February 23, 2023

“Risen Christ” by Michelangelo (1519-1521. In the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome)

A year ago, I wrote how until I came to St. Augustine’s, I had grown up and attended churches that didn’t really do Lent. (Or Advent for that matter.) So, I never really thought much about Lent. One day it was March or April, and then WHAM! Good Friday and Easter. Then a long silence with weekly Sunday services, and then WHAM! Merry Christmas! (But don’t be too joyful.). It was therefore with a little trepidation that in Lent 2022, I decided to seriously give something up for six weeks: social media. And I’m happy to say, I stuck it out. After a couple of weeks, it was really freeing to be honest. But once Lent and Easter were over, I decided to check out Facebook a bit. Then Instagram. And before I realised it, time suckage had struck again.

My first thought in all this was maybe the Reformed churches I grew up in weren’t completely wrong not fasting during Lent. What good does it do to give up something for six weeks, only then to find it can come back twice as tempting when we delve back into it? We may as well just not give up anything and depend upon grace alone by faith. Well, that didn’t make much sense to me either. Nor did I learn that in the churches of my youth. We cannot wallow in our temptations as it goes contrary to Paul’s warning in Romans 6 regarding sinning and taking grace for granted. What then was I to make of this?

In the passages for today we see a clear juxtaposition between righteousness and lawlessness in writings that span over a thousand years. From Moses making his final call that Israel choose life over death and live obediently to God, to David clearly describing the difference between a blessed person versus those he terms chaff, to Paul writing to Titus in the 1^st Century A.D., we see that the Word remains constant. God does not bend to the culture of the day. There is a clear distinction between a life lived for Christ and one lived opposed to him. But how does this figure into my understanding of Lent?

The answer for that lies in Luke’s description of one of Peter’s greatest acts of faith to that point in his life. While some tell Jesus what they are hearing from the masses about who he is, Peter speaks from the heart and tells Jesus he is, “The Christ of God!” What a moment! Wouldn’t we all want to be Peter proclaiming that face-to-face with Christ? What a victory! But then…

This occurs not long before the Biblical account of the Transfiguration where Jesus, taking Peter, James, John with him, meets with Moses and Elijah on the mountain to discuss his coming sacrifice. As Rev. Gillian indicated this past Sunday, Peter, impetuous and excited as always, speaks up wanting to get busy and build shelters before God interrupts and silences him. According to Matthew 16, not long after his beautiful confession of Christ’s divinity, Peter tries to act all-knowing, rebuking Jesus about his death. How does Jesus respond? “Get behind me Satan! You are a hinderance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (verse 16). Harsh! What a monumental fall from confession to rebuke, first from the Father and then the Son.

To me, here is where fasting and Lent come in. We give up things that are special to us. Things we enjoy, or things that are harming us. For six weeks we work hard at this and achieve victory, joyfully singing on Easter Sunday morning, “Christ the Lord is risen today! Alleluia!” But then Easter passes. Lent is over. And we don’t have to fast. We turn again to what we gave up, hoping that this time we have mastered it, only again to be frustrated by it. Like Peter, we go from spiritual high and shattering fall, knowing we have failed God, ourselves, and others. Once again, we get on our knees, confess our weakness, and beg God his forgiveness.

Sometimes our victories, even our spiritual ones, can pull us further from God than our failures because of overconfidence in ourselves. It is in this frustrating, seemingly never-ending cycle of sin-confession-repentance that we embrace our constant dependence upon Christ and his defeat of sin and death. C.S. Lewis once wrote, “Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.” (Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, 2006). It is in this faith, this knowledge and understanding, that we as Christians constantly stand. No wonder fasting and Lent end on Easter with an empty tomb. Our victory does not depend upon our own efforts. Fasting and Lent point us to our risen Saviour Jesus Christ upon who we depend every moment of our lives until he calls us home to hear the words, “Well done, my good and faithful servant!” (Matt. 25:21). Christ is risen indeed. Hallelujah!  

 

- Keith Griffioen

 

  Phil Wickham – Christ is Risen