Reflections on Lent

This is an interesting time of the year. We are approaching the first day of spring and so winter is coming to an end. In fact today in our little mountain valley the temperature is a wonderful 70 degrees. The birds are out enjoying the warmth, and even a little humming bird came looking for our feeder.

We are also in that special time of the year called Lent. Our brothers and sisters in Liturgical churches are preparing themselves through various spiritual disciplines to celebrate Easter. Those of us who don’t follow the Church Liturgical Calendar are still preparing for our Easter Celebrations. It is a time to remember the new life that comes with spring and the New Eternal Life that came with the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. I have been preaching in our local Methodist church the last few weeks and enjoying the discipline of preaching on the great gospel texts of Lent.

They are reminders to all of us of the importance of an examined Christian life. This week the Gospel lesson is that favorite of most people, John 3:16, actually the complete text for preaching is John 3:14-21. This passage with the great gospel kernel at the center calls us to bow before the Cross and examine our lives and commitment to our Lord and Savior.

I plan to remind the congregation that Lent is a time of reflection and self examination of our spiritual lives. As I prepare for Sunday, I am also reading Frederica Mathewes-Green’s little book The Illumined Heart. Her chapter on repentance struck a cord in my life this week and will probably have an influence on my sermon on Sunday.

She writes, “Repentance is the doorway to the spiritual life, the only way to begin. It is also the path itself, the only way to continue.” [pg 39]. She reminds us that Jesus’ preaching from the first to the last included a great call to his hearers to “Repent.” Repent is the transforming of our mind, a coming to understand our situation and a change from it. In the First Testament the Hebrew word for ‘repent’ means “to change the path we are on, to move from the wrong path to the right path so that we arrive at our destination of being in God’s presence.” Often in preaching I reminded the congregation that repentance was a radical change of direction, a total 180 degrees, from walking north to walking south. That is the key to our new life in Christ, isn’t?

We need to acknowledge that our life is not taking us any closer to God. Of course this is very true when we first believe in Christ as our Lord and Savior. We acknowledge in the words of that great hymn, Amazing Grace:

“That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, hut now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.”

That is how we begin. We should celebrate that first turn to Jesus, that first act of Repentance. In fact Mathewes-Green writes, “The starting point for the early church was this awareness of the abyss of sin inside each person, the murky depths of which only the top few inches are visible. God, who is all clarity and light, wants to make us perfect as he is perfect, shot through with his radiance. The first step in our healing, then, is not being comforted. Is taking a hard look at the cleansing that needs to be done.” [pg 41.] That is how we begin.

However, if we stop our ‘repenting’ with that first act we miss out on the deeper areas of our walk with God. As Mathewes-Green says, “repentance is the path itself.” It is the continual act of a growing maturing Christian. We need to take a spiritual inventory of our life on a continuing basis. Lent affords one such time to spend quality time examining our life, asking in the words of David “Examine me, O LORD, and try me; Test my mind and my heart. For Thy lovingkindness is before my eyes, And I have walked in Thy truth” (Psalm 26:2,3) or “Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.” (Psalm 139:23,24)

As we take time to reflect on the state of our soul, we come to a deeper understanding of how great our sin and misery are and how great the mercy, lovingkindness and grace of God are.

Again, Mathewes-Green writes, “our first step then is to decide where we want to go. If we are resolved to move daily further into union with Christ, we must be ready to face our sins, the things that holds us back, and to let God begin to heal them. Repentance is the way back to the Father. It is both the door and the path, and there is no other.” [pg 45]

For the next few weeks I am going to take some extra time to let God examine my heart, soul, and life, to see where I need to practice Repentance and accepting the healing that flows from His presence.