The season of Lent has the potential to be
the most spiritually significant time of year for Christians who are serious
about growing deeper in faith.
We began the season of Lent this past week,
on Ash Wednesday. A group of us gathered
here on Wednesday evening to mark the occasion, to have ashes placed on our
foreheads, and to be reminded of where we have come from. We took notice of which direction our lives
are facing, and then made a commitment, over the next 40 days, to figure out
what changes we need to make, what course alterations, so that we may get back
to moving in the direction that God would have us travel.
It is a season of paying attention. I mentioned Wednesday night that life has a
way of pulling us along, and we’re not even aware of it… like a leaf floating
down a stream: the leaf isn’t doing
anything. It is completely passive; and
yet it is moving on a journey that can take it very far from where it began, and
possibly, very far from where it wants to go.
I don’t know about you, but I feel like this
is how my life goes. I’m not really
paying attention, I’m not intentional about where I’m going, and so the current
of the stream just pulls me along where it wants to go. And I don’t realize where I’m going until,
hopefully, I wake up, look around, and say, “hey, wait a minute; this isn’t
where I want to be.” And I realize that
I have to work to get back to where I want to be.
That’s what Lent does for me.
How about you? As life pulls you downstream, do you even
know where you are going? Do you know
where you are right now, and how you got there?
Are you actively charting your course, or are you as passive and unaware
as that leaf?
The season of Lent is 40 days long. The number 40 is significant. For 40 days, Jesus was alone in the wilderness,
separated from society. You could say
that, for those 40 days, he pulled himself out of the stream, in order to
figure out what direction the stream was flowing, and what direction God was
calling him to.
In those 40 days, he learned that the stream
of humanity tends to pull ambitious men toward wealth and power. By stepping out of the stream and reflecting
on where he was and where he was going, Jesus realized that wealth and power
are false gods, that they are, in fact, tools of Satan, at least when they are
pursued for their own sakes. By spending
40 days in contemplation, Jesus was able to identify those temptations, resist
them, and become more intentional about moving in a different direction, toward
different goals, following the path set for him by God.
The 40 days of Lent also bring to mind the 40
years which the Israelites spent wandering in the wilderness as they journeyed
away from slavery in Egypt and toward freedom in the promised land.
There is a reason why it took them 40 years. No, they weren’t lost. They needed 40 years to figure out where they
were mentally, and to figure out – mentally – where they were going. They needed 40 years to figure out who they
were, and who they were called to be.
Think of the journey African Americans took
in this country from emancipation to true freedom. The journey from civil war to civil rights
took 100 years or more. The journey from
a nation of slave and free to a nation of true equality took a century … and in
some ways that journey is not over yet.
That the Israelites were able to take the journey from emancipation to a
new nation in just 40 years is actually quite remarkable.
The Israelites may have left Egypt in body,
but their minds were still there. Their
minds were still being held captive.
They were still swimming in an Egyptian stream of thought. They saw the journey ahead of them, saw that
it was a long, hard road, and they realized that it was so much easier to be a
leaf floating down a stream, just going with the current, not fighting against
it. It required no effort at all to just
go with the flow; and, mentally speaking, their minds were still doing just
that. Their minds were still stuck in Egypt,
and Egypt was still stuck in their minds.
It didn’t take 40 years to get the Israelites
out of Egypt. It took 40 years to get
Egypt out of the Israelites.
When those 40 years were over, the Israelites
were finally ready to enter the Promised Land.
But before they did, Moses had a few words to say.
Basically, what Moses said is this: “You have spent the last 40 years remembering
who you are, where you’ve been, and where you are going. Now, as you enter this NEW land and become a
NEW nation: don’t forget!”
Then Moses gave them a ritual, a liturgy,
designed to help them remember. Moses
told them to start by taking the first fruits of the harvest, and making it an
offering to God. The offering was to be
presented to the priest, and when the priest took the offering and placed it
before the altar, the one who was offering his gifts would recite these words:
“A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went
down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became
a great nation, mighty and populous.
When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard
labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our
voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a
mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and
with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this
land, a land flowing with milk and honey.
So now I bring the first fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have
given me.”
It seems like a lot of attention to give to
the offering. The offering seems almost
like the main event. By contrast, most
congregations that I’ve been part of do their best to slip the offering in with
as little fanfare as possible. Maybe if
they do it well enough, you won’t even know that it’s there.
The congregation in which I grew up went a
step further. That congregation took
great pride in the fact that it never collected an offering during
worship. Instead, tithes and offerings
were placed in wooden boxes at the back of the sanctuary as people entered or
exited. That way the worship service
itself remained holy, untainted by the necessary evil of money.
That’s how they saw it, anyway.
But I think they were wrong to do it that
way. When I worship now, I actually look
forward to the offering as an essential celebratory part of the worship
experience. I look forward to the
opportunity to show my gratitude to God in a real, tangible way. What other part of the worship service allows
you to do that, to show your gratitude in a real, tangible way?
In recent years I have made it a point to
contribute some amount, no matter how small, every week. I used to try to lump it all together once a
month. That works for a lot of people. It doesn’t work for me. I want – I need – to participate to the fullest extent possible when the
offering is taken. I need that opportunity to
show my gratitude to God.
But it’s about even more than that. The offering is also a moment of sobering
conviction for me. Many weeks, I (like
many of you) make purchases after worship at the scrip table. For me, that means that, every week, my check
register shows how much I give to the church on one line, and then on the very
next line it shows how much I spend on things like ARCO gas cards.
Comparing those two lines shows me just how
much I still live my life as a leaf floating in the current. It shows me that I’m still caught in the
current of a society that believes it’s perfectly alright to spend a major
portion of my personal budget on fossil fuels and the corporations that
distribute them. If I were truly in
charge of my own life, choosing my life’s direction rather than just going with
the flow, I would certainly find a way to give more to the church, and less to
Big Oil.
This weekly reminder is also a part of why I
NEED the offering to be a part of my weekly worship.
How we spend our money – how we use our
personal resources – shows who we are and what is truly important to us. Moses knew how vitally important it is to
remember who you are and what’s most important, and so he made sure to include
this liturgy of the first fruits, this offering liturgy, and to instruct the
people to observe it in worship.
Even with
this liturgy, the Israelites found it hard to remember. As they formed a new nation, they did not
always practice hospitality to foreigners and immigrants, forgetting that they
themselves were foreigners and immigrants, descendants of a wandering Aramean
who lived as an alien. They forgot to
care for the poor among them. They
forgot that all they had was from God.
They forgot that human life is more precious than gold, and they
neglected to show justice and compassion.
One prophet after another had to remind them
of these things.
As I live my life, caught by the current, the
offering grabs hold of me, pulls me out of that current, points down to where I
was and says, “look at where you are. Is
this where you want to be?”
On a larger scale, the season of Lent does
the same thing. That is why it is such a
gift to us. We’re caught in the stream,
and we don’t even know it. There doesn’t
seem to be anything wrong, because everyone else is caught in the stream as
well.
But downstream, there is a waterfall, with
sharp, jagged rocks at the bottom. That
is where our life is headed … until Lent comes along, pulls us out of the
stream, and makes us aware.
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