Second Sunday of Lent
February 28, 2021
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Romans 4:13-25
Mark 8:31-38
We are now about 10 days into Lent: our 40 days before the feast of Easter. This number of days derives, of course, from the 40 days that Jesus spent alone in the desert after his baptism. These 40 days, in turn, derive from the 40 years that Moses and the Israelites are said to have wandered in the desert after their exodus from slavery in Egypt and before their arrival in the Promised Land. This is the period in the liturgical year in which self-denial is a major theme. In our liturgies, we deny ourselves the joy of a certain word beginning with “A” (I dare not say it!), until the Gospel acclamation at the Easter Vigil. And in our everyday lives there is a long tradition of other forms of self-denial; or, to use an SAT word, other forms of asceticism. The word “ascetic” comes from the Greek askein, which means to exercise. I dare say, anyone who tries to exercise regularly is certainly familiar with the meaning of self-denial. But I digress…
A few days after Ash Wednesday, a friend asked me if I was giving up something for Lent. The question unleashed a torrent of memories. For old Catholic boys like my friend and me, who were raised in the pre-Vatican II church, these 40 days were always shot through with this theme of “giving up,” of self-denial. I remember my parents and their friends talking about how they were “giving up something for Lent.” It was usually liquor or chocolate or desserts–some simple everyday pleasure. As a rebellious teenager, I told my parents I was giving up church for Lent. That didn’t go over terribly well. Even more heart-breaking for them was my actually giving up church, for the next 25 years. For many of those years, I saw the practices of self-denial, of asceticism, as hopelessly out-dated, old-fashioned, life-denying…the list goes on. But that eventually changed. When I returned to Christianity–coincidently at about the age of 40–I was gifted with the riches of our contemplative tradition. Through the prism of that tradition, asceticism came to look very different. It has become much more meaningful. With the help of this morning’s scriptural texts and some other sources, I want to offer a view of self-denial that I hope makes it more meaningful for all of us.
Our readings today take up the topic of self-denial from different angles. The most obvious is Jesus saying explicitly that, to follow him, we must deny ourselves and take up our cross. Isn’t that just putting it out there, as we say these days! This is strong stuff, particularly in Roman-occupied Israel. After all, the cross was the primary method of public execution at that time, and, by extension, it was the primary means of social control used by the Roman authorities. To take up one’s cross was the ultimate form of self-denial: basically death. Mark’s Jesus (as well as Matthew’s and Luke’s) elaborates on this exhortation with the call to lose our lives for his sake and for the sake of his teachings. A bit more on this at the end of this homily.
In our reading from Genesis we have a situation which, on the surface, does not look like a call to self-denial. Quite to contrary, Abram is presented with images of the promised glories of the covenant with God. Instead, the loss here is more subtle and psychological. Abram and Sarai are giving up the lives they have known, including giving up their names. Yes, they are told by God that they will win the child-bearing and lineage lotteries, but it’s a well known fact that winning the lottery is a mixed blessing. For Abraham and Sarah and their descendants, which includes us, it is the mixed blessing of the covenant. The covenant carries the burden of living in right relationship with God, with ourselves, and with one another such that the covenant continues to be fulfilled. That means our own wishes and expectations will often not be fulfilled. Things will not be the way we had in mind. Rather they will be God’s way. Living in keeping with the covenant is, indeed, an ascetic practice.
In Paul’s letter to the Romans, the theme of self-denial is even more veiled, yet his message, I think, penetrates deep into the heart of asceticism. Paul presents us with his familiar contrast between the law on the one hand, and faith and grace on the other. He comes down on the side of faith and grace; on the side of the inner experience of our being in God, rather than on the side of the external practices prescribed by the law. On the face of it, those external practices might look like asceticism…and they are, but only to a certain degree. Without faith, these external practices all too easily turn into a source of self-congratulation; a way to see ourselves as set apart, as especially pious–the way of religious life that Jesus repeatedly railed against, particularly through his parables. It is a kind of asceticism that is under our control, presided over by ourselves and our egos, rather than by God. Faith, in contrast, means proceeding by an unknown path, often in the dark, guided by nothing but our commitment to the love that is God…God who, as Paul tells us, calls into existence the things that do not exist. Faith is a trackless way; a way of not knowing. This understanding of faith echoes through a saying of the great 16th century Spanish mystic, St. John of the Cross: To come to the knowledge you have not, you must go by a way in which you know not. It echoes through a saying that is dear to the tradition of the Black church: Make a way out of no way. Faith is the way of no way. It is an asceticism: a giving-up of all the ways that are familiar and under our control.
This meditation on today’s scripture texts is all by way of conveying to you the understanding that the essence of asceticism is not self-denial, rather it is self-denial. Through denying ourselves certain external, pleasurable things and activities, we are cultivating an inner practice of denying our selves. We are put in touch with the depth of our attachments to impermanent, temporal things that we mistakenly believe we need in order to be who we are. And these things include not just the everyday pleasures of, say, chocolate chip cookies, but also all our habitual thoughts and beliefs about who we are, about who the “other” is, and even about who God is.
Asceticism is not about the things. It is about our attachment to the things. It is about discovering that these impermanent things are, indeed, impermanent; that what we thought was a permanent, ultimate source of pleasure or satisfaction or meaning is, in fact, ephemeral; that, in fact, the gratification always fades. Sometimes it even turns to ashes in our mouth. The great Japanese-American Zen master, Shunryu Suzuki, put it in very simple, clear terms: “Renunciation is not giving up the things of this world, but accepting that they go away.” Self-denial, asceticism, renunciation is, then, about freedom. It is about freedom from our attachments to finite, conditioned, impermanent things; freedom from our fear of losing those things. And, it is also about freedom for a life in God; an acceptance of and, dare I say during Lent, even a revelling in the Love that holds us in being in every moment. It is our freedom to live the truth of Easter.
The foundational reality of our life is that we are always in God. It is always Easter. We are guests at an eternal wedding feast. So what, then, is the point of Lent? If we are already, eternally, living in God, what’s the point of breaking up the year into these different liturgical seasons; particularly a period of 40 days in our own special self-imposed desert? What’s the point of our practices of extra prayer, fasting, and alms-giving that we emphasize at this time of year? My answer this morning is that, yes, we are eternally held in the love that is God; and each of us is, indeed, a manifestation of that love. But our chronic problem is that we don’t really know it–we don’t realize it–we don’t embody it. Most of the time, our spiritual senses are obscured by our attachment to what is not God–attachment to finite, impermanent things that we mistake for the real thing. In this Lenten season, we are invited to pay more attention to our spiritual blindness; to get inside it and, if you will, see it more clearly. We are offered a space in which to let go of our attachments…an opportunity for each of us to lose our life–or what we think is our life–and live in the freedom of God.