The Christian life is filled with choices. Every day we ask ourselves to what will we say yes and to what will we say no. The journey we undertake during the season of Lent is meant to help us examine the choices that we make in everyday life. The impact that these choices have on our lives as Christians determines our readiness for meeting the resurrected Christ as we draw near to the day of Easter. We take our cue about preparing to meet our risen Lord from God, our Creator.
In Genesis, we find God sharing the promise and sign of the covenant with Noah. The earth will never be destroyed again by the waters of a flood. The bow in the sky is a sign. God will remember the covenant that has been made.
This is not the only reading we will have regarding covenant during this Lenten season. All but one of the Old Testament readings during this season will focus on covenant. Why? Because in the act of covenant, we know that God is giving of the divine self. The giving of the covenant is God's doing-a gift to God's created people. It is the first step in preparation for what the future will hold in the relationship between the Creator and the created.
God then sets the bow-a symbol of war-in the sky as a sign of disarmament, a sign of peace. With this sign, God is saying that we can trust the covenant that is being made. The elements of war are being laid down and God will never again destroy creation.
With the covenant given to Noah, God says yes to all of us. God's yes to us is all that God can possibly say. We are part of God's beloved, God's creation. God is love. It is consistent with God's character to speak a resounding yes to the object of His love. What else would our God say?
In Mark's gospel, we find Jesus preparing for His ministry. John has prepared the way. Jesus is baptized. The voice of God emerges from the cloud and the Spirit anoints Jesus for His divine calling. But, that is not all that is involved in preparing Jesus for His life on earth, for as soon as His baptism is complete Jesus is driven out into the wilderness by the very same Spirit that descended like a dove. Jesus is forced out, as Fred Craddock says, "still wet from the Jordan." It happens immediately-as everything does in Mark.
There seems to lie herein a connection between baptism and temptation. Jesus is not completely ready to proclaim the gospel until He has been tested. Make no mistake about it, Jesus is truly tempted here. He suffers and hungers. He needs to make a choice. He is fully human after all. The difference is, that Jesus is also fully divine. He is able to resist temptation. When His ordeal in the wilderness is over, Jesus has said no to temptation and said a resounding yes to His Father in Heaven. He has been prepared, not only for preaching and teaching, healing and performing miracles, but also for the way of the cross. Jesus is now ready to fulfill His calling-proclaiming the Kingdom of God to all who can hear.
Jesus' life and ministry is the fulfilling of God's covenant, God's yes, to us. God's promise came to pass with the birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ. During Lent, we, too, can fulfill the covenant that we have made. The preparation that we make on the journey to Easter will make us ready, as Jesus was, for the ministry God has called us to and for taking up our cross.
The Lenten season provides us with an opportunity to say yes back to the God who has given us the divine yes through covenant and Christ. Many Christians across the globe say yes to their Creator by preparing for Easter through the practice of spiritual disciplines. They are defined as "religious practices that are expressions of devotion to God." These disciplines, according to spiritual growth and development experts like Richard Foster can be broken down into three large categories: inward, outward and corporate.
The corporate disciplines are what we do when we gather together freely in this sacred space. We worship, we confess, we celebrate, we guide. The outward disciplines are the physical ways that we try to express our love for and devotion to God-submission, solitude, simplicity and service.
But, during the season of Lent, the emphasis is usually upon the inward disciplines, the things inside of us that will transform our hearts and turn our energies and focus toward God. There are four main categories of inward spiritual discipline practiced by Christians during Lent. They are prayer, meditation, study and fasting.
Prayer is the act of communicating with God. In prayer we listen and we speak. We praise God and acknowledge God's greatness and power. We acknowledge our need for God. We also ask God to intervene in our lives, praying for those we love, for our world. And, we ask God to give us what we need in order to submit our will to the Divine will. In the act of prayer we focus on God and not on the world. By looking at the act of prayer as a discipline, we make it a regular part of our day-not waiting until we feel like praying-but making it a necessary part of our lives for the purpose of communicating with our God.
Meditation is similar to prayer-an act of communicating with and focusing on God. There are many forms of meditation, from sitting in silence to repeating a scripture verse over and over. The purpose, though, is the same. In meditation we seek to sit in the presence of God. When we become accustomed to quieting the self and making room for God to come into our beings, not only do we become more attuned to God's perpetual presence, but we can hear more acutely what God is saying to us. Through meditation, a Christian can feel closer to God, content in resting with God, while feeling a deeper sense of purpose about what God would have us do in this life.
Study of scripture and devotional reading brings us closer to God in yet other ways. When we read scripture or the writings of other about their faith experiences, we see God revealed anew. We can focus on one small passage and try to let it's full meaning come through to us. We can study one book of the Bible and find how it fits into the whole message of scripture. We can read passages from the Old and New Testaments, seeing the purpose with which our God has interacted with humanity. The benefits of studying scripture or what others write about it are endless, especially when we realize that scripture will keep on speaking to us in new ways year after year after year.
Now fasting is something that many feel is a category unto itself. Many would wonder why it is included with the inward rather than the outward disciplines. But fasting itself is not practiced as we might assume to control eating or to transform one's outward appearance. Instead, the purpose of fasting is to focus on God and not on food. What will control our lives, our outward desires, what we wish to put into our bodies, or devotion to God? According to Richard Foster, fasting, more than any other discipline, reveals the things that control us. We eat for so many reasons-not only because we are hungry. When we fast, we focus our attention not on what we think sustains us-food, but what truly sustains us-our God.
These little commentaries on the inward spiritual disciplines are merely small pieces of a much larger picture. They are meant to get us thinking. How do we choose to spend our time each day? How do we enact our devotion to God? Is a closer relationship to God at the top of our priority list? How do we show God how much love we feel? How do we help our love for God to grow?
During the Lenten season, we examine our faith lives. The purpose of the season is to prepare us, to make us ready, for meeting our risen Lord and Savior on that glorious morning-Easter. When we practice spiritual disciplines we are saying that we want to walk with Jesus, that our relationship with our Savior is our priority, the main focus for our lives.
In covenant God has said yes to us. In Christ God has reiterated that same yes, fulfilling the covenant, giving us all that there is to give. May we say yes as well, and with God's help prepare ourselves for the day of Resurection. Amen.
Peace,
Rev. Cynthia Bacon
Minister
You may email at:
cbacon@heritagemadison.org
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This page was last updated on March 10, 2003.