And Angels Attended Him
As we begin another Lent, it reminds us that no matter how many Lents we have lived through, we have lived another year, becoming involved in many things and maybe, just maybe, we’re in need of our annual spiritual and life purpose “re-boot.” Lent is a sort of refresher course in refreshment; in renewal.
It is a time of quiet inventory where we check in on our spiritual lives, get real about where we’re doing well and where we’re not. It’s a time of intentionality to help us get back in sync.
Nearly all week I found myself out of sync, housebound due to a lousy cold. The only thing I had energy for was thinking about how this Lent was, could and should be different than previous ones.
This was made acutely real as I watched President Obama’s first address to Congress this week. I couldn’t help but notice that the United States and to some degree the world, is being called to a type of global lent, a national “re-boot” as it were. The President’s speech was asking us to reflect as a country and as individuals on what is required to bring our nation back to a condition of wholeness and stability. He wasn’t calling out only the government. He called out every citizen to reflect on our good decisions and the bad ones, the quick fixes, and short run thinking that have deferred long term consequences. He asked us all to put our shoulder into the joint journey of getting back on track while at the same time remembering who we are and where we came from.
That is Lent in a nutshell- a time when we bring our whole selves to our lives and as people of faith- to God. A time to look back over the last year - and see what has most distracted us from our spiritual lives.
And we should make no mistake about it. This global economy has spiritual undertones and spiritual consequences. Of all the stressors in our lives-work, relationships, lack of free time, angst over money may be the most corrosive. Wanting more and more and more is often because we feel less and less and less connected to a moral imperative bigger than our own lack. Where is Jesus in our life priorities? Lent can help us name that lack in whatever forms it takes and it can help us make whatever midcourse corrections we need as individuals, families—even whole nations!
There’s no sugar coating Lent. It’s about repentance and repentance is about turning away from whatever it is that isn’t working in our lives. Repentance is not meant to make us uncomfortable with God, it’s meant to make us uncomfortable with our less than Godly decisions. Lent drives us into our own personal wilderness to find those things that are getting in the way of bringing our whole selves to God. And we repent of those things.
Jesus too was compelled, drawn by the Spirit into his dessert struggle-his Lent. Mark’s Gospel throws a lot at us in only a few verses. Immediately and still wet from his baptism, it says "the Spirit drove him out into the wilderness."
He didn't go out for a stroll. He didn't pack the latest equipment from REI, and this was certainly no vacation; Jesus was driven out into difficult days and places, the experience of which readied him to begin his work.
He was tempted, we're told, by the evil one and was with the wild beasts. Then comes something amazing, a passage I hadn’t noticed before: “the angels waited on him.” Even Jesus didn’t go it alone. God provides.
You and I both know wilderness and dessert times are very real in 2009. Sometimes it feels like we’re doing battle with wild beasts. Our wilderness may be that of addiction and substance abuse; it may be a jungle of depression and despair, it may be indebtedness, a condition that was scary before this recession and terrifying now.
God bless you if your life is not affected by the economic wilderness many of you do face. Perhaps your wilderness is the realization that your health is not where you want it to be. Maybe it’s losing a client at work. And maybe it’s as simple as seeing some erosion this year in your relationship with God, or your friends or your spouse.
So how can we use this Lent to put things back into their right proportion? The wilderness is not a place of escape, but a place of discovery. This is the time we hold up a mirror and honestly ask ourselves hard questions. It’s time to take inventory of ourselves. Ask ourselves, how can I turn toward God this Lenten season? What is it going to take for me to bring my whole self forward? What’s the next step on my journey? What is God’s greatest imagination for my life? We find our greatest strength in the questions we’re courageous enough to ask. And we find the greatest growth in facing whatever it is we discover.
Even and perhaps especially in our personal desert, this is a holy time and it is holy ground. God does provide. Whatever demons we each encounter, whatever wild beasts we need to tame, we are not alone and we do not have to go it alone. God will provide. God is with us and there are angels all around. That is good news worth spending some quality time with. May God bless us all as we do just that.
Amen.