Luke 11:1-10 "Teach Us to Pray

Today’s scripture begins with an interesting event. Jesus is out, away from his disciples, praying in a certain place, the Bible tells us. As we look through the gospels we see that this is a very common thing for Jesus. Jesus had a very real prayer life, one that we all probably would be jealous of. He is constantly going off, away from his followers, away from the crowds, so that he can pray. Whereas we tend to struggle in our lives to grow prayer in our lives, it is something that seems to be a natural part of Jesus and his life. This is true to the point where Jesus would actually sneak away from his followers so that he could go off to pray on his own. And here we see that his disciples, his followers, responded to this. They saw something special in Jesus and his prayer life and they wanted to know more about it. So, Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them to pray. They see that Jesus has something that they want and so they ask for it. And Jesus replies by introducing to them the Lord’s Prayer, he replies by teaching them how to pray, just as they asked.

I. Praying for Ourselves

The Lord’s Prayer has much to it, and I fear that we sometimes take it for granted, praying it each Sunday morning, speaking the words by rote, ignoring the meaning behind them. As the youth reminded us this morning, there is meaning behind the words that we speak, and we should be praying the prayer with the mind that it is not only being heard by God, but that he is answering the prayer that we pray.

But the Lord’s Prayer isn’t the only thing that Jesus had to say about prayer. He had more to tell his disciples, and there is more for us to hear as well. The thing that we often spend the most time in prayer about isn’t even found in the Lord’s Prayer; praying for others. This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t pray for others, it just isn’t what Jesus was teaching his disciples about when he taught them the Lord’s Prayer. You’ll discover that he has more to say about praying for others and requesting things farther down in the scripture that was read this morning.

But the Lord’s Prayer, in and of itself, is a prayer about our relationship with God. It begins with relationship, calling to God not in some formal or distant way but instead referring to him as Father. Our Wednesday Night Bible Study spent two weeks looking at the Lord’s Prayer and one thing that we discovered during this time is that the Greek word that is translated as Father isn’t nearly as formal a word as Father is today. When you say “Father”, there is usually some distance there, there is usually some separation. If you had a child come up to you and say, “Hello, father,” you’d probably wonder what was wrong, why they were being so very formal. No, the Greek word that is translated as Father in Jesus’ teaching is not a formal word for father, but a familial one. Growing up, I called my father, “Dad.” And this would actually be a better translation for the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer, “our Dad, which art in heaven.” Some of us use the word daddy, others use the word poppa, either of these would work as well. So the Lord’s Prayer is relational. It is saying that God is not distant from us. It is telling us to call out to him in family terms. And the Lord’s Prayer isn’t about asking for things. Instead it begins by praying that God’s name be hallowed, or glorified, or made holy. It continues by praying that God’s kingdom comes to this earth and that God’s will is done on this earth. And when you begin to think about what it is you are praying, you realize that those are things that we, God’s people are responsible for. If God’s will is going to be done on this earth, we are going to be the ones doing it. So, our prayer becomes an active prayer. It hopefully becomes something that we don’t only speak, but that we begin to live out in our lives. When we pray for God’s will to be done, we have to question whether we are going about doing God’s will. How can we ask for that to happen if we aren’t willing to do it ourselves?

Now, after affirming our family relationship with God and praying for his name to be hallowed, his kingdom to come and his will to be done, we finally get to a request. And the request is quite simple, “please meet our daily needs.” Again, not something that we often pray for. We pray for grand and great things, we don’t remember to ask God for the little things. We don’t remember that our very existence is in God’s hands. We think we can handle our daily needs so that all we have to ask God about are the big things in our life. Not so. God wants us to remember that he is the one who meets our daily needs, and we are to turn to him, and ask him to help us.

We then get to the difficult one; forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Matthew’s recording of this event tells us that Jesus, after teaching this prayer to his disciples spent a fair amount of time talking about how important it was that we forgive others if we want God to forgive us. This is a relational prayer and our relationship with God is not going to be what it can or should be as long as we are holding things against others. We won’t be able to receive God’s forgive-ness if we don’t offer that same forgiveness to those around us.

Jesus continues by telling his disciples to ask God to lead them not into temptation. Matthew’s take on this again adds something, “but deliver us from the evil one.” Again, we have a responsibility in this request that we ask of God. We ask him not to lead us into temptation. But we cannot allow ourselves to walk into temptation either. What are the things that tempt you? Learn to avoid them. Learn to stay away from tempting circumstances.

And when we pray for God to deliver us from evil, I again fear that we are hearing it wrong. We aren’t supposed to be asking God to deliver us from difficulty. We aren’t supposed to be asking God to deliver us from pain. We aren’t supposed to be asking God to deliver us from grief. We often lump these things together, thinking that we are asking God to give us smooth sailing ahead. We often think that if we are going through difficult things or living in difficult times, there is something wrong with us, or worse, something wrong with God. But Jesus doesn’t tell his disciples to pray for smooth sailing ahead. Jesus tells his disciples to ask to be delivered from evil. And what, in this case, is evil? It is that which will separate you from God. It is that which pulls you out of that dad-relationship with God that Jesus modeled in his own life. Jesus is telling us to pray that God can keep us on the straight and narrow. Jesus is telling us to ask God to keep us in right relationship with him.

This is the Lord’s Prayer as Jesus gives it to his disciples. Again, as I mentioned, in Matthew, Jesus goes on to talk with his disciples about the importance of forgiveness, both ours and the forgiveness of those around us.

II. Praying for Others

But here, in Luke, Jesus has another important message for us about prayer. And his message is this: be persistent. His message also refers specifically to praying for others. The Lord’s Prayer was all about praying for yourself and your relationship with God. This next section is about praying for those around you. Jesus tells a parable, he uses an example. A man has a friend and goes to him at midnight asking for three loaves of bread. These loaves are not for himself, rather they are for someone else. You see, a traveler has come a great distance and has come to his place to rest, and he doesn’t have anything to feed this traveler. Now the friend in bed, asleep, doesn’t want to help, he wants to be left alone. But Jesus says that because of the boldness of the man doing the asking, because of his persistence, the man asleep will get up and give what is needed.

Jesus is telling us to be persistent. He is telling us that we can come to God with the needs of those around us and leave those needs before God. Jesus tells us these awesome words, “ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”

So when praying for those around you, be bold. When lifting the needs of others before God, speak with authority and conviction. Be ready to ask. Seek out the Lord and find him and his will. Knock so that the door might be opened for you. This is the God we follow. This is our dad in heaven. He will hear our prayers and answer us, but we need to be willing to be bold. We need to be ready to speak our minds before him. And we need to make sure that our relationship with him and our relationship with those around us are on the right track. Our prayers should begin with a focus not on ourselves but rather on him and we should remember the glory of putting him first. We need to remember that what we speak when we pray are not only words, but that we should be willing to act them out. I remember hearing of a pastor who would pray at each service for God to reach his hands out to the lost, to those who needed him. It was just a part of the prayer that he would regularly say, often without thinking about it, somewhat like the phrase I use every Sunday about making us a light to the people around us, something that just slipped off the tongue. But then, one day, this pastor heard God respond to him, saying, “you are my hands.” This pastor realized that these weren’t just words that he was to say. He needed to live them out. He continued to pray that prayer, but now with new meaning and with new understanding about his own responsibility. Lord, reach your hands out to the lost. Lord, reach us out to the lost.

Let us take our own prayers that seriously. Let us give ourselves to God and his mission with such abandon. Let us learn to be bold in our prayer, especially prayer for those around us in need. And let us learn to call out to God not in some formal way, not by rote memory, but remembering that he wants relationship with each of us. Amen.

John 2:13-22 "Turning Tables"

When you think of Jesus, what picture comes to your mind? Perhaps it is the famous Warner Sallman face of Jesus that shows his grace so well. At my college, there was a picture that we all referred to as Surfer Jesus, as his hair seemed to be bleached fairly blond and he had a big smile on his face as he looked down on you with his arms open showing how cool he was. My grandmother had a picture of Jesus with the crown of thorns on his head in absolute pain on her wall next to her crucifix; she was a good Catholic. I also remember that when I was in the South Pacific when I was ten, I was shocked that some of the art portrayed Jesus with much darker skin than I was used to.

In the Saint John’s Bible, a new illuminated Bible that is being written by hand with original art, Jesus sometimes shows up without a face at all, a reminder that we should not put a face on Jesus but rather remember that he is God himself, too glorious for us to imagine.

Whatever picture of Jesus comes to your mind, my guess is that you probably see him either in some serene pose, perhaps as a shepherd caring for his flock or as a guide pointing the way for a man at the wheel of a ship, or in a moment of suffering such as how he was when he faced the cross.

I could be wrong, but I seriously doubt that your image of Jesus has him with a whip in one of his hands as he chases animals and people out of the temple, as he overturns tables where people are selling animals and converting money.

And yet, this is the way Jesus is portrayed in today’s scripture. He is a man on a mission, and he will not stand for his Father’s temple to be desecrated. He almost seems out of control. He perhaps seems a little fierce. Here we glimpse a side of Jesus we don’t see in other parts of the gospels. Here we see him acting in an almost violent way. Here we see him doing what needs to be done. Here we see him cleansing the temple. Perhaps we don’t want to know this Jesus after all. He’s a bit scary here, not necessarily someone that seems very safe. And yet we are seeing the true Jesus here, just as in other parts of the Bible. And we can learn much from him.

I. Jesus angry?

In high school and college, my friends and I would often turn to the story of Jesus casting the money changers out of the temple to discuss the issue of whether there could be such thing as righteous anger. Here is a story in the Bible where we seem to see Jesus lose control. Here is a story where Jesus becomes violent, and it is often associated with the idea of Jesus becoming angry because the temple, the house of the Lord, is being misused by God’s people. We used this scripture to explain that there is definitely such a thing as righteous anger and therefore we justified our own anger at things that we saw that were wrong with the world. We would say to each other that it is okay to get angry, after all didn’t Jesus?

But in focusing on this, Jesus’ anger, I think my friends and I missed the point about what Jesus was doing in the temple. When we look at this closer, we discover that Jesus wasn’t acting just out of a moment of anger. Instead, he was cleansing the temple. Instead, he was making it clean and pure. Instead, he was casting sin out of God’s house… something he is able to do for each of us as well.

This is not to say that anger cannot at times be godly. We see, particularly through the Old Testament, that God himself acts out of anger. But God’s anger is not one where he loses control and we can never use God’s righteous anger as an excuse for how we act out our own anger.

It is rare that something that happened in Jesus’ life and ministry gets reported in all four of the gospels. There are a few things that show up in all four, like the crucifixion and the resurrection or Jesus’ baptism. But many of the things that are important parts of Jesus’ ministry only show up in a couple of the gospels. One example of this is the Last Supper, which doesn’t show up in the gospel of John, instead we are treated to the foot washing. And yet, Jesus cleansing the temple is one of the acts of Jesus that shows up in all four gospels, well sort of…

Matthew, Mark and Luke talk about Jesus entering Jerusalem a week before he is crucified and making his way to the Temple where he chases the money collectors out of the Temple. This is something that happens in Jesus’ last week on this earth. It is something that directly leads to his own crucifixion as the teachers of the law and the high priests realize that Jesus is not to be controlled. Now the Gospel of John gives us a different sequence of events. In the Gospel of John, the temple is cleansed at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. It happens when Jesus visits Jerusalem three years before his death. And it is one of the early things that we see Jesus do to show his authority. Now there are two possibilities here, one is that John is miss-remembering the sequence of events from Jesus’ life and writes about this happening much earlier in Jesus’ ministry than it really happened. I don’t tend to like that option. Out of all the gospel writers, John is the one who knew Jesus the best. He was the one who was one of the twelve who traveled with Jesus in his ministry. He was the one who was with Jesus from the beginning. Yes, it is believed that John’s own disciples, his own followers are the ones responsible for writing down the Gospel of John, but it is also believed that they were writing down the story as John had told it to them many times. No, there is another option that is much more probable. The other option is that Jesus cleansed out the temple twice in his ministry: once at the beginning and again at the end. This makes much more sense to me, it seems much more probable. But this also takes away a bit of the idea of Jesus cleansing out the temple solely from anger.

If Jesus cleansed the temple twice in his ministry, perhaps he wasn’t out of control as he did it. Instead, perhaps he was making a point to his disciples and to those who were in charge of the temple. And perhaps the point was very important, otherwise he wouldn’t have had to make it twice.

II. The Temple of the Lord

In today’s scripture Jesus specifically identifies his own body in connection with the temple. The disciples ask him by what authority he cleanses out the temple. They ask him how they can know that he is speaking for God. And he responds with a cryptic answer. He tells them that if the temple is destroyed, he will raise it again in three days. And then our narrator, John, steps in and explains what in the world it is that Jesus means with this cryptic saying. Our narrator tells us that Jesus isn’t really talking about the temple at all, rather he is talking about his own body. And he is talking about the fact that people will destroy his body and he will raise it again in three days. Jesus is predicting his own death and resurrection, something that will happen three years from this point in his ministry. He knew from the beginning what it was that he faced. Jesus is talking about the power of Easter.

But he is also hinting that what he does in the temple is not just about the temple. There is a deeper meaning to what Jesus does as he casts the moneychangers and the sheep and cattle out of the temple. They have taken God’s house and turned it into a market. They have taken a holy place and found a way to use it to their own ends.

Now there are other scriptures that I think we need to look at to better help us understand what Jesus is doing here. They are found in Paul’s writings. Two of these scriptures are found in 1 Corinthians. The first I want to look at is 1 Corinthians 6:19, 20. “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.”

Our bodies are temples of God. And we are to honor God with our bodies. Does Jesus need to cleanse out our temples? Does he need to come in and cast out our sinfulness so that our bodies are holy again? Does he need to take cords and make them into a whip so that he can push our sin out of our lives?

There is another scripture that also talks about the temple in interesting language, this is a couple chapters earlier in 1 Corinthians, chapter 3:16,17 “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.”

This also is powerful and worth noting. Not only are our bodies temples to God, but we together as the people of Christ are also a temple. When you gather together a group of Christians, a holy thing is happening. When you gather together a group of Christ’s followers, a sacred space is created.

III. Cleansing

And yet we do not honor our gathering together as Christ’s followers as something that is sacred. We treat it so commonly, so trivially. We even allow things into our midst that have no place being in the house of the Lord. This is where we turn to God and ask him to cleanse us of our sin. This is where we ask him to come in and overturn our tables, not out of anger but rather to make our lives and our community into what he has created us to be. Perhaps the fierce Jesus is needed. Perhaps Jesus needs to come in with a whip to cleanse us out.

Jesus cleansed the temple. He took God’s house and made it right. He did it physically twice in his ministry, then he did it again on the cross. You see, on the cross he cleansed this world of its sin. Unfortunately, this world doesn’t always want to be clean.

We all have sins that separate us from the relationship that God wants with us. We all have things in our lives that keep us from the path that God has for us. The thing is that we are used to them. We don’t even realize they are there anymore. We don’t even see them as sin. They are just a part of our world. Like the Temple, we have tables of sin that have wandered into our lives and we don’t even realize that they shouldn’t be there. And once the sin takes hold it grows. I’m sure the tables in the temple started out small, but then they grew and grew and soon you had sheep and cattle and birds in a part of the temple where people were supposed to be worshipping. I’m sure worship wasn’t easy while you’re being distracted by cattle. This is the way it is with sin in our lives as well. We allow it to build up. It claims its place and grows and will not let go of us. And this keeps our relationships with God weak and superficial. The other stuff the stuff of this world takes roost in our own temples and keeps us from the one relationship that is really important. And the fact is that we are unable to get rid of these sins and distractions on our own. We barely notice them, and we are just not strong enough to remove them. I know people who try to do it themselves, and often they fail miserably.

But the good news is that we don’t need to do it on our own. For Jesus, fierce Jesus, with his whip made from cords, is there to cast out those things that need to be caste out. Let Jesus in your temple. Allow him to work in your life and free you from the things of this world that keep you from God. Let him cleanse you. Let him redirect you towards God.

I want to do something a little different today. I want to close with a prayer. And I want to invite you to pray along with me silently as we ask Jesus to cleanse us. Let us ask him to clear out our hearts so that our relationship with him can grow. Please pray with me:

Father, I have sin in my life which I am not strong enough to deal with. I try and I try to make myself a better Christian, a better person, and I continue to fail. Help me to give this up. Help me to turn my sins over to you. Come into my life with your whip and cleanse me out. Take those parts of my life that take me away from you and get rid of them. Fill me with your Spirit. Lord, you have the power to forgive and you have the power to change me. I ask that you do that very thing this morning; for me and for each person here, Amen.

Mark 8:31-38 "Get Behind Me"

This coming Friday is Saint Patrick’s Day. In celebration of this, city workers in Chicago spent the morning pouring drums of green dye into the Chicago River yesterday so that for the day the river would be green. There were also parades around the country in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day. Now, normally, when we think of St. Patrick’s Day, we think of it as a celebration of the Irish. We think of shamrocks and leprechauns and pots of gold. But if you visited Ireland and talked about St. Patrick’s Day, you would discover that it is not a civil holiday but rather a religious one. Moreover, it is something really exciting that they are celebrating. They are celebrating the introduction of Christianity to their land. Patrick was a missionary to Ireland who brought the gospel in the fifth century, and in his lifetime most of Ireland was converted from their pagan ways to Christianity. And on St. Patrick’s Day the Irish remember that once they did not know God but now they do, and this is something worth celebrating. Wouldn’t it be great if we had a similar holiday, or even as individuals celebrated our own coming to Jesus in such a way?

But Patrick was an interesting man. He wrote an autobiography towards the end of his life, telling of his life and the journey he took. He grew up in Britain and he had a grandfather who was a priest and who encouraged him toward God, but in his youth he was much more interested in having fun with his friends and in drinking. He even hints at some great sin that he committed in his youth, though he never tells exactly what it is. Theories range from adultery to murder of a servant, but the fact is that we just don’t know. Then tragedy struck him as his village was attacked by Irish marauders and he was carried off to Ireland as a slave. It was during his time in Ireland, working as a shepherd for his master, that he remembered the faith that his grandfather had taught him and he became serious about Jesus. He then escaped back to his home, running away from the land of his slavery. Patrick became a priest and then felt the call back to Ireland to share the gospel with those who had been responsible for his slavery. He journeyed back to Ireland and began to spread the gospel in a way that reached many and changed the island completely.

Patrick was a fully human person, with sin and trouble abounding. Yet he chose to deny himself and take up his cross and follow Jesus, back to the land of his own captivity. And here we are, 1500 years later, celebrating this man’s life by pouring green dye into the Chicago River.

Let us open in prayer.

I. Fully God / Fully Man

I’m going to begin today’s message by talking about a theological concept. It is worth talking about because it helps us to better understand how to read today’s scripture and understand what is going on with Jesus. It also helps us to allow ourselves to follow the example that Jesus puts before us.

This theological concept is the dual nature of Christ. You see, we believe some pretty amazing and strange things about this man who lived 2000 years ago in the land of Israel named Jesus. We believe that he was able to do miracles… pretty amazing ones: He calmed a storm while he was out on a lake. He walked on water. He caste out demons and healed the sick. He rose from the dead. But we believe that Jesus was more than just a miraclemaker. We believe that he spoke with authority the truth of God. We go as far as to say that Jesus was God, that he was divine. We, as Christians, believe in the Trinity: the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and we believe that Jesus is the God the Son. But again, there is more to our belief. We don’t believe that God came down and pretended to be human and went through a number of motions on his way to the cross. No, what we believe is that God came down and clothed himself in humanity. What we believe is that Jesus was fully God, but also fully human: the dual nature of Christ. It’s beyond our comprehension, but nothing is too great for God. So God became man and dwelt among us.

What does this mean to us today? It means that Jesus wasn’t just going through the motions. It means that when Jesus was in the desert fasting he actually found himself growing hungry. It means that when Satan tempted Jesus in the desert, the temptations were real. It means that the journey to the cross was a difficult one for Jesus, one that he even feared. We see this fear in his time in the garden of Gethsemane as he prayed for God to take the burden from him. Jesus didn’t want to go through with what was ahead of him. He knew how painful and difficult it would be. But even so, he did follow through with it. Even so, he did sacrifice his own life for each of us.

And so, this helps us read the gospels in a different light. It helps us to realize that we aren’t just watching Jesus play act out examples for us about how to live the Christian life. Instead, we see a fully human Jesus face a difficult time ahead of him and remain faithful to his mission from his Father. It makes Jesus’ sacrifice all the more powerful to us that it was a hard sacrifice for him to make. And it also helps us understand a bit better the difficult passage that we read this morning where Jesus refers to one of his disciples, Peter, as Satan.

II. Peter / Satan

I find it absolutely amazing that Jesus refers to Peter, the rock on whom he will build his church, as Satan. I find this harsh and not in keeping with everything else we see from Jesus. Peter doesn’t understand what Jesus is about. Peter doesn’t understand the path that Jesus will be facing. Peter thinks that Jesus will be conquering Rome, not dying on a cross. How can Jesus expect any more from him, and how can Jesus treat him so harshly for his lack of knowledge. What is absolutely amazing about this story is that it is caught in the middle of a point where we get to see Jesus in all his divinity. It is in a part of scripture where we see that Jesus is God. If you look at what happens right before this, Peter has just proclaimed that Jesus is the Messiah, the Savior. Other gospels tell us that this is the point where Jesus tells Peter that he and his faith are the rock on which the church will be built. And then, immediately following this, Jesus heads up a mountain with Peter, James and John and is seen in all his majesty as he talks to Moses and Elijah.

If Jesus is fully God and just play-acting a drama as he heads to the cross, there is no reason for him to rebuke Peter as harshly as he does. But if he is also fully human, and dealing with his own doubts and fears about what it is that he has to face, he will rebuke Peter because Peter’s words hold temptation for him. Jesus, when he rebukes Peter, is resisting temptation.

When Peter tells Jesus that he doesn’t need to die on the cross, this is not something that Jesus needs to hear. It is not something that Jesus is going to listen to. So Jesus tells Peter to get behind him, he refers to him as Satan, which is a name for the devil but also means “tempter”. Jesus does not want to be tempted away from the path that God has put before him.

And then, after resisting this temptation, Jesus calls the crowd around him and gives them a message… one that he has been working through himself. He tells them not to live their lives in way that is trying to save their lives. He tells them not to hold on so closely to this life that they will miss God’s path for them. He tells them that “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.”

III. Following Jesus

Following Jesus means living the life that Jesus lived. It means making the sacrifices that Jesus made. It means following the path that Jesus followed. When we accept that Jesus was fully God and fully human we realize that Jesus knew the path he had to take, and we realize that even so, this path was difficult for him. So, when we follow the path of discipleship, we can know that as we face trial and temptation, we are in good company. Even Jesus had doubts. Even Jesus was tempted away from following God. But we also know that Jesus, being fully human, was able to put those temptations behind him, even when they came from the mouth of his most trusted disciple. Jesus knew the ways of God and stayed true to them.

Jesus gives us a great example to follow. But there are other examples of people who followed God’s way instead of giving in to temptation. I think of Patrick those many years ago, having to decide whether he should return to Ireland, which he had escaped from as a slave. His life was forfeit to the people of Ireland. He was an escaped slave. He was very probably going back to his doom. We know that his master was well known and would find out about him if he came to Ireland. And yet, he felt that God was calling him to Ireland to teach the people of Ireland about Jesus. He had to make a choice. Was he going to follow the path that God had set for him or was he going to let his fears tempt him to remain at home in comfort. He followed God’s path and great things happened.

What tempts you to stray from God’s path? What keeps you from following God with your whole heart? Is it fear of the unknown? Is it being uncomfortable with change? Is it the draw of comfort? Is it the council of friends who are not seeking God’s will in their lives?

You can respond to these temptations as Jesus did, “Get behind me, tempter. Get behind me, Satan! I choose to follow where God will lead me. I choose to give my life to God here and now, on this earth so that he will save it. I choose not to be ashamed of Jesus or his words, so that he might not be ashamed of me.”

Jesus gives us an example of what it means to resist temptation. Jesus gives us an example of what it means to remain faithful to God. And he calls for us to live and follow that example. Let us do that very thing. Amen.

Mark 1:9-15 "Forty Days"

Today I would like to talk about something we don’t often talk much about in Evangelical churches: Lent. And to begin talking about it, I am going to read to you a quick thought on lent from someone who does not understand what lent is about. It reads as follows: “[Lent] is silly. Why give up something? Jesus wouldn't give anything up. He would want you to enjoy everything you do and have each and every day. Or did I misread the Bible?”

Unfortunately, this is a regular misconception about both lent and about Jesus. Today, in America, we expect our faith to be easy. We don’t feel that we need to work at what we believe. We think that if something is hard for us, Jesus won’t really ask it of us. After all, Jesus himself told us that his yoke was easy and his burden was light.

But then we look at Jesus himself. He began his ministry by spending forty days in the desert fasting. And his message for the people of God was to repent, to turn from their evil ways, for the kingdom of God is near. Jesus lived a life where his whims weren’t answered and he went to the cross, sacrificing himself for his people.

Jesus lived a life of sacrifice. Though he lived a life full of joy, he gave up much for us, his people. So the idea that Jesus would not want us to give anything up for him is plain and simply wrong. Jesus came back from his forty days in the desert with a message that told us that he wanted us to give up something in particular, and not just for forty days… he wanted us to repent, he wanted us to give up our sin.

I. Wilderness Time

Today’s scripture tells us that immediately after Jesus was baptized, the Spirit sent him out into the desert. Not having been to Israel, many of us automatically think that the desert must have been like the Sahara, large dunes of sand that stretched as far as the eye can see. In truth, the word desert is misleading, for it wasn’t the desert that Jesus went off into. Rather it was the wilderness.

When we look at people in the Bible who are used by God, they all spend time in the wilderness. They all spend time away from civilization, out in the wilderness, and through this time in the wilderness they are tested and their faith grows. Moses spent forty years in the wilderness as a shepherd before God called him in the burning bush and brought him back to Egypt to lead God’s people to freedom. Elijah spent time in the wilderness hiding from his enemies after he called down fire from heaven. Angels attended him and met his needs as he hid in the wilderness. David was on the run from King Saul and fled to the wilderness, hiding in caves. The people of Israel spent forty years in the wilderness before they could enter the Promised Land. Even Paul, after his conversion on the road to Damascus, spent time in the wilderness studying and learning about this Jesus who he now served.

And, here we have Jesus, going to the wilderness where he is tempted by Satan, where he is tried as he is surrounded by wild animals, and where angels come to care for him. The angels come to care for Jesus in the wilderness, because it is desolate enough that a person cannot care for themselves out in the wilderness. And for Jesus, this wilderness is not something that he is forced into, it is something that he chooses, because the Spirit is leading him there. Yet it is only after his forty days in the wilderness that Jesus comes and begins to proclaim his message. It is after his forty days in the wilderness that Jesus truly begins his ministry.

So Jesus is sent to the wilderness and through this time of fasting and temptation he is prepared for his three-year ministry and his journey toward the cross. Jesus spends forty days preparing himself for what is to come. He spends forty days putting himself in a difficult position so that he will better be prepared for what he has yet to face.

It is no coincidence that the season of Lent is the forty days before Easter. Actually, if you count it up, you’ll notice that it is a few more than forty days. That is because we don’t count the Sundays of lent as a part of the season. On each and every Sunday we remember Christ’s resurrection, and therefore they are breaks from the season of lent. Now Easter is the most exciting and important thing we celebrate as Christians. It is at Easter that we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord. It is at Easter that we remember that Jesus conquered death and sin. But the forty days before Easter have been remembered by the church as a time to discipline ourselves and focus on our need for what Christ has done for us. The forty days before Easter are our time to spend in the wilderness. Different churches and different Christians have chosen to spend this time in the wilderness in different ways. For some it means eating no meat on Fridays during lent. For others it means giving something up. For some it means having an extra worship service during the week. For others, it is all about wearing ashes on your forehead for a day. And sometimes we seem to trivialize the forty days of wilderness by making lent all about giving up chocolate. In truth it’s about much more than that.

II. Lent

I need to tell you that the hardest part of Lent for me has always been that it happens in spring. Having grown up in Washington, where we could go for months without ever seeing the sun through the winter, the first days of sunshine in the springtime were important. The melancholy that the lack of sun had laid in our hearts evaporated as we began to see blue sky again. It can be much the same here in Iowa, when, after a particularly cold winter, it begins to heat up again. Yet it never seemed to fail that when the sun began to show itself again, and we all found our spirits rising in an exciting way due to the change in the weather, Ash Wednesday would come around and we would be told that we were supposed to give something up and spend our worship time focused on how horrible we all are. I always fought against that. My thought was that I had just gotten over giving something up for at least forty days… the sun. And now it’s back and I’m going to enjoy it to its fullest. The only wilderness I wanted to spend time in as the first signs of spring showed themselves was the wilderness of God’s creation.

Yet there is something to be said for taking time to be in wilderness. There is something to be said for choosing not to put your energy into meeting each and every whim that comes across your thoughts.

Again, I go back to the example of Jesus. We are told about the temptations put before him by Satan. He was tempted to change a stone into bread, so that his hunger could be satisfied. He was tempted to throw himself off the temple so that angels could come to his rescue. He was tempted to bow before Satan so that he could become ruler of the world without having to face the cross. Each of the temptations attacked his selfishness. Each of the temptations was about him taking care of his problems himself in his own way. He was tempted to make his own food so he didn’t need to rely on anyone else to provide for him. He was tempted to test God and make a big display of his power as angels saved him from death in front of crowds of the faithful, insuring his place as Messiah in the hearts and minds of those who witnessed this miracle. He was tempted to avoid the pain of the cross altogether as he bowed to Satan, allowing the ends to justify the means.

But in the face of these temptations Jesus chose to remain faithful. In the face of these temptations Jesus chose to do what was right. And then he returned with a message calling for all people to repent and believe. He could call for us to repent because he faced the same temptations we have faced. Yet he was able to remain faithful to God. And now he offers the opportunity for us to live in that same relationship with God that he has, to call out to God as our Abba, our dad, and all we must do is repent and believe the good news.

III. Celebrating Lent

So, how are you going to spend this season of lent? Is lent just a silly concept put together by some silly people in the Catholic Church that misses the point of being joyful about our faith? Sometimes it comes across that way. Sometimes it seems that lent is all about taking all the fun out of being a Christian. But lent can be something much greater, something much more. I would go as far as to say that if lent is only something that takes the joy and fun out of being a Christian, you are probably celebrating it the wrong way.

Lent can be an opportunity for us to spend time in the wilderness as Jesus did, as so many men and women of God throughout scripture did. It can be a time where we get our priorities straight. It can be a time where we learn to rely on God and not ourselves, a time where we turn over our sins and our pride, our selfishness to God and allow him to work a special way in our lives.

Lent is not something to be dreaded, something to be mocked. It is not at all about being depressed or overly hard on ourselves. It is something that we can celebrate. As we enter the wilderness we will grow to know God better, we will find new ways to draw closer to him, we will find his call on our lives to grow clearer and more understandable. So, this spring, let us celebrate the season of lent together.

What are you giving up for lent? Perhaps you can follow Jesus call in Mark 1:15. Perhaps you can give up your sin. Amen.