Collect
Almighty God, whose Son Jesus Christ fasted forty days in the wilderness, and was tempted as we are, yet without sin: give us grace to discipline ourselves in obedience to your Spirit; and, as you know our weakness, so may we know your power to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
or
Heavenly Father, your Son battled with the powers of darkness, and grew closer to you in the desert: help us to use these days to grow in wisdom and prayer that we may witness to your saving love in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Post Communion
Lord God, you have renewed us with the living bread from heaven; by it you nourish our faith, increase our hope, and strengthen our love: teach us always to hunger for him who is the true and living bread, and enable us to live by every word that proceeds from out of your mouth; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Readings
Old Testament – Genesis 9.8–17
Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ‘As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.’ God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.’ God said to Noah, ‘This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.’
Psalm 25.1–9
1 To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul;
O my God, in you I trust; ♦
let me not be put to shame;
let not my enemies triumph over me.
2 Let none who look to you be put to shame, ♦
but let the treacherous be shamed and frustrated.
3 Make me to know your ways, O Lord, ♦
and teach me your paths.
4 Lead me in your truth and teach me, ♦
for you are the God of my salvation;
for you have I hoped all the day long.
5 Remember, Lord, your compassion and love, ♦
for they are from everlasting.
6 Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions, ♦
but think on me in your goodness, O Lord, according to your steadfast love.
7 Gracious and upright is the Lord; ♦
therefore shall he teach sinners in the way.
8 He will guide the humble in doing right ♦
and teach his way to the lowly.
9 All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth ♦
to those who keep his covenant and his testimonies.
Epistle – 1 Peter 3.18–22
For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight people, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you – not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.
Gospel – Mark 1.9–15
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’
And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.
Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’
Sermon on Sunday, Lent 1
“Forty days and forty nights” – with that phrase we have begun our great fast in preparation for the events proclaiming our salvation, in preparation for Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday.
But why forty? What is the significance of that particular number? A teacher of mine in Vermont told his class – “Forty is a perfectly long time. Four is the perfect division of all things. Quaternity is the perfect partition of space – the four compass points. And ten times four is a very long time.” You get the idea. My teacher wanted us to think poetically about the statements in the bible. I still do that. So what do we imagine the forty days and forty nights is all about? Do we think about perfection at all? Or do we hurumph and complain ‘when can I have my chocolate and wine again?’
Forty days is such a long time in our lives, isn’t it? Imagine fasting for forty days! I can’t because I love my food too much. But we can symbolically fast for such long times, can’t we? Can’t we abstain for the whole of our lives? I know people who have taken “the pledge”, don’t you? I know people who have never taken drugs for pleasure – they have taken drugs only when the doctor told them.
We all know that it is possible to live the great fast, don’t we? We have seen others do it. We ourselves might have been able to do it. The great fast is something more than the ascetic foregoing of pleasure. I think we can all agree about that, can’t we? The great fast is the transformation of our lives. We make the great fast the starting point for a new life. We begin to forsake the horrible for the noble. We begin to value what is good in life.
The great fast is the point at which we change our worlds. We move from the everyday forgetfulness of the honourable to the extraordinary care for each person we encounter around us. I would like to suggest that the great fast gives us so much more than we could possibly give up.
Coincidently, the other night I was exploring Search Engine Optimisation and the writer was talking about an exercise to see how to get better search terms – he talked about “voluntary fasting” – and it led to a lot of information about giving up eating for periods as opposed to “involuntary fasting” which is another way of saying “starvation”.
Maybe we should think about that distinction when we think about our Lenten discipline. Is our fasting seen to be like starvation? Do people outside the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church see our fasting for Lent to be something that is involuntary and akin to starvation when they consider it in relation to their everyday lives? Do people inside the Church think the same? – I don’t know. These are just questions that pop into my head, exactly as they appear in your minds when you think about faith and its expression in your own lives.
So, imagine my surprise when I realised that even my Search Engine Optimisation research could impact my reflection on faith – on this talk I am giving today.
But should we be surprised? Doesn’t everything connect with everything else? Don’t we realise that in or everyday lives? We have all heard about “the butterfly effect”, haven’t we? The effect of when the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings will have some bearing with an event on the other side of the planet. – I always remember a science fiction story in which people go back in time to go dinosaur hunting. They are told to stay on the path. However, one person did not and he stepped off the path for just one step which landed on a butterfly. No one thought much about it until they returned. Not much had changed, except there were nazi insignia everywhere and everything was just so subtly different.
This is the sort of effect that I think the great fast can have for the world. If lots of people – if the majority of the people in an area took on the discipline of the great fast, imagine how things could change!
If our great fast was not just about giving up chocolate or wine for forty days and forty nights, but if our great fast was to do good deeds for forty day and forty nights or even the whole of our lives, imagine the changes that might occur. We would have changed ourselves a bit – we would become aware that doing good is not an extraordinary thing, that we could do it day in and day out for the rest of our lives. Imagine how that would change everything around us! Life would be better for everyone, starting with ourselves. Every year during Lent we should be transforming our world. The perfectly long time of forty days would have an impact on the world – we might even be able to perfect the world in which we move and have our being.
We christians should be taking a longer view. Imagine the forty days as forty years, like the wandering in the desert which the Hebrew people did, the Hebrew people who are the foundation of Jesus’ life, the foundation of our Lord’s life here on earth.
Imagine if we made that period the great fast of our discipline. Imagine how strong our resolve would be! We would be able to do good at every moment of our lives. Our world would be one in which the poor and widow would not be ignored. Our world would be one in which everyone was cared for because we loved one another. Self would be left behind and the other would be the focus for all our activity. Because we would take care of others, others would take care of us. No one would be unloved.
Imagine that our great fast of Lent could transform the world in which we live like that. Wouldn’t we gladly participate? It could, don’t you think? So why don’t we fast greatly? Do we listen to what “they” say, those who say “it doesn’t make any difference,” or “this is the way it is.” Why do we listen to those voices without love? Shouldn’t we hear the word of love as it sounds all around us? Or do we turn a deaf ear to the joyful message of universal salvation?
Forty days and forty nights – the great fast of Lent – we have started it. Let us continue with it, transforming the giving up of Lent to the giving the good over to the world. Let us pray that our Lent becomes the making over of the world. May Lent make us engage with everyone we meet. May Lent be the means by which Love becomes incarnate in us. Let us fulfill Christ’s wish, to show that we have the faith, because we love others as Jesus loved his disciples. I want us to be the presentation of Christ now, as Jesus loved the world that he became nothing for all. We can become the image of Jesus Christ to our neighbours because we love one another in the way a true family has affection for each and every one without concupiscence, warts and all.
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