Ash Wednesday Sermon

So…

What great spiritual contest is the Lord preparing you for?

In some ways the story of Jesus testing in the wilderness doesn’t help us much. Most of us aren’t headed out to a desert any time soon, and none of us plan to fast for forty days, no less two.

And we aren’t going to be tested by the devil in such a straight forward fashion. There was no point in the devil’s hiding from Jesus, Jesus knew he was there and was unafraid of him, so a straight forward contest ensued.

But for us, events that can seem like wilderness ones can and do occur. Sometimes the wilderness comes in the form of a job loss, or the death of a loved one that takes us out into the desert of grief. Sometimes it’s illness, one that changes the landscape of our lives.

And sometimes it is just a period of time where nothing is going right. We have a job, but the attitudes at work are all bad, or ours is. We have a house but it seems it is just always falling apart.

We are in a significant relationship, but he forgot Valentine’s Day, or perhaps our kids or our parents are in relationships that are falling apart and we feel like the roof in caving in.

Desert come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, colors and textures. But we all go through them, and when we are in them, we are often quite spiritually dry, as tough we are fasting from water, our thirst not quenched by the flowing of God’s spirit, our hunger unrecognized for God’s presence as if we were fasting for days on end, and so in our dryness and fasting state, tempt-able.

There is a solution.

But you have to understand you are parched, famished, and in a hot dry place!

And often, we just don’t.

We don’t see the landscape changing. We don’t notice that our water bottle is empty and that we haven’t eaten or eaten healthy in a long time.

In cardiac rehab the other day the nutritionist was explaining the difference between eating a bagel for breakfast and a pouch of oatmeal. Her presentation was very good and very helpful, and we all learned a lot.

But we all cracked up when one of the old codgers asked if the staff knew the closest bagel shop for us to stop at the way home, since we were all now craving bagels!

Sometimes we don’t really plan good healthy meals. Sometimes we feel or are too busy to prepare, to busy to notice, too busy to care, too overwhelmed, to see we are getting farther and farther away for safety.

And that is when the tempter starts his siren song, inviting us to think, and feel, and act in ways we know are not good for us, not good for those around us, inconsistent with what we say we believe and should practice.

But that is why we prepare.

That is what Lent is all about. The community of faith practicing for the crisis ahead as a community, so that when the crisis hits, we all know what to do.

Like Jesus then, already fortified with God’s love, and God’s word, and God’s spirit, and in the case of the church, God’s people, ready to join us in the battle. Seeing the wilderness in our own lives, or even in the lives of others, we begin the work of traveling back to a safe place.

Satan offered options; Jesus deferred to God’s word.

He could because as weak as he may have felt, as overwhelmed, God’s presence was strong in him, and in temptation after temptation he could respond, “but God has said.”

Why not make this Lent a great one, by preparing you heart and your life for the inevitable times of journeying in the desert.

Decide to pray every day. Write each day in a blessings journal. Gather with others who know the Lord more intentionally so your spirit can be strong and flexible, your life resilient and ready. And invite others to do the same!

Make it a holy Lent, by following the example of Jesus!

Amen!