Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne
2 Corinthians 5.20-6.10; John 8. 1-11
When I was at university, a big Catholic charity in Ireland had a major Lent advertising campaign to raise funds for its work in developing countries. The campaign slogan was very clever: not only does it stick in my head a quarter of a century later, but I remember how, back at the time, it struck a chord with one of my associates in student politics. This friend was and still is what you might call a sympathetic atheist—supportive of the Church as a channel for good works, especially looking after the poor; sometimes entranced by the beauty of Church music and architecture; but fundamentally convinced that there was and could be no such being as God. But the slogan stuck in his head—one evening, in the pub, when I refused a pint because I had given up drink for Lent, recited this charity’s slogan to me. It was: “Lent is what you do.”
Of course, it was nice that my friend missed drinking beer with me, but I wasn’t convinced by the idea that: “Lent is what you do.” My instinct was that Lent was indeed mainly about giving things up and that this was a good thing. Over the years since, my instincts then on this score have hardened into a firm conviction.
Of course, I understand the logic behind “Lent is what you do”, and why many of you will be surprised that I don’t like it. With the idea that Lent is about giving things up so firmly rooted in people’s heads, the slogan presents the exact opposite message. Not only was this memorable for the charity, but it also presents an image of Christianity that is positive and wants to get things done for people, rather than always saying no and wanting to forbid things.
So why do I think Lent should be primarily about giving things up? Well, while good works are indeed good, we lose much of the richness of the Christian faith if we reduce it to a religion of good works.
The first reason for giving things up is to prevent our routine, daily, pleasures having mastery over us. Nothing should have mastery over us except God. It’s noticeable that other religions also have a tradition of fasting, and even our secular society has invented all sorts of events encouraging people to give things up for a period—Dry January, Veganuary, Stoptober, and all that. Giving things up for a while seems to touch a profound human emotional need.
Secondly, while giving things up for a while has always done people good, this is particularly the case in our consumer society, where we can get anything at the click of a button—at least if we have the cash. Lent is an antidote to the unhealthy idea that there is something wrong if all our desires can’t be satisfied instantly.
Thirdly – perhaps like me, you already feel overextended, there aren’t enough hours in the day? Now, it might be the case that your life is too filled with time-consuming rubbish and, if so, you might well be advised to take on some good works as an encouragement to dump the rubbish. But I know that a lot of you are already pretty overwhelmed through work, or caring responsibilities, or the amount of time you put into keeping the Church going. Is it really helpful to try to do even more? Or is it a healthier challenge to learn, just for a while, to do without some of the crutches you use to deal with your stresses instead?
My final point is perhaps a little surprising: I think we should keep Lent primarily as a time of giving up as a reminder that it isn’t up to us to save the world by our good works. God has already saved the world. Our job is to live well in His world. It strikes me that the problems we have in living well in the world today, most obviously our environmental crisis, are not going to be fixed by learning to do more, but by learning to take less.
The dangers of thinking it’s up to us to save the world come across powerfully in our Gospel reading. The mob thinks it is doing God’s work in bringing the woman caught in adultery to be condemned. It members think they’re preserving holiness and purity. These people are so caught up in their own self-righteousness, so convinced they know what God demands, that they are completely blind to God’s true nature. The Devil knows only too well that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. As for Jesus who, never forget, was God incarnate, what does He do to these cruel religious hypocrites? Does he smite them? Blind them and deafen them for their cruelty? No, he writes in the dirt with his finger, asks a difficult question, and let’s them stew on their own hypocrisy for a while. It doesn’t take them long to realise how wrong they were.
Indeed, if we go back to the roots of Lent, the idea of forty days of fasting in Lent comes from the Gospel story of Jesus being tempted for forty days in the wilderness. Satan tempts Jesus precisely, precisely, with the idea that he should be the solution to the world’s problems. Satan offers Jesus rulership over the kingdoms of the world, but Jesus refuses. It isn’t Jesus’ job to boss us about, or be a powerful political ruler. Lent is rooted in the idea that even God knows that there is a time to do less.
I don’t want to dissuade you from any long-standing Lenten habits of doing good works – please keep them up – but remember that Christianity is not about what we do, but about what Jesus Christ did for us on the last-but-one day of Lent, when through dying and rising, He opened the way to eternal life for us.
Now praise, glory, and honour be to God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who is with us in times of plenty and times of austerity, when we are doing and when we are fasting, in all the earth and for ever and ever. Amen.
