Sermon for the 1st Sunday of Lent 6th March 2022

Something that I share with many other people I know, is a love of chocolate. I’m sure we all know that chocolate isn’t the healthiest of things to eat but it’s very nice and if we eat it in moderation, it’s not going to do us any real harm. The trouble with chocolate for most of us, I think, is that it is so nice it’s very difficult to eat it in moderation. I know that, if I open a bar of chocolate, break off a piece and eat it, I’ll immediately want another piece, and another, and another and, if I didn’t make a conscious effort not to, I’d eat the whole bar there and then. And I know that lots of other people have exactly the same problem with chocolate.

In that sense I, and lots of other people, could be called ‘chocoholics’. Actually, that’s a bit of a misnomer because the word chocoholic implies an addiction to chocolate but, according to research, there’s nothing in chocolate itself that’s addictive. It seems the problem with chocolate is the sugar that’s added to it, to milk chocolate especially, to enhance the flavour by taking away chocolate’s natural bitterness. The sugar, it seems, gives us a ‘sugar high’ when we eat chocolate and it’s that, coupled with the taste of the sweetened chocolate that makes us crave more of it. So whether it’s actually addictive or not, for lots of people, chocolate is certainly very ‘moreish’.

Another way of talking about chocolate would be to say it’s very tempting and, as Christians, temptation, and especially resisting temptation, is something we’re very much focussed on during Lent. So, if we wanted to give up chocolate for Lent, or perhaps cure ourselves of our ‘chocoholism’ more permanently, how would we go about it?

One way would be to simply not have any chocolate in the house; if we don’t have any chocolate, we can’t eat it. That would be, if you’ll pardon the pun, a quick, simple fix. But that would probably only be a short-term solution too. It would be OK if we were giving up chocolate for Lent, but if we wanted to give up or cut down our consumption of chocolate on a long-term basis, it probably wouldn’t be a practical way to do it. We’d be bound to come across chocolate somewhere at some time and then we’d have to face the temptation to eat some of this very moreish stuff. And that’s a problem lots of people do have with chocolate, me included. People tend not to crave chocolate when they don’t have any to hand, but when they do have it, they start to eat it, and then they want to eat it to excess. So, if we wanted to be cured of our chocoholism rather than just give up chocolate for Lent, we’d have to find a different way to do it than simply not having any chocolate in the house.

In the end, the only way we’d be able to stop eating chocolate or cut down on how much of it we ate, on a long-term basis, would be to build up the strength of character, the will power if you like, not to eat chocolate even when we do have it to hand. And that’s the solution to dealing with all temptations on a long-term basis; to be able to face temptation, to be in the presence of what tempts us, but to have the strength of character not to give in to temptation.

I think people often miss a very important point about temptation. Temptation is about wanting something that we shouldn’t have, or perhaps wanting to do something that we shouldn’t do. But there’s a big difference between wanting and having, wanting to do and doing. And the most dangerous temptations are those things we want and shouldn’t want but can have; the things we want to do and shouldn’t do but can do. To give an example. In recent days, more than one person has said to me that they’d like to shoot a certain politician, whose name I won’t mention, but it was the president of Russia. Christians shouldn’t want to do that, but it’s not a temptation to those who’ve said it to me because they can’t do it anyway. On the other hand, if those people had said to me, they’d like to shoot their next-door neighbour, that would be a temptation, and a very dangerous one, because it’s something they could do. So resisting temptation isn’t about not doing what we can’t do anyway, such as not eating chocolate when we don’t have any chocolate, it’s about not doing what we could do; it’s about not eating chocolate when we’re surrounded by it. This is one of the lessons we can learn from the story of Jesus’ Temptation in the Wilderness.

We could interpret the temptations Jesus’ faced in certain ways so that they apply to us, but the temptations themselves really don’t. If we were hungry, we might look at a stone and wish it was bread, but we couldn’t possibly turn a stone into a loaf, so that wouldn’t be a temptation to us. But it was to Jesus because he could have turned the stones into loaves. And the stones were there, probably all around him, so it would have been a very real temptation to Jesus, one he had to face and resist.

We might be tempted by the prospect of power and authority, but we’re never going to rule the world, no human being, no matter how powerful has ever been able to do that. As we know, a few have tried over the years, but they’ve all failed. So the prospect of ruling the world in return for worshipping the devil isn’t a temptation to us because it’s a power we can never have. But it was a temptation to Jesus because he could have used his divine power for his own ends, to pursue his own glory rather than the will and the glory of his Father. So this temptation, which would be so ludicrous to us as to be no temptation at all, was a very real temptation to Jesus because it was a power he could have had.

And the final temptation Jesus faced, that of putting God to the test by throwing himself from the top of the temple is, again, not a temptation to us. Unfortunately, people very often are tempted to put others to the test, and they often succumb to that temptation. They succumb by using others as nothing more than a means to satisfy their own desires, or by taking others for granted, which is very often simply another way of saying that people have put their own desires above the needs of others, simply because they think they can, and can get away with doing that. But would any of us really consider throwing ourselves off the roof of St Marks’, or St Gabriel’s, to test whether God loves us or not? In the 40 plus years I’ve been an adult member of the Church, I’ve never met anyone who thought they could do something like that and get away with it. So this isn’t a temptation to us, but it was to Jesus. Jesus knew his mission was to fulfil the Scriptures, that’s why the devil tempted him by quoting the Scriptures. So Jesus knew that he could have thrown himself from the top of the temple in the absolute certainty that no harm would come to him. And so this was another temptation that Jesus had to face and resist.

When we think about temptation, we have to be clear about what we really mean. Are we talking about unachievable goals or hopes, things we’d very much want to have or do but which, in reality, we know we can’t? Because those are pipedreams, not temptations. Or are we talking about real temptations, things we’d very much like to have or do, that we know we shouldn’t want or do, but can or could have or do? It’s these things, real temptations and not pipedreams that we should be concerned about and that we need to resist.

But, when it comes to resisting real temptations, how do we know that we’re resisting them and not simply hiding from them? The only way we can know that, is if we actually face them, just as Jesus did during his 40 days in the wilderness. 

In the Lord’s Prayer, we pray that God our Father may,

‘…lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from evil.

But we know from Jesus’ Temptation in the Wilderness that God can, and sometimes does, lead us into places and situations where we can be tempted. So what we’re really praying for here is first of all, that we won’t be tempted by what we find in the places and situations that God leads us into. And we’re praying too that, if we are tempted by what we find in those places and situations, we may be delivered, saved, from the evil of giving in to temptation and all the evil that may flow from that. If we look at these lines from the Lord’s Prayer in the light of Jesus’ Temptation in the Wilderness, we’re not praying to have temptations hidden from us by being spared from being led into places and situations where temptation occurs, because that wasn’t Jesus’ experience; he was led into the wilderness, the place of temptation, by God the Holy Spirit. We’re praying that if, in following where God leads us, we do find temptation, we may have the strength and the faith to act as Jesus did; the strength and faith to face up to temptation and resist it.

If we’re a chocoholic, we can hide from our chocoholism by avoiding contact with chocolate, by hiding from chocolate. But we’ll never know if we’ve freed ourselves from chocoholism unless we have chocolate in front of us, and don’t eat it, or at least can resist the temptation to eat it all in one go. And in the same way, we can try to hide from the temptations that we may find in the places into which God leads us. But the only way we can do that is by not going where God wants us to go, by trying to hide from God in effect, and as Christians, that’s not an option. As Christians we’re called to follow Christ and to go where God leads us and sometimes that means going into the place of temptation and facing up to what we find there and resisting. That may not be easy but it’s the only way to be sure that we really are able to resist temptation and that we’re following this example of Jesus.

Amen.

The Propers for the First Sunday of Lent can be found here.

Sermon for Ash Wednesday 2nd March 2022

One of the things I’ve spoken about in the past is my fondness for going into schools to lead assemblies and worship for children. One of the things I like best about doing that is listening to the things that children say and trying to answer the questions they ask. Sometimes those questions are completely unexpected, often because they don’t seem to have anything to do with what I’ve been talking about.  Such as was the case, not too long ago, when a very young child asked, “Fr Stephen, why do you look like God?” and after I’d said something about us all being made in the image and likeness of God, he then asked, “So are you and God twins?” Sometimes, their questions are unexpected because they go off at tangents to the subject I’ve been talking about, such as the time when I was talking about king Herod’s plot to kill the baby Jesus, and I was asked “Fr Stephen, how old was Hitler?”

Sometimes the questions children ask display a level of understanding that’s quite surprising, but at other times they display the innocence and naivety you might expect from young children. But, on the basis that the only silly question is the one that isn’t asked and that we never learn anything if we don’t ask, I always answer children’s questions, however bizarre they might seem to be. I always try to do that too because I remember that, as a young child, I was always asking questions and I asked them because I wanted to know that answers. And I do remember once asking my mum a very innocent, childlike question about today, Ash Wednesday. The question was this. “Mum, if we eat pancakes on pancake Tuesday, why don’t we have potato hash on Ash Wednesday?” I honestly can’t remember the exact answer I got except that it was something about the kind of ash that’s meant on Ash Wednesday not being the kind of hash that we eat so I did learn something, but it wasn’t until a long time afterwards that I realised what the ash in Ash Wednesday is really about.

As I’m sure we all know, Ash Wednesday gets it’s name from the biblical practice of people wearing sackcloth and either sitting in ashes or putting ashes on their heads as a sign of sorrow and mourning, and perhaps especially as a sign of repentance for sin. So, we read in the Book of Daniel that, when he prays for forgiveness for the sinfulness of Jerusalem, Daniel says,

“…I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.” 

Or again, we read in the Book of Jonah that, when Jonah finally goes to the city of Nineveh and calls them to turn from their evil ways, the people of Nineveh,

‘…believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them. The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.’

And we find it too in the teaching of Jesus when he speaks about the lack of repentance he finds amongst the people in the towns and cities where he’d performed miracles:

“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.” 

So the ash referred to in Ash Wednesday is this kind of ash, the ash that represents our sorrow for the sins we’ve committed and a sign of our repentance of those sins. These days of course, we don’t wear sackcloth and we don’t sit in ashes to show these things, but we do we begin the season of Lent, the most penitential season of the Church’s year, the season when we’re called to think about our sins and make a real, determined effort to repent of them, to turn from them permanently, by being marked on our foreheads with the sign of the Cross, in ash, on Ash Wednesday. But, unless we’re going to make Ash Wednesday the start of that real, determined effort to repent and turn permanently from our sins, then rather than having our foreheads marked with the sign of the Cross in ash today, we might just as well make Ash Wednesday a day for eating potato hash.

The usual way for people in the Church to keep Lent is, as you know, by taking on some kind of Lenten discipline, either giving something up for Lent, or taking something on for Lent. That’s fine. But we always have to remember what the purpose of a Lenten discipline is. A Lenten discipline is supposed to help us to become better Christians, and not just better Christians for the 40 days of Lent, but better Christians always from the time we take on that discipline.

So, if we give something up for Lent, ideally, we should give up something that’s holding us back from being better Christians.  And if we do give up something for Lent that’s holding us back in our Christian discipleship, we should make Lent the time when we resolve give it up for good. But isn’t it true that when we do give things up for Lent, we do just that; give them up for Lent and then take them up again at Easter? It’s also true that when people give something up for Lent, many of them don’t even really do that because many people, encouraged by the clergy it must be said, say that as Sunday’s are a feast day, they’re days when we don’t have to keep our Lenten discipline. So they have a day off on Sundays. But the 40 days of Lent are intended to mirror our Lord’s 40 days and nights in the wilderness, and we don’t read that he went back home or into town for a day off on the Sabbath, so why should his disciples, which is what we are, think is OK for us to have one day a week off during Lent?  And isn’t it also true that what we give up very often has nothing to do with becoming better Christians but is to do with our physical health and earthly wealth? How many people do you know who have or do give up things like beer, chocolate, cigarettes, crisps and chips for Lent? If that’s all our Lenten discipline is about then we might just as well give up marking the start of Lent by putting ash on our foreheads and take up eating potato hash on Ash Wednesday instead.

And if we take something on for Lent, again, it should be something that’s going to help us to become better Christians, and we should do it with the purpose of making it a permanent addition to our lives, not just something we do for a few weeks before Easter. But how many people use Lent take up things that are of personal rather than spiritual interest or benefit? How many people do you know who’ve taken up daily exercise as a Lenten discipline? There’s nothing wrong with improving our health but a Lenten discipline should be about our spiritual health, not just our physical health. How many people have you known who’ve used Lent as a time to take up a new hobby or pastime? There’s nothing wrong with taking up hobbies either, in fact, it’s a very beneficial thing to do. But again, a Lenten discipline shouldn’t be about making time to do something we want to do or something we simply like doing, it should be about benefitting us in a spiritual sense and very often that means taking on something we find hard to do, perhaps even something that, at times, we don’t really want to do. The clue is in the name, it’s a Lenten discipline, not a Lenten hobby. And a Lenten discipline should be something we take on with the aim of carrying it on beyond Easter.

Over the years I’ve had a number of people ask me to suggest some Bible reading they could do during Lent. When I’ve been asked to do that, I’ve always suggested something because it’s never a bad thing to read the Scriptures, but I’ve also suggested that rather than just reading the Bible during Lent and then not looking at it again until next Lent, a far better thing to do would be to use this Lent to make a start on reading the Bible every day throughout the year. Again if we’re going to take things on that don’t benefit us as Christians, things that don’t help us to be better disciples of Christ each and every day of our lives, we might as well take up eating potato hash for Lent.

I don’t know what you’ve all decided to do as your Lenten discipline this year, but I hope you have decided to do something. Having said that, although the season of Lent has begun again today, it’s not too late to think about your Lenten discipline again. To think about whether what you’re going to do really will help you to become a better Christian, not just for the next six and a half weeks, but each and every day throughout this and every year. To think about whether your Lenten discipline is about potato hash, or the ashes of sorrow for sin and the repentance that leads to eternal life.

Amen. 

The Propers for Ash Wednesday can be found here.

Propers for the 8th Sunday of Ordinary Time (next before Lent) 27th February 2022

Entrance Antiphon

The Lord has been my strength; he hassled me into freedom.
He saved me because he loved me.

The Collect

Almighty Father,
whose Son was revealed in majesty before he suffered death upon the cross:
give us grace to perceive his glory,
that we may be strengthened to suffer with him,
and be changed into his likeness, from glory to glory;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Amen.

 

The Readings

Missal (St Mark’s)         Ecclesiasticus 27:4-7
                                   Psalm 92:2-3, 13-16
                                   1 Corinthians 15:54-58
                                   Luke 6:39-49

RCL (St Gabriel’s)         Exodus 34:29-35
                                   Psalm 99
                                   2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
                                   Luke 9:28-43