Invitation to a Holy Lent

​On Ash Wednesday, you probably expect a curmudgeonly, John the Baptist kind of sermon. At least that’s what I hope you are expecting, because that’s what I am doing!
 
I begin with an important qualification. There are MANY wonderful things about our culture. I think especially about the values on which we are founded: the self-evident truth that all people are created equal and endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. At our best, we as a nation try to reflect those values in our common life.
 
A second qualification. This year’s Super Bowl was a great game. The only thing that could have made it better was substituting the Atlanta Falcons for the Kansas City Chiefs.
 
But tonight, I want to acknowledge some of the less attractive features of our culture, some of which were on display at the Super Bowl. I’m thinking particularly about our glitz, our consumerism, and our materialism.
 
First the glitz. Compared to our ancestors just a handful of generations ago, people today are incredibly overstimulated. We are constantly bombarded with images and sounds competing for our attention.
 
I think about the contrast between the amount of stimulation a farmer might experience in a day working the fields compared to the amount of stimulation I and many of us experience in a day at our computers, with our phones, or in front of the television.
 
The problem with all that stimulation, all those bright lights and loud sounds coming at us all the time, is that they can so easily distract us from things that really matter.
 
Take the Super Bowl. At least in theory, it’s a football game. But my wife wasn’t interested in football. She wanted to watch the commercials and the halftime show.
 
I worry that our whole culture can be like that. We get so caught up in the glitz that we neglect the substance, the game itself, so to speak, the things that make life really meaningful. 
 
Connected to all the glitz is our consumerism. Particularly in advertisements, we are taught that the things we consume—the beer we drink and the cars we drive and the gadgets we own—they define the good life.
 
And that message is powerful. The cost of a thirty second ad during the Superbowl was seven million dollars. Companies pay that price, year after year, because they believe that the price is worth it, that enough people will buy their products because of that ad to justify spending seven million dollars for thirty seconds.
 
I like my stuff. But as Christian people, we believe that the good life is NOT defined by what we own or what we consume. The good life is defined by love, love of God and love of neighbor.
 
Most troubling of all to me is our materialism. Partly I mean our desire for stuff. But in its most toxic form, materialism is the idea that physical stuff is all that exists or at least all that matters. Materialism is the rejection of spirituality, the denial of God.
 
As people in our culture, we can’t escape the glitz, or the appeal to our consumer desires, or the message that material stuff is all that matters. But we can push back against the glitz and the consumerism and the materialism.
 
And Lent is one of the ways we push back.
 
In just a moment we will hear the Church’s invitation to a holy Lent. I hope that you will all take that invitation seriously. I encourage you to adopt whatever Lenten discipline seems best for you.
 
Tonight I want to celebrate giving things up for Lent. Practicing renunciation of one sort or another is an antidote to some of the excesses of our culture.
 
Now, some Christians take the whole renunciation thing REALLY seriously. I recently read about one of the great saints of the fourth century, a famously eloquent preacher who was also the Archbishop of Constantinople, making him one of the most important and influential Churchmen in the world at the time.
 
When he retired, he took a vow of total silence for all of Lent. He felt the need to surround himself with quiet, after all the stimulation of life at Constantinople. 
 
I am not going to take a vow of silence. But Lent is a good season for reflecting on how we speak.
 
In my ordinary conversation, I say a lot that isn’t particularly helpful or constructive. So, I am wearing my complaint bracelet, which is intended to help me be at least a little more intentional about what I say and ideally to say a little less, particularly less that is negative.
 
Because what we say matters. What we say effects us, and it effects the people around us. As Christian people, we are called to speak the truth in love. And that takes practice, including practice at NOT speaking sometimes.
 
Some of the truly hardcore saints of the early Church fasted for the entire forty days of Lent. Following Jesus’ example, they ate nothing at all. One nearly died the first time he did the total fast. For reasons that are not clear to me, he kept doing it in future years, and eventually got to the point that he didn’t come so close to death.
 
That’s another thing I am not going to do.
 
But we live in a culture of food excess, among other kinds of excess. I don’t just mean that we mostly eat more than is good for us, although that is true enough. Apparently, something like a third of the food produced around the world is wasted.[1] That’s a shockingly high percentage, particularly given that lots of people go hungry every day.
 
What I eat for supper tonight is not going to effect the problem of food wastage or world hunger. But it will effect me. And if I cut my consumption in some small way, especially if I cut my consumption for this entire season, it could re-sensitize me to what I put in my mouth, as well as what comes out of my mouth.
 
So, I will again give up sweets and alcohol and peanut butter crackers. And I will complain about that, which will cost me some money. Thankfully, I can indulge on Sundays, which are always feast days!
 
A third area where I think giving things up can be helpful is entertainment.
 
We are surely the most entertained culture ever. I tried to find out how much money Americans spent on entertainment in 2023. I couldn’t, but I did see that in 2022 Americans spent over 36.5 billion dollars on “digital” entertainment alone.
 
Carrie and I watch television together, so I don’t want to give up my own digital entertainment. But I will once again give up Sudoku puzzles, which don’t cost me money, but take up a LOT of my time.
 
My goal in giving things up is not to fix the problems of the world or even to address my own overconsumption.
 
My goal is religious: to become more aware of patterns in our culture that do not reflect God’s will but that do shape my life in their own image, that form me in ways that I don’t want to be formed.
 
My big goal this Lent is to focus a little more on who God calls me to be, on the things that matter, on the life of the Spirit, on the life of love.
 
Here at the beginning of Lent, I invite you to commit to a Lenten discipline that will help you to focus on God, and Spirit, and love. And so I invite you to stand, to hear again the invitation to a holy Lent.
 


[1] Vaclav Smil, How the World Really Works, 2022: 71.