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Sermon: A Sermon for Lent 1

 
Preacher:
Chris Hollingshurst
Date:
Sunday 9th March 2025
Venue:
Guildford Cathedral
Service:
Cathedral Eucharist

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Every family in the land will know, or will have known, journeys by car in which from the back seat comes the plaintiff cry: ‘Are we nearly there, yet?’ 

The young travellers may know that, for example, ‘we’re going on holiday to the Lake District’, but, of course, they won’t really know the route or what the journey will entail.  

These days our satnavs fool us – or, at least, tempt us - into thinking that we know what our planned route will be and how long the journey should take. They lull us into a false sense of security, but, in themselves they do nothing to legislate for sudden changes in traffic or driving conditions.

Whether we are driving a mini or a Maserati, whether we are reading a map or using Satnav, whether it’s just us in the car or a family outing, nothing about road journeys can be certain. And that would be true even without the unending vagaries of the A3 at Wisley…

Christians often approach the present season of Lent as a spiritual journey, one of sustained prayer and penitential discipline. This discipline is traditionally characterised by abstinence, by fasting, or by choosing to refrain from habits that we know keep us from God.

Lenten discipline might equally entail taking up or doing something new, rather than giving up or stopping something else. Recent years have introduced us to, among other ideas, offering random acts of kindness to others – which is something that has also begun to be adopted by many people of good will outside the Church.

Whichever of these we choose, they are not meant to be tokenistic or, worse, undertaken so that others see it and think well of us.

Rather, Lenten discipline taken seriously often results in us being prompted to change direction or move forwards on our personal and spiritual journey. Paradoxically, the short-term, pause results in in moving forwards in the longer-term, as we understand more of our journey, and our quest for God’s glory and love.

This morning’s readings helpfully embrace questions of where people have come from and might be heading.

In our first reading from Deuteronomy, God’s people have come out of slavery and, after a journey, been led to the Promised Land. Through common memory and active recollection, they have known and handed down their early history of nomadic existence, and then becoming numerous from the line of Abraham; of being exiled aliens who have now become a nation.

God has heard their cry in hardship, and they are now being led into a new future. Moses and God’s people are learning to depend on and to share God’s generosity together, not in a wilderness but in a land flowing with milk and honey; no longer wandering aimlessly, but at home in the land. Aware of their past, they count their blessings as they head into the future.

With a little thought and application, this morning’s gospel reading from St Luke can also be understood in terms of a journey, that of Jesus Himself.

Where are Luke’s readers and hearers to understand that Jesus has come from? And where do they learn He is heading? Well the third chapter of Luke’s gospel provides a context and framework for who Jesus is. Luke records Jesus, at his Baptism, being told ‘You are my Son, the Beloved’.

Luke then follows this with an extensive genealogy of Jesus, through Abraham and even back to Adam, in order to show where Jesus has come from not just in human history but even in the foundation of the world.

In today’s passage from Luke chapter four, Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit at his Baptism, is led by the Spirit in the wilderness where He encounters three temptations. They all begin deceptively with – did you notice? - ‘If you are the Son of God…’, with the devil inviting Jesus to doubt who He is.

Jesus robustly refuses to do that, something many of us can learn from. Jesus was strong but sometimes it only takes a challenge to our sense of identity, and it is as if our whole world crumbles. Yet we are cherished children of God, something to hold firm to even – and especially - when life is stressful, or the world is going crazy.

Five years ago everything seemed to spiral out of control as the pandemic swept the globe. There were many questions, fewer answers, and overwhelming loss.

The pandemic sharpened some of our understanding of where we had come from, but for a while completely obscured the world’s view of where we were heading. In our confusion and shock, we learned again that standing with others in loss and with few words is more powerful than articulating glib explanation or excoriating blame. There will be some, perhaps many, here this morning who were marked deeply, and whose loss has changed their lives for ever. We stand together today.

In the aftermath – which will of course be felt for generations – a numerically weakened Church now has an opportunity to understand its calling afresh, with Christ as both the source of hope and the exemplar.

The Jesus of Luke 4 shows a clear and growing sense of where He has come from, and who He is. We see Him starting to live out His calling as the Son of God - in a broken world and to save that world - by resisting evil. Jesus does not allow himself to be curdled by flattery. He is not tempted to misuse power, to follow the way of the world, to seek dramatic status in place of humble service. He isn’t taken in by Scriptural proof verses when they are being used to hide the Love between their lines.

There is something else of interest here, too. In seeing the headlines of the three famous temptations that Jesus faced, it’s easy to miss a detail, which is the possibility that Jesus faced more than three temptations and trials whilst in the wilderness. Did you spot it?

Luke says, ‘When he had finished every test, [the devil] departed from him until an opportune time.’  That could perhaps imply that there were more temptations and trials in the wilderness than those described by Luke. 

More than that, though, as fully divine and fully human, Jesus, out of the wilderness, would of course face other normal human temptations throughout his life - before, finally, at ‘an opportune time’ in the Garden of Gethsemane, which we discover in Luke chapter 22. Facing arrest and execution, Jesus prays: ‘Father, if you are willing [there’s that ‘if’ again] remove this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done.’

What about each of us?

Do we currently have a sense of where we have come from, and where we are going – personally, and in the world around us? I suspect most of us share something in common with the children on the car journey. We know where we are trying to get to but, together with those we are travelling with, we hit diversions and delays and wonder what’s happening.

If that describes any of us today, what can we take from this morning into our continuing Lenten journey this year – as Christian people and as a Cathedral community?

We can learn from Moses and his people to be aware of our past and understand just how we have reached the present point. We can be grateful for what has been good and generous as we seek to share what we have, trusting that God’s faithfulness will continue.

Most of all we can learn from Jesus and what Luke tells us about Jesus. Secure in our identity as beloved children of God, we can pray to be able to withstand those temptations, trials and challenges which threaten to derail our faith, our own lives, and our life together.

There will be critical moments throughout life when, like Jesus, we have to make difficult choices or find enough strength to do what we know to be right. There will also be the ordinary ongoing temptations which, if we are not careful, sometimes add up in ways that take us away from the main route and even away from our travelling companions. And, sometimes, we will simply have to stay standing up.

So let’s use this Lent wisely, prayerfully, and with intent. Let’s be encouraged to seek sustenance and to be open to new direction, expecting to be strengthened and changed by the steadfast love, the presence, and the example of the Lord.   Amen.

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