Sermon for the 26th of February, 2023 - First Sunday of Lent

Lent has come around again…. It’s a yearly season where we, to use a gardening metaphor, do some weeding in our spiritual life. Where we check bad habits that can grow and choke our spiritual life. For forty days, more if we include Holy Week, we journey with Jesus into the wilderness.

St Augustine wrote, ‘God longs to give you something [the precious gift of himself] but you are not able to receive it because your hands are already too full.’

Are your lives, is my life, too full to receive what God has to give us?

In which case, Lent encourages us to stop and be still. You may remember the advice given to children about crossing the road – stop, look, listen. It’s good Lenten advice. In a world of constant notifications from snapchat, WhatsApp, Instagram, or if you’re really old, Facebook…. it isn’t easy to practice stillness, being quiet and alone. Its why its so important to attend church for an hour and put aside those smart phone devices can constantly cry for our attention.

Being still is the basic instruction in contemplative prayer. To be quiet and still, even for a short time each day, is to opt out of the rat race. It’s to create a space where we can begin to see things about ourselves and our culture more clearly.

You may know that Lent is a season of preparation for baptism. In the early church the catechumens, those under instruction, went through a three year programme of preparation. This culminated in the intense period of preparation – the season of Lent – and they were then baptised and confirmed on Easter Day.

So Lent was, and is, a liminal time starting with Ash Wednesday. The noun “limen” is from the Latin for “threshold”. The adjective “liminal” refers to a threshold, a “crossing over”. You will remember the Piero della Francesca painting of the baptism of Christ at the National Gallery.

 

Jesus stands at the edge of the water being baptised, at a liminal point, about to start his earthly ministry. Here at St George’s, the steps leading up the sanctuary area marks a liminal place. At St John’s, the rood screen acts in a similar way. It demarcates increasingly sacred space. Passing through them means entering into proximity to the holy.

Years ago, women wouldn’t be allowed into the sanctuary area – I’m glad those days over! This sanctuary area is particularly special. In it sits the ambry where we keep consecrated bread. We take this with us when we visit those who are too sick to come to church. They too are part of the one body of Christ, and are part of this community. The candle above it that burns throughout the year, emphasising the presence of Christ among us, whenever we visit church.

So, “Ash Wednesday” started the season of Lent this week and it opens the door into the liminal season of Lent.

If you were to type word “liminal” into your computer, the spell checker might well try to change it to “luminal”. While liminal refers to a threshold, something begun but not yet complete, lumen suggests light.

Ash Wednesday’s liminality leads through Lent to the luminal event, Easter.

For those early Christians coming to baptism and confirmation, the liminality is intensified during Holy Week, until they were led to a magical moment, between death and life. After Good Friday, on Holy Saturday, according to tradition, Christ was dead; on Easter Sunday he was alive again. That’s the central mystery of Christianity. And we enact this every year in our liturgy. They the ambry candle is extinguished. It emphasises the absence of God…. A feeling many people experience in life, an experience Jesus had on the cross when he cried out, ‘Father, why have you forsaken me’.

This then leads to the Easter vigil. We process into a dark church, all of the lights are off, and all we have is the one pascal candle proclaiming the light of Christ. We then light our own candles and the church shines brightly. The liminal becomes luminal, and we proclaim Christ is risen!

During this Easter vigil service, the catechumens were baptised. They were plunged fully into the water. Unlike our small font, they were fully immersed, which I must say, I much prefer.

They were baptised into the death of Christ. It’s strange to think of baptism as involving a death. But that’s what it involves. It means dying to our false self; it means a death to all that diminishes us; it means dying to everything in our lives that doesn’t bring life.

I heard of one pastor who, when he baptises adults, holds them under just long enough until, just before they start to panic, they rise. And they rise to new life in Christ.

As we heard in our Gospel reading today, Lent begins with Jesus being tempted among the rocks of the wilderness. And Lent ends among them, where the largest rock of all, the one over Life’s tomb, is removed. For ever. We cross Lent’s threshold, journey through its liminality, and encounter Christ’s empty tomb: darkness is overcome by an eternal luminosity.