Walking the paths of Lent (a sermon for Ash Wednesday)

This is my sermon from Ash Wednesday this year, here in Kew. The texts were Isaiah 58:1-12, 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10 and Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 - and my purple stole,  

I.                             

I wonder how many of you have walked across cliffs and moors covered with purple heather and, in paying attention to where you’re putting your feet, noticed the way that the paths seem to change over time?  As people walk, furrows develop first through the plants and then through the soil in which they are rooted. Over time these furrows grow both deeper and wider as people start walking two abreast, or pass each other, or bypass puddles and muddy patches. Yet although the path grows and changes, fundamentally it remains the same—a way along which people go as they walk the same journey.

Sometimes, Lent can be a bit like this. The journey from Ash Wednesday to Good Friday is a path that we and those ahead of us have walked before—and that we, and others coming after us, will walk again. What the path looks like, our particular steps, and how we find the walking of it will change over time: but it is fundamentally the same path – going the same way. 

When Sally and I were planning the stoles she was designing for me as a gift from all of you, I would throw out ideas and she would turn them into images. One of the keys for my purple stole was the idea of journey. We thought about wandering (and waiting), pilgrimage, stepping stones and pathways. Another key for me, for all the stoles, were ideas of time and the value of the repeating pattern of the church year, of walking through the world in time in awareness of the eternity of God.

This is the stole that she created. It’s a stole for both Advent and Lent: seasons of waiting, wandering and wondering, and of being aware that our sense and experience of time Is carefully held in God’s eternity. When I look at it, I see stepping stones looping around or planets in orbit —movement  around a space that might be the universe, might be the wilderness, might be the mouth of a tomb. 

This year, I find this imagery makes me remember the value of walking the same path again, even if it can feel repetitive or as if we are going in circles—because we are always walking with and towards God, our understanding and our faith and love hopefully growing deeper and wider as we make another loop around this centre point. For heather moors, this kind of furrow-making or erosion isn’t always a good thing—but for us and our walk in the world it can be, as it shapes us and the paths with and towards God that we and those who come after us will tread.

And this year, at this point, this central space around which these stepping stones orbit speak to me both of the tomb, in which Jesus is buried and from which he rises again, and of the reality of God at the heart of the universe—the still point of the turning world, as T.S Eliot puts it in The Four Quartets.  As I enter this Lent, it feels like circling something that continually draws me closer towards it.

II.                          

In his little book on Lent, the American priest-theologian Esau McCaulley talks about the importance of repeating the season of Lent every year. It reminds us, he says, of the reality that our journey with and towards God is not a straight line or continually upwards trajectory. We are not always on the move forwards, feeling like we’re progressing—getting better, or holier. There are plateaus, downhills, mazes—as well as moments of forward momentum.

But repeating Lent every year reminds us that even though we all always wander around and even away from God at times, there is always the opportunity to return to the path, to follow and walk with Christ back to God.

Make in us new and contrite hearts, we pray on Ash Wednesday every year, claiming the promises of God’s mercy and love. And at the end of the service, in the post-communion prayer, we will ask for God’s grace that we may daily endeavour to follow the steps of Jesus’ most holy life—as we step into Lent and the practice of fasting that has long been at its heart.

The turn back to the path is one of sorrow and of joy. There is sorrow for the ways in which we have wandered off and in the ways in which we can feel like we are treading a familiar path back to God—how have we not yet learned, we might wonder. But there is also joy in returning to where we are always welcome, and in sloughing off some of the things that have drawn us away over the year.

III.                      

And this is what fasting is. A chance to put aside those things that have drawn us away from God or that we have allowed to come in between ourselves in God. A-making space to open ourselves up to God again, so that the Lord can—in the words of Isaiah—guide us, water us, make our bones strong. So that we can be ready to work together with Christ, as his ambassadors in the world, as Paul says to the Corinthians.

Our readings give us two notes of caution and encouragement.

One we find in Matthew, who reminds us that our choices this Lent are for us and for God—they aren’t for anyone else’s edification. They aren’t something that we perform or do because the world thinks we should. That’s the warning—but this also means that we shouldn’t worry about anyone else’s judgement if we struggle or even fail this Lent. We are here to try and to be open to God—and we can trust God’s mercy if and when we fail. Jesus might have succeeded in his fasting in the wilderness—but Jesus is God, and in his success he covers all our attempts and failures before God in his grace.

The other note we find in Isaiah, who reminds us that fasting isn’t just about the rituals of worship, prayer and penance. This is a preparation and a grounding for the works of love and mercy—service, charity and justice—in which we are invited to work together with Christ to make his salvation known in the world. Perhaps the only ‘failure’ of Lent is to refuse to be open to the growing and shaping that happens in us as we go on this journey with God, making us ready for this work.

Lent is a time of return. Of re-walking paths and re-forming ourselves in the light of the image of God revealed to in Jesus. And ultimately it is a time of refreshing—even as it is hard along the way.

For we walk through our wildernesses with God towards the new life of Easter.

We might be walking a path we’ve already tried walking before, in our own choices of fasts and devotions—I know I am. But even if we feel as if we are going in circles, we are not circling the void—we are circling God, who is the source of all life, seeking to draw us in. In returning and walking this way again, we tread out our furrows, deeper or wider with God. And as we do so we will find out new things about God. About ourselves as God’s children.  And about what it is to be God’s children in God’s world.

May we all experience this, this Lent