The world we live in as Americans is, to use a local phrase, wicked busy.  We are constantly on the move, running a hundred-fifty miles an hour.  We like the one-up-manship that happens when we compare schedules.

This crazy pace is costing us something. Like time to reflect on our lives. We are encourage to do some self-reflection during these 40 days of Lent, and here’s my take on why.

Lent 1B—Feb. 26, 2012

Every year on Ash Wednesday as a priest I say these words, “I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.”  They are some of the most descriptive words in our prayer book about how we are to engage in the preparatory season of Lent.  These six things that we are to undertake during our Lenten journey get this fly-by mention on the first day of Lent, but then are not brought up ever really again.

I also receive questions from folks about how to do Lent.  How to think about fasting and what it means.  Or if there is a rite of confession in the Episcopal Church.  Some have no idea where to begin when it comes to prayer, or even meditating on God’s Word.

So I am embarking on a new thing myself this year: I plan to systematically work through these calls to holy living with you, to give you my take on them, how they have impacted my life, what they mean to me.  My desire is that by spending time speaking about them you may be able to have a more meaningful Lent, and even more so, be prepared to experience a more meaningful Easter in six weeks.

It is not a mistake that the very first things we are invited to do in Lent are self-examination and repentance.  We cannot begin to even understand the practices of Lent if we have no idea where we are.  It is much easier to remain on the sidelines during Lent if we don’t feel we need or would benefit from Lenten disciplines.  So we are to take a long, hard look at our lives and see them for what they truly are.  And that can be downright scary.

But we must begin with honesty.  The reality is that many of us live our lives at such a frenetic pace that we never have a chance to take do self-reflection.  We are so caught up in the day-to-day, running errands and getting kids off to school, or cleaning the house, squeezing in the workout, planning meals, catching up with family or friends, walking the dog, yard work, responding to email, catching up on Facebook, watching the evening news, reading a book, never mind when a crisis—both big (a family medical event) or small (needing a new dryer) comes in to play.  We are bombarded by noise as well, our own personal soundtracks on our i-Devices or talk radio in the car or the tv as background noise.  There is no time for quiet and no time for reflection.  And perchance we keep up the pace and the noise and the rest of it so we don’t have to do the internal inventory.  If we keep it up, we can ignore whatever is happening on a deeper level.

So the first thing I would encourage you to do is to make time for self reflection, possibly even an hour of dedicated time to do this work.  If you have a spouse, ask them to manage the kids or the pets.  If you have a cell phone, turn it off.  If you can, get away from everything that may distract you so that you can pause and ask some basic questions.

Like this: What brings me joy in my life?  What takes me away from joy?  Or what am I doing right now that brings me life?  What am I doing that is draining me of life?  How do I spend my time?  How do I spend my money?  Am I aware of where my money goes, and does that align with things that are important to me?  Does it align with what is important to God?

How am I doing in my relationships?  Am I taking enough time to be with those I love?  Do I have an issues outstanding in my relationships, any people I need to make amends with?

Am I cultivating a strong spiritual life?  Do I do a good job caring for all that God has given me?  Do I use my gifts, resources and time  in pursuit of God’s kingdom?

I think you get the idea.  What I’m encouraging us to do is to take a personal inventory, do a spiritual check-up, to hold up a mirror to our inner lives and make an honest and thorough assessment.

And then comes the next question: what do we do with that information?  Do we allow it to overwhelm us, or do we take it as an opportunity to draw closer to Christ, seeking forgiveness and reconciliation where it is needed?  Do we, in other words, recognize sin in our lives for what it is?

The word “sin” has taken a bashing in our society over the past many years.   It is reserved for a few seemingly major offenses, and other seemingly smaller things are “problems” or difficult areas or whatnot.  Barbara Brown Taylor, Episcopal priest and professor, contends that we have almost entirely lost the language of sin.[1]  Yet, she argues, that abandoning the language of sin won’t make it go away, it will only leave us unable to talk about its effect on our lives and push us more toward denial.  What has taken the place of the language of sin, Taylor suggests, are the languages of medicine and law[2]; sin explained as either sickness or crime.

She writes this, “Contrary to the medical model, we are not entirely at the mercy of our maladies.”  And “contrary to the legal model, sin is not simply a set of behaviors to be avoided.”  She continues, Much more fundamentally, [sin] is a way of life to be exposed and changed, and no one is innocent.  But that fact need not paralyze anyone with fear, since the proper response to sin is not punishment but penance. … [T]he essence of sin is not the violation of laws but the violation of relationships. Punishment is not paramount.  Restoration of relationship is paramount, which means that the focus is not on paying debts, but recovering fullness of life.”[3]

Jesus made it clear in John’s gospel that he came to bring life and to bring it more abundantly.  And in the verse immediately after John 3:16, we hear that God didn’t send Jesus to condemn the world, or us, but that we might be saved.  Saved from sin, from the path we walk toward destruction.  The path that takes us further from the light of God and onward toward the darkness of all that is not God.

We get a sense of all this in our reading this morning, when the evil one comes and tempts Jesus.  The temptations—notice Mark doesn’t even give them specifically—were those things if acted upon that would lead Jesus away from God.  They do the same for us when we follow them, whatever they are.

And that’s a big point, by the way.  Sin is anything that leads us further from life in God.  Anything.  Sin isn’t just confined to a handful of wretched items—usually being done by others—but anything that moves us further from life and God’s presence.

Finally, I’d like to say this: sometimes the thing pulling us further and further from God is our own self-negation.  Some among us—and particularly those who are caretakers of various kinds—spend much of their time elevating others, yet refuse to see their own gifts or talents as anything worth cultivating.  We denigrate the very image of God in our lives when we do this, and that is something from which we must turn.

And remember, that is what repentance means: to turn around.  To recognize that God wants to be in relationship with us, and our fessing up that we’ve blown it and returning back to God.  That is in the end, what this is all about.  Restoration of relationships and community that is so strongly desired it leads to repentance and amendment of life.  St. Mark’s can be a place where this work can happen, where we encourage transformed and new lives, and where we both hold ourselves accountable and help restore us to the path of God.  May it be so.  Amen.

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