Todd Bruce
March 9, 2014
Year A, Lent I | Mt 4:1-11
“He fasted forty days and forty nights.”
Without exception, when I wake up on Ash Wednesday, I’m not thinking about the long day of services ahead, or our desperate need for forgiveness and redemption, or the dreary weeks of Lent that are beginning, or how I’m already behind on planning for Holy Week and Easter. No, the only thing I’m thinking about is food. Ash Wednesday is one of only two fast days in the Prayer Book, the other is Good Friday, and it’s not only the clergy who are supposed to fast, but all Christians, lay and ordained. I wake up on Ash Wednesday with good intentions, but I end up thinking about food all day long, to the point of dangerous and desperate distraction. Almost every year I give in and at some point in the day, I take off my collar, wipe the ashes off my forehead, and sneak out to some place where I can indulge in the forbidden foods, meat and cheese, and dessert with lots of frosting, feeling a little ashamed, but not particularly remorseful. The frosting, I’ve found, in particular, to be very effective at eliminating any little bad taste of remorse that might be lingering in my mouth after a delicious lunch on Ash Wednesday.
The Lenten season is intended to bring us closer to Jesus, to prepare our hearts to understand his life and ministry, his passion and death, and to celebrate his Resurrection at Easter, and one of the ways the Church has observed Lent and attempted to fulfill its purpose is by fasting. There are several intentions behind fasting; to suffer as Jesus suffered for the forty days in the wilderness, to conquer the physical so as to enhance the spiritual, and to do penance for our sins. Fasting might do that for some people; but the only thing it does to me is cause me to focus on my own suffering. Maybe fasting or giving up chocolate or shopping or Facebook does it for you; but I fear that for many of us, engaging in this practice of fasting or self-denial is a substitute, a comparatively easy one, for living like Christ, for our hearts to love Jesus so much that they become like his. We humans are sneaky and clever, even when the only ones we’re fooling are ourselves, and it’s just like us, really, to avoid the most difficult practice by focusing all of our energies on a difficult, but less difficult, practice. Not eating until after the last Ash Wednesday service, or avoiding candy or coffee or text messaging is hard. But it isn’t as hard as staying faithful when the cards are stacked against you and the devil is offering you an easy way out. It isn’t as hard as being mocked or marginalized or ignored by your peers for showing compassion to those to whom they only show derision. It isn’t as hard as giving up something that is yours to someone who hasn’t done anything to deserve having it. It isn’t as hard as questioning what you’ve always done and always thought because it doesn’t correspond with the values and principles you hold to be good and right and holy. It isn’t as hard as loving another so much that you would give up your life for him, or sacrifice your happiness for hers. The devil has won this round, if we abstain from meat or sugar or cigarettes, with much pain and suffering on our part, and still cast a cold eye on the pain and suffering of others.
I invite you, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a Holy Lent; but instead of observing Lent simply by abstaining from one of your life’s little luxuries, the challenge before you is to discern how you will this Lent live like Christ lived. How will you open your heart so that Jesus will find a home there? It might very well be through the disciplines the Church has promoted as appropriate to the season, through fasting and abstinence and self-denial. You might make Christ a home through meditation and prayer, by reading the Scriptures and finding out, perhaps for the first time, what they really say, and not what other people say they say. Regular attendance at worship might open a space inside of you in which Christ will be resurrected again. You might live like Christ lived by feeding the hungry, comforting the lonely, listening instead of just hearing, and simply paying attention, for once in your busy life, to those who are generally ignored. This, I think, is the hardest thing; not to imitate his forty days of hunger by skipping a few meals, but to imitate his entire life by walking like he walked, among the sick and the poor, prostitutes and thieves, and not with condescension and condemnation, but with compassion and with love. This Lent, no matter the practices in which you engage to bring you closer to our Lord, remember our Savior’s reply to Satan, that “one does not live by bread alone.” It’s not an empty stomach that is pleasing to our God, but a full heart. Amen.
