5-03-06 - Lent 1


His name was Jim McMeekin. He was training to be a lawyer, and he was a very senior official in the Students' Union when I was in my first year at Glasgow . I had got to know him slightly, and he was always very pleasant, unlike some of the really important students who looked at you as if you had crawled out from under a stone. I met Jim this morning on the steps of the Students' Union. “Your face needs a wash” I said. “Its Ash Wednesday” he said.

 

I knew that Jim was a devout Roman Catholic but what I didn't know until that morning, was that as mass on Ash Wednesday, Roman Catholics had ash smeared on their forehead: the ash, as it happens, of the palm branches which were waved on Palm Sunday the previous year. A reminder of how fickle and transient our loyalty and devotion can be.

 

We sometimes think that Lent isn't for staunch members of the Kirk like us. It was one of the things the reformation got rid of. But it wasn't. For more than a hundred years after the reformation in Scotland , eating meat during Lent was forbidden unless you had a licence from the local authority. Mind you, I think that law wasn't so much religious as a way of on the one hand boosting the 16 th century fishing industry and at the same time conserving stocks of cattle.

 

The result was that in all our minds, even today, Lent is associated with giving up something. Even if very few of us actually do give up something, that's what we believe Lent is all about: giving up something for forty days to identify ourselves with the forty days and forty nights that Jesus spent in the wilderness, fasting.

 

Forty days is a long time. There are a lot of “forties” in the Bible: The children of Israel forty years in the wilderness; Noah's flood lasted forty days; after Easter Jesus makes appearances for forty days. When the Bible uses the word “forty” it just means “a long time”. But “forty” became a very important number in law. In olden days you had forty days to pay a fine; after you had stayed in a village for forty days, you had to pay local taxes; a widow was allowed to stay in her husband's house for forty days. All because the law took the number forty literally. But it just meant “a long time”.

 

Forty days is a long time.

 

Can we just think for a minute or two about giving something up for forty days. I'm not going to say you should do it, but I want to think about why giving up something for forty days might symbolise something very important, and might mean much more than just self-discipline or self-restraint or self control.

 

You can give up chocolates or coffee or meat or alcohol for a few days, and you won't really notice it. But to give up something you like for forty days – that's a long time. You'll really begin to miss what you have given up. But gradually, as the days go by, your body won't remember its need for that particular fix any more, and you will have changed something. Forty days is long enough to change.

 

And Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness. We read St Mark's very short account of his time in the wilderness, but you'll remember that the other Gospel writers tell us how he was tempted.

 

To turn stones into bread. In other words to be the person who provided what was absolutely necessary. Jesus had forty days to get rid of the temptation that comes to all of us some time or another: to make people dependent.

 

And then he was tempted to jump off the top of the temple and win people's support that way: attract everyone's attention, by doing something dramatic.

 

And then he was tempted to do a quick deal with the devil and win all the kingdoms of the world, and then he would be able to persuade everyone to follow him because he was in a position to dominate .

 

And do you know what winning the world by making people dependent, or by doing something dramatic or being able to dominate – do you know what all of those things have in common. They are all temptations to win the world through a quick fix, and instant solution.

 

And it took Jesus forty days to get these ways of winning the world out of his system.

 

Do you see why I think giving something up for forty days isn't a bad symbol for what Lent is all about?

 

Last Sunday night there was a drama on BBC1 which was written and produced by the masterly Stephen Poliakov. It was called Gideon's Daughter, and it told the story of a brilliant public relations man, who had masterminded any number of brilliant PR achievements in the early nineteen nineties. He was the spin doctor to end all spin doctors. But, of course, when it came to his own personal life – his relationship with his distant daughter, the man he met whose son had been on his bike when a car killed him, the lover who was living with the pain of bereavement too – the quick fix of the public relations consultant or the spin doctor had nothing to say. The only way was to live through it and so face what you couldn't avoid.

 

So it took Jesus forty days to face the fact that the way of the world wasn't going to be his way.

 

But we're not Jesus.

 

No, but we are his disciples, and if you read the story of the weeks that led up to the first Holy Week, if you read the story of the disciples' journey to Good Friday, you'll find the pattern repeats itself, in their experience too.

 

There was a moment when Mark's Gospel tells us that a huge crowd had followed Jesus and they were hungry, and Jesus tells his disciples to feed them. “Shall we go and buy bread for this crowd?” they ask. That's usually taken to mean that the disciples were asking Jesus where they would get enough money to feed such a crowd. But I wonder: I wonder whether they did have the money and were prepared to go and buy the bread that would make the crowd dependent on them for their food, And Jesus says: what resources do the people have themselves? And we all know what he did with the five loaves and two fishes.

 

We all know what he did with the resources people had among themselves. Independence and nor dependence.

 

Then there was a moment, later on, when Jesus and his disciples got a very unwelcome reception in a Samaritan village and the disciples said to Jesus: “Come on, let's show them who you are. Why don't you command fire to come down from heaven and burn the village up” And Jesus, quietly, said “No” and went on to talk about how the Son of Man had nowhere to lay hi9s head. The undramatic contrasted with the dramatic.

 

And then there was the time when the disciples wanted the chief places in the kingdom, and Jesus said to them that you know that in the world rulers lord it over everyone else, but it's not to be like that with you. Whoever wants to be the greatest must be the servant of all. Dedication contrasted with domination.

 

It took the disciples a long time to get the ways of the world out of their system on their Lenten journey to the Cross.

 

And just in case they still hankered after that way of living, Jesus took them to an upper room. And instead of turning stones into bread, he said this bread is my body; and instead of a big dramatic gesture, he took a towel and washed their feet; and instead of winning the kingdoms of the world, he took a cup and said he would soon drink it anew in another kingdom.

 

And he said: Do this to remember me. Do this to remember what I have shown you. Do this to remember what you should have learned by now.