Gospel of Mark, the first sermon Jesus ever preached was this:  “The time has come.  The kingdom of God is near.  Repent and believe the good news!”   Notice how personal this is.  Repent and believe the good news.  This is a call to change our thinking and our living so that it lines up with what God is doing.  It is a call for me to change my thinking and my living; and it is a call to you to change your thinking and your living.   We avoid this at our own peril!  The moment any of us turns the call of repentance into a matter that is for others, and not for ourselves, we set ourselves in the position of judge and jury and we lose the possibility of our own transformation that the good news brings.  I am reminded of the lady who greeted her pastor on the way out of church.  “That was a challenging sermon today,” she told her pastor. “It was exactly what my husband needed to hear.”  

Here’s a suggestion.  The next time you find yourself trying to change someone else, step back and ask the question, ‘Whom do I have the authority and the resources to change?’  For most of us, the answer is obvious.  We can only change ourselves.  Then, ask an even more difficult question: ‘How might I be contributing to the behavior or attitude in another that I so want to change?’  Could it be that your lecturing, cajoling, ‘preaching,’ nagging, manipulating, threatening and blackmailing are actually part of the problem?  Or, could it be that your enabling, protecting, sheltering, comforting and failing to follow through with calm but tough boundaries is contributing to the situation?  Finally, and this is key, put your ongoing energies into changing your own thinking, your own living.  Ironically, others around us may change, in time, as we put our energies into our own repentance.  That is not the goal, however.  The goal is to invest our energies into the only person whose repentance we are responsible for: ourselves.  Do that, with all of the power God gives you, and you will be “in your right mind” once again.

During a recent meeting of our congregation’s Worship Planning Team, we turned our attention to planning for the season of worship known as “Lent.”  As our conversation began,  I heard myself say, “I would stop being a pastor if I had to stop observing Lent.”  It’s that important to me.  I believe that the season of Lent speaks to many of our deepest needs as nothing else can  and tells a story that we–particularly those of us in North America–need desperately to hear.

Lent is the season of forty days, excluding Sundays, that lead up to Easter Sunday.  The observance of Lent began in the third and fourth centuries, as a time when Christians  thoughtfully prepared themselves for the celebration of the resurrection of our Lord.   The period of forty days is significant.  You may recall that Israel wandered in the desert for forty years prior to entering the promised land; and Jesus entered the desert for forty days prior to the beginning of his public ministry.   In both of these accounts, the season in the desert was a crucial time of preparation for what was to follow.  Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, which falls this year on February 22, and it ends on Easter Sunday morning, April 8.  

Allow me to offer four reasons why I believe the observance of Lent is important.

Lent is, first of all, the time when we carefully follow Jesus to the cross.  Here is an important observation:  The Gospel of Mark dedicates nearly one-third of its narrative to one week in the life of Jesus, namely the final week that culminates in the crucifixion. Matthew, Luke and John give only slightly less space to that same span of time.   We can be certain that this is no mistake.  The slow movement of Jesus toward the cross compels Christian people to consider the resistance to God that is present in our world and in our own lives.  This is hard but (as we will see) truly liberating work.  Unless we come to terms with the ways that we resist God’s renewing work, we will never be freed by it!  Lent will invariably lead those who thoughtfully walk its journey into a season of humility and confession.

Lent is, secondly, a season when we remember that the Christian experience takes the shape of death and resurrection.  In Lent we are called to remember not only that Jesus was crucified and raised on our behalf, but that we too must be crucified and raised if we are to truly live.  “I have been crucified with Christ,” St. Paul wrote to the Galatians.  “Nevertheless I live.  Yet not I, but Christ lives in me.”   During Lent we face up to the fact that getting more and more of what we want, giving ourselves ever more fully to our attachments, does not make us happy, good or free; it merely serves to deepen our servitude to our idols.   Jesus calls us to lose our lives (our idolatrous clinging to that which we falsely think will make us happy) in order to truly live. 

Thirdly, Lent is a season to fast in order that we might truly feast.  It is well know that in the season of Lent, many Christians practice a variety of different kinds of fasting.  Some may fast from certain kinds of food for the entire forty-day period.  Others may choose a 24 hour fast from all food one day each week.  Still others may choose to let go of things upon which they have become overly dependent, such as caffeine or some of their electronic gadgets.  These are just a few examples of various kinds of fasts.  That Lent is a season of fasting is well known.  That we fast in order to truly feast is, unfortunately, less well known.  The purpose of our variously chosen fasts is that we might let go of these attachments in order to more fully feast on the love of God.  Jesus told his disciples, “I have bread that you know not of.”  During Lent we fast from some of our attachments in order that we may feast on God who makes us truly free.  (I have written a good deal more about fasting in a brief pamphlet that will be available on the web page and on the resource table just outside our sanctuary.)   

Finally, Lent is a time of preparation for Easter Sunday.  Imagine that you have decided to give a  feast for your family and neighbors. You send out invitations and collect RSVP s and on the day of the feast you learn that all of your guests have stopped at McDonald’s and Burger King on their way to your home.  Is it any wonder that none could possibly fully appreciate the feast you have set before them?  Sadly, in my view, many Christians ‘celebrate’ Easter this way.  They go about their indulgent lifestyles, just as they always have, and then wonder why the celebration of Easter has little sustaining nourishment or power for their lives.  Lent helps us to get ready for Easter.  It helps us to nurture that spiritual hunger without which no one can be centered in God.