Lent 2015

9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. ¹⁰And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.¹¹And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’

12 And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. ¹³He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, ¹⁵and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’ 

[Mark 1.9-15] 

It’s the fifth day of Lent, a perfect time to be nosy. So here’s a quick straw poll for the brave.

Who here has given something up for Lent?

And who has slipped up already?

I have, I do almost every year. Now I know that that might look really bad, only five days in and I’ve messed up already. 

In a way I empathise with Peter, James and John when Jesus says to them at Gethsemane “You couldn’t stay awake for an hour?”

It does look bad, especially when you hold me up against Jesus and his time of testing.

He’s just had his baptism and the Spirit immediately drives him into the desert, there’s no baptism tea, no celebration in the pub. It’s straight up and straight out, and then he spends forty days in the wilderness.

Now I’ve not spent a lot of time in wildernesses, but I know they don’t have much in the way of luxuries.  Food is going to be berries and insects, and shelter is probably under a tree or amongst some rocks, at best it’s going to be a cave.

Sunbeams scorching all the day,

Chilly dewdrops nightly shed,

Prowling beasts about thy way,

Stones thy pillow, earth thy bed.

It’s cold, bleak, uncomfortable, and it’s for forty days.

And then there’s me, who gave up chocolate one Lent and on about day three ate a chocolate Hob Nob, or the year I gave up sugar in my tea but accidently sweetened it on day four, or last year, when I tried a juice fast. But that’s another story.

And even when I get it right, I only have to wait until day five and I get a day off, because I don’t fast on a holy day.

[That did for me the year I gave up cigarettes for Lent.  I was doing okay, but I was hanging on until the Sunday, and then I had about twenty and felt physically sick.]

This is all my way of saying that I’m no shining example when it comes to Lent, but then, are any of us when we compare ourselves to Jesus, to God in the flesh?

No, we aren’t. We’re actually failures. At pretty much everything we do. We’re rubbish.

I should say: please don’t take offence at this.

But we really are pathetic.

So what’s the point of Lent, if it’s not to go without and show our commitment to the faith? Why bother doing it if we can’t get to day forty and say, “hey, I went without food and water this year, so I’m automatically in Heaven’s penthouse suite”?

As I’m sure most of you know, I’m training to be a reader and I’m studying a lot as part of the course. So, I’ve come across this great debate about justification.  Which is: are we justified by works, or by faith alone?

Now I’ll be honest, I don’t think there’s much of a debate here. I reckon anyone who reckons we’re made right with God by what we do is a little bit cracked.

God asking us to justify ourselves by our actions is a bit like me expecting my seven year-old daughter Faith to do the housework.

Yes I encourage her to take part, but the job takes twice as long and I often have to go back and do bits of it again to bring it up to scratch.

So why bother? Why don’t I plonk her in front of the TV and do the job myself, faster and more efficiently?  Parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles, you know the answer: it’s because I love her; it’s because I enjoy her company; because even if it takes me longer to get the washing up done, and secretly putting some things back in the washing up bowl, seeing her having a good time with the bubbles is worth every extra minute.

She thinks she’s helping me.

But she is making the job more enjoyable.

The time spent doing the housework with her passes quicker than doing it myself, because it’s fun.

So, let’s go back to the question: what’s the point of Lent?

Lent is about self-denial, it is about going without things, but it’s not about scoring points, or earning anything. Nothing we do can possibly pay back God for everything he’s already done for us.

He came to earth as a human being, he lived among us (in a time before central heating, and the minimum wage, and Wi-Fi), and he died a horrible death.  Giving up chocolate isn’t going to make up for that.

But it doesn’t have to. That’s not why we do it.

It’s about relationships.  Giving something up is a good way to shake us out of complacency and thinking that we’ve got it cracked.  It’s a way to get us to refocus our attention.  It helps us appreciate the joy of Easter all the more.

Lent is for us.

Some of you be like wha?

What did Jesus say in Matthew 6?

 ‘And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.’

Now I ask you, did Jesus ever tell people to lie?

No? Then he wasn’t say pretend to be suffering.  He was saying don’t pretend that you are suffering.

Lent isn’t about making yourself miserable, if that’s all you do then you’re missing the point.  Lent is about coming closer to God.

I know we’re already five days in, but I would like to make a suggestion, call it a plea if you will. Whether you’ve given things up this Lent or not, as of tonight, or tomorrow morning, can you make a promise to draw closer to God for the rest of this season?

That might mean read the Bible more if you read it daily, can you do it twice daily? Or it might mean to pray more fully — twenty minutes instead of ten.

I don’t know what your relationship with God is like, so I can’t tell you what you should do.

But I know that God loves you even more than I love my kids, and I know that he would love for you to want to spend more time with him.  

Food banks

I'm not one for gambling really. Never seen the fun in it.

In our office though there are a few opportunities to have a 'little flutter', including the 'scratch off syndicate': about twelve staff members pay a pound, buy scratch cards with the money and split any winnings.

They decided last week that if they had a medium sized win they'd split the profits between themselves and the local food bank.

They ended up with £10 spend on food items, and I volunteered to help choose what to buy. Partly because I thought that was the right thing to do, but mostly because I had nagged them into thinking about people less fortunate than themselves, which led to a long debate about the fairness of society (all of which is too boring to go into now).

So, anyway, we chose Aldi as the store to spend the money in, because it's pretty inexpensive so obviously the cash goes further. Or does it?

You see, it seems like a simple job: spend a tenner on food; put it in the foodbank; job done.

But it's not that simple.

First of all you have to think about what people need.  This bit is helped along by the foodbank giving a list of items that they're running low on.  This week it was sponge puddings and instant mash.

But then there's the quantity vs quality debate.  You can buy quite a lot of budget instant mash with £10.  But I wouldn't give it to my dog -- seriously, the stuff looks like it has the nutritional value of wallpaper paste, and that's not good for anyone, much.

We bought the instant mash on this occasion because it was specifically requested by the foodbank, but we decided never to buy it again, instead we'd go with something better.  Even tinned potatoes would be preferable to the stuff we bought.

And the next factor to be considered is ethics: take tuna as an example.

Should you buy cheap tuna, knowing that it is probably net-caught, which is a practice that endangers other aquatic life, including the dolphin?

Source: Observer.com

Or, should you spend that little bit extra on pole-caught tuna, which is considerably more environmentally friendly?

Well, we agonised about it in the shop.  (Seriously, we discussed it for about 10 minutes). Finally we went with the ethical option, knowing that people eating it couldn't care less because they're hungry, but also knowing that we could care less.

The conclusion for me was a long time coming, but actually quite simple: people are hungry and will eat whatever they're given; the cheap stuff is nutritionally substandard; the expensive stuff is preferable; therefore, if you're gonna add to foodbank stocks, spend more money.

In the end, a tenner wasn't enough to buy what we set out to get, and to meet our own standards, so we spent about £12, and that felt right.

In future, when I buy anything for the foodbank, I'll be setting myself some standards:

1. There has to be enough stuff to feed a family of four for a full meal
2. If I wouldn't buy it for my own family, then I won't buy it for someone else's
3. If I think it might hurt our world to buy something, then I won't do it.

Anything else is like a grasshopper: it's just not cricket.