The God of Abraham and Moses and Christ is very interested in the physicality of Creation. That is to say, God cares about time, space and matter just as much as heart, mind and soul. Inspirited beings, souled bodies, spiritual carbon. That’s the beauty of humanity. Made in God’s image, declared good, brought into covenant promises, redeemed by the blood of Christ, made into a people. From first to last, to be a child of God is to care about body and soul.
Training Season
John Wesley didn’t take much stock in Lent, or any season that required more spiritual discipline. He believed spiritual discipline should be more of a year-round training than a seasonal one. But Lent as a season of penitence and increased practice of spiritual discipline can have a nourishing effect on the soul. So many traditions continue to encourage it.
If they are to prepare us to receive grace, our spiritual discipline must unite head, heart and hands. The way we use our bodies to consume and to convey love to others has a direct impact on the soil of our hearts. Selfishness and greed have a hardening effect. Generosity and gratitude have a tilling effect: aerating our souls to be more open to the watering of God’s grace. God promises to meet us in grace, mercy, wholeness and assurance through ordinary practices like prayer and fasting, giving to the poor, visiting the sick (See Sermon 16).
We don’t engage in these practices to prove anything. Selfless practices do not make me more worthy of God’s love. Rather, they prepare my heart to believe that God’s love is real. And it’s really for me. God doesn’t love me more just because I kept all my spiritual disciplines and turned into the best version of myself. No, God’s love for me is just as steadfast during my most selfish and greedy moments, I am just closed to accepting that truth. I can do all these spiritual practices for selfish reasons: trying to prove my love or my worth, to prove that I’m on the “right side of history.” But if it doesn’t till the soil of my heart towards knowing the humble heart of God, what am I doing?
Not Today, Satan
If you’re like me, spiritual discipline can be very difficult to maintain over time. We tend to think of Satan in the wilderness with us, tempting us to eat that piece of chocolate. “Since you are a child of God, delight in that glass of wine,” we imagine Satan whispering over that bottle on the counter. We take pride in accomplishing our fast and feel guilty when we give in.
If that’s where you find yourself, I’d like to challenge your concept of temptation here. Isaiah makes it clear that we didn’t fail to keep the fast if we gobbled some bacon during Lent.
Isn’t this the fast I choose:
releasing wicked restraints, untying the ropes of a yoke,
setting free the mistreated,
and breaking every yoke?
7 Isn’t it sharing your bread with the hungry
and bringing the homeless poor into your house,
covering the naked when you see them,
and not hiding from your own family?
8 Then your light will break out like the dawn,
and you will be healed quickly.
Your own righteousness will walk before you,
and the Lord’s glory will be your rear guard.
9 Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
you will cry for help, and God will say, “I’m here.”
If you remove the yoke from among you,
the finger-pointing, the wicked speech;
10 if you open your heart to the hungry,
and provide abundantly for those who are afflicted,
your light will shine in the darkness,
and your gloom will be like the noon.
11 The Lord will guide you continually
and provide for you, even in parched places.
He will rescue your bones.
You will be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water that won’t run dry. Isaiah 58:6-11
God doesn’t love you less if you fail to keep this kind of fast. However, keeping this kind of fast prepares your heart all the more to experience the richness of God’s grace. It aligns your body and soul with the humility of Christ, who did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. According to this text, temptation looks more like holding tightly to what you could share, hiding your true self from the people who love you, and then resenting others for not really knowing you.
This Lent, how can you practice sharing the goodness of all of yourself with others?