Isaiah 58:1-12; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10

For many Australians with a Christians heritage, the word “Lent” describes a period between early February and late April when religious-types give up luxuries in remembrance of the sacrifice of Jesus. Even in major supermarkets you might see advertisements for “Fish for Lent” above the freezers; but the word “Lent” has nothing to do with giving up pleasures, or seeking sorrow where joy might be found. No, “Lent” comes from the language of “lengthen” because in the Northern Hemisphere the people are entering Spring, and after the vernal equinox on March 21st the daylight is longer than the darkness. On this first Sunday back in purple I’m going to suggest, right from the outset, that rather than giving up your fun or shortening your lives with self-denial leading up to Easter, this is the best time to take-up something, and expanding your religiosity. Lent offers a fresh opportunity to try-out a Christian discipline or spiritual practice; maybe even one that could be continued after Easter. And yes, perhaps that practice is less grog and more green vegetables; but perhaps it is prayer, or hospitality, or worship, or regular church attendance.

Fifteen years ago I returned to Australia after almost six years of living in England, and for most of that time had been worshipping at Hillsong Church London. At that time Hillsong in England was made up of around twelve thousand people, meeting in multiple services and study and fellowship groups in multiple venues across multiple locations around the home counties and in the metropolitan area. You might think that such a megachurch would be wealthy, but that wasn’t actually the case because most of the people in our congregations were young people and people on lower-than-average incomes. Many of us were students, others were twenty- or thirty-somethings on OE or a Gap Year; we had lots of energy, excitement, and activity, but very little cash. Some attendees were newly introduced Christians who were dealing with the complications of their life before Christ and had little cash, or were new to discipleship and working through the “for reals, a tithe is 10%; I mean really?” thing. So every Sunday, prayer requests would come in via the care cards on our seats, with requests of God for help. “Pray for me,” the request might read, “I need £400 for bond or I can’t move into my new flat; I have my rent, but I don’t have the lump sum for bond.” Or “pray for me because I have to move out of my flat on Tuesday and I have nowhere to go.” Ot “pray for me, because my grandfather in Auckland is dying and I cannot afford to go home yet.”  Our pastor would shake a fistful of cards at us and say “no”.  “No,” he would say, “no, we are not going to insult God by asking Him to grant these requests when the Church is sitting in front of me. You are going to answer these prayers Church, you. So, come and speak to me after the service if you wrote this, or come and speak to one of the pastoral care team if you can offer help.” Then he would pray that “the church will be church”, everyone would give a huge cheer, and we’d move on. The next week there would be a “thanksgiving” where the cards read “praise God my £400 need was met by my small group and I move in on Friday.” Or “praise God my need for accommodation was met and I am now staying in a better flat for lower rent, in Zone Two of the Tube, and sharing with two lovely Saffy girls I met in the foyer last Sunday.”

Through that, and other experiences, I have come to understand that sometimes God doesn’t really want the Church’s prayers: God wants the needs of the individuals to be met by the whole congregation for God’s glory. Those prayer answers were never prefaced with “Praise be to Janien and Mareta from Bloemfontein” or “Praise be to Hillsong”; they were always “Praise God” and “I love Jesus so much!”. When the Church comes through, even for people are not Christian believers, God always gets the glory.

In the passage read to us from Isaiah 58 this morning we hear about God’s displeasure with the people of Judah. They had been doing all the religious stuff like festivals, offerings, prayers and fasts, but God was not at all impressed. It might seem odd that the Lectionary would ask us to read a passage at the outset of Lent which discredits fasting because fasting what Lent is all about: but, is fasting what Lent is all about? No, the message of God to the local church is that God wants to see us living out our faith in ways that bring benefit to the world and not just a sense of self-worth to our members. God says to Judah, and God may well say to us, what good is your fasting when all you do is squabble? What good is taking a Sabbath when it means you work your employees twice as much in your absence to make up for the lost time? What good is depriving yourself of something when you aren’t then following through to use those same things to lift the condition of the poor? The point of self-denial through Lent is not so that you end up with an extra $200 for chocolate eggs, the money you saved from 40 days of going without a $5 coffee. If you’re going to go without food for Lent, Lent says give that food to the hungry!  If you insist upon walking around in sackcloth and ashes for Lent, Lent says give your coat to the homeless man and allow him use of your bath. If you are going to babble away all day in prayers and protestations for Lent, Lent says use those prayers to raise the plight of the orphan, the widow and the alien rather than whinging like small children about the petty problem you have with the family in the row behind you!

For God to deny the piety of the people, and to reject it more so seems a hard word to address a people who thought they were doing the right thing.  Look at Isaiah 58:1-3 where God says of these people: they come to the temple every day and seem delighted to hear my words….“We have fasted before you” they say, “we have done so much penance”. You would never know that they are a nation that has abandoned its God. Harsh: yet God’s response is very simple, turn your thoughts away from yourselves and how religious you think you are and start acting like the people of the God who loves. The God who so loved the world as we read in John 3:16 directs us to find the needs in our cities and to meet those needs from our God-given resources. Feed the hungry, clothe the poor, heal the sick, include the lonely, encourage the downtrodden. Stop gossiping and lying but use your words to praise; this is not Rocket Surgery. Think of others with the same compassion by which you cry out to me, says The LORD, and then I will respond.

So that is the message of Lent.  It’s not just about laying off the coffee for six weeks and doubling your intake of fish; it’s about seeking out the lonely person you are aware of and taking her to Mokepilly for coffee. Or inviting her into your own kitchen for a chipped mug of International Dust and a good old natter.

But there is another side to Lent, a personal side, and God desires this for us too. In Psalm 25:1-10 we read a profound expression of extreme trust, kind of like what a man whose needs were met by the God of Jesus Christ, through the action of his local church, might express in his worship. Yet if we read on through Psalm 25:11-22 we hear from a man struggling with the high standards of the discipleship-focussed life. Discipleship is inspiring and impossible, glorious and grinding. And in Mark 1:9-15 we read the story of the commencement of Jesus’ ministry, and especially his message to repent and believe in the gospel (Mark 1:15b, English Standard Version).  Jesus is very clear, the very first thing he says in the very first account of the gospel written in history is that “the time is now”. Now, not later, now is when you must change the way you think about life, and begin to trust completely and with the total annihilation of all other sources of rescue, that all that God is, is enough. God, and only God, but all of God, is what you require to live an abundant life as one person within the global and eternal priesthood of believers. You are not simply the fortunate hearer of a sacred password which will get you past St Peter’s keys and through the Pearly Gates in half a century’s time or whenever; no. You are an ambassador of truth, and a person who is called to live by trust through obedience to what you have heard through grace; that’s who you are. So, is that true of you, is that who you understand yourself to be? I am actually asking, and it is very important to me that I hear you answer; this is not a rhetorical question and I want to see hands. Are you a person committed to truth, someone who lives by trust through obedience to what you have heard through grace?  Okay, if not, because that is pretty lofty, are you committed to the path of becoming such a person as this?

Lent is all about discipleship, because Christianity is all about discipleship, because Jesus was all about discipleship.  I want to ask whether you are all about discipleship: are you ready to repent and believe in the gospel today? Maybe you think you already believe, but do you only mean by that that you once prayed the right words of that single, sacred and correct password for Heaven, and your discipleship is evidenced primarily in proficiency in memory verse recall? That is not Christian belief; that is Gnostic superstition. Don’t you see that there is another side to discipleship, another side to Lent, a personal side where God desires so much depth for you? Far removed from six weeks of self-imposed caffeine detox, Jesus summons us to lay aside what has become dry and rote and come to know God afresh. Begin to pray and read your Bible if you don’t already do so; and if you do already do so, ask whether it really is nourishing you or whether it has become a duty. I encourage you to find a Lenten study book or group, or just spend the next month and a half reading the Gospel of Mark, taking time to stop and think if something strikes you.  Think of the hardships of Paul we read about in 2 Corinthians 6 this morning.  Do you have the faith that would sustain you in those trials?

My “habitus”, my specific devotional practice for Lent over more than a decade, has been daily use of a book of prayers which comes annually from Barnabas Fund. Every day for the forty days of Lent I will read a reflection and a prayer for a different nation in which Christians are being persecuted for their faith. I hope that alongside my regular Bible reading and prayer this booklet will allow me to spend time thinking with God about the themes of Lent and the ways in which I as a Christian can be of use to the world because of my faith. I am blessed to have time to do this and I think that even if I didn’t have time I’d make time.

I wonder if you would also set aside some time in the next thirty-six days, and six Sundays, to seek God.  If you do, please let me know so that I can pray for you as you go.

I’ll even take you to Liv’Indi: the coffee is on me.

Amen.