Over the Sundays of Lent, I will be exploring some old Lenten practices with an eye to understanding them and appropriating them in new ways. The practices I mean are the three pillars of Lenten discipline (fasting, prayer, and almsgiving), plus a fourth often associated with Lent (study), and finally I will look at the topic of conversion, which underlies these other topics.

So today we begin with fasting. Right away, I want you to forget food for a minute, and think of fasting in broader terms. Think of fasting as “letting go of one thing in order to embrace another.” To fast from something is really to refrain from it, or even better, to let go of it. Once you have stopped doing one thing, you are then free to do something else. Once you have let go of one thing, you are free to embrace something else.

The traditional Gospel reading for the First Sunday in Lent is or includes Jesus' temptation in the wilderness during his 40 day sojourn of fasting and praying at the beginning of his ministry. Each of the Gospels emphasizes or uses this episode differently. Mark's telling of it is very sparse. He gives us no details, but offers the general description, that Jesus “was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” Matthew and Luke offer much more elaborate descriptions, including the dialogue with Satan who tempts or tests Jesus with the opportunity to make bread out of stones, to use earthly power to achieve his ends, and to produce an undeniable sign from heaven to point to his own special nature.

In each of the three Gospels, it is the Spirit of God which drives Jesus into the wilderness. Having been Baptized and declared to be the Son of God, Jesus immediately must go off to confront his demons. He must engage in a struggle, not against outside forces, but against himself. Remember, the name Satan in Hebrew means “tester”, and Satan's main function in the Bible is to test people, to see what they're made of.

Jesus, having been identified as the Son of God, having been called to an extraordinary ministry, must confront his own ego, his sense of power, and his own motivations for proceeding. We all know the saying, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This is exactly what Jesus must grapple with. He must lay down, let go of any sense of entitlement, any sense of having authority over people, any inclination to use his gifts and powers to benefit himself, before he can set out on his mission.

Matthew and Luke, in giving lengthy descriptions of the dialogue with Satan, emphasize this one part of the time in the wilderness. Mark, on the other hand, hints at a three part journey for Jesus. First Jesus is confronted by Satan, that is, he must deal with all of the challenges I just mentioned. Then, it says, he was with the wild beasts. And finally the angles waited on him. I think the reference to being with the wild beasts has at least a double meaning.

First, I think it refers to Jesus having to confront fear. The wild beasts, especially the predators which could still be found in the Israel of that time, were troublesome and scary to many, especially to the shepherds of the day. In John's Gospel, Jesus even describes himself as the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep. Jesus must decide if his own life is more important than the lives of others, if fear will drive him, or if courage and faith (and love?) will overcome fear.

Second, the wild beasts are God's creation as such, without human interference, so this is a sort of journey to the source. At the same time, being in the harsh give and take of nature can also be a time of rediscovering that humans have a different vocation from the other animals. We have all of the same survival instincts, but we can choose to rise above them and live a different kind of life. We can either cave into the biologically driven instincts, to predation, tribalism, territoriality, and the mere perpetuation of genetic material, or we can imagine, envision, and embrace a way that transcends this or enriches this.

This is where fasting comes in. The act of fasting (remember, I want you to think beyond food and understand fasting as “letting go of one thing in order to embrace another”) is especially a determined act of not acting on impulse, but bringing intention and thought to one's actions. In our society where for most of us everything is easily at hand (more entertainment than we can possibly process, more information than we could possibly absorb, more food than we could possibly eat) our old Ice Age instincts are completely out of synch with our circumstances. We can now do most things mindlessly, things which our ancestors of 10,000 years ago had to put great thought and care into. We are prone to being run by our instincts to our own undoing.

Fasting is teaching ourselves to stop and think about what we are doing, what we are focusing our minds on, and what we are taking into ourselves. Fasting is the natural beginning point for looking at the next three topics I will deal with in the next weeks: prayer, almsgiving, and study. The act of fasting, of letting go in order to embrace something else, is the beginning of making time for prayer, making room for generosity, and taking energy for study. It is the beginning of thinking about the things on which we feed our spirits, and deciding to feed them with specific things, with the things of God and the Spirit.

This Lent I invite you to fast. Think about what you take into your mind, your soul, and your body. Think about the impact these things have, the power they have to shape and mold your thoughts, your feelings, and your health. Then think about what of all this you can let go, in order to embrace the things of God. Next week we will look at letting go in order to pray.

      Last week I said that over the Sundays of Lent, I will be exploring some old Lenten practices with an eye to understanding them and appropriating them in new ways. The practices I mean are the three pillars of Lenten discipline (fasting, prayer, and almsgiving), plus a fourth often associated with Lent (study), and finally I will look at the topic of conversion, which underlies these other topics. Last week I looked at fasting as “letting go of one thing in order to embrace another.”

So today we continue with prayer. Right away I want to to forget about the idea of telling God anything, saying anything to God, asking God for anything, singing praises to God, or any of what most of you probably think of when you hear the word prayer. Just for a few minutes, I would like you to forget all that and try to think of prayer in a different way. Think of prayer as “intentionally coming into the presence of God.”

The key word here is “intentionally”. We are always in the presence of God. God is everywhere in the cosmos, because God is the creator, the source, the sustainer of the universe. Picking up on what the prophet Isaiah heard the seraphim sing at the throne of God (Isaiah 6), we sing in our communion liturgy, “Holy, holy, holy... heaven and earth are full of your glory...” This holds true from the perspective of space, and from the perspective of time.

In our reading from Genesis for today, God makes the interesting statement to Abraham, “You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations.” The subtle implication is that from Abraham's perspective, what God has promised is in an uncertain and unknown future, but from God's perspective it has already come to be. In other words, God also fills the cosmos in terms of time. Every moment is already filled with God, now, in the past, and in the future. God exists beyond time, and God exists fully in all time.

Just as we can say that wherever we may go, speaking in terms of space and place, God is already there, so we can also say that “whenever” we may go, God is already there. Each moment comes to us already filled with God.

Our problem is that we don't stop to notice. We, so wrapped up in all of our need-to's and should's and ought's and schedules and perceived needs and wants, are always going going going, racing to things, or running from things, with our thoughts always somewhere else. Although God is there, wherever, and whenever we are, we do not stop to take intentional notice of this.

Prayer is stopping to come into God's presence in an intentional way. Fasting is letting go of one thing in order to embrace another. Fasting from distraction and preoccupation can be an opportunity to let go in order to embrace being in the presence of God, that is, in order to pray.

Our western secular, post-industrial, information age society, is one in which we go at things with the hidden or overt question, “Why should I do that? What do I get out of it?” Like so many seven year olds in adult bodies, we have become a society of instant gratification and of decidedly self-serving motivations. But this is not because we are bad or worse than any previous age or any different culture. It is only because we have the greater possibility of fulfilling our instant gratification needs more quickly and easily than in any age before. This means that we are not forced to become more mature or wise in the way one is forced to in circumstances that demand patience and perseverance.

What this means for spirituality is that we look for an easy and self-fulfilling spirituality, one in which we can have both our gratification and spiritual meaning. No wonder that spiritually speaking, as a society, we are adrift. Always searching, finding all kinds of gurus or hobbies or things to fill our time, but rarely patient enough to walk the road of wisdom and coming to know the depths of the Divine presence, what in Christianity we generally call, coming to know God.

Prayer, that is, stopping to come intentionally into the presence of God, is the gateway to this deeper, long term, wisdom path. The famous Psalm (111:10) passage says, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding.” As I have said before, “fear of the LORD” in the Old Testament, functions as a kind of technical term for “religion”, and might be translated today as “taking God seriously.” Wisdom begins in taking God seriously. Wisdom begins in coming to recognize one's situation in a very large universe, among billions of people, all striving and seeking after something. Wisdom begins with seeing both the relative position one occupies in the scheme of things, but also the unique position one occupies as a potential channel for God to work in the world.

But before you or I can get to any of this, we have to stop and come into God's presence intentionally. For those of us who confess, “I believe in God,” we have to move from believing in the sense of information to knowing in the sense of engaging or coming to know someone.

Having done this, having stopped and come intentionally into the presence of God, an interesting phenomenon begins to take place. For an instant, time gives way to eternity. What do I mean by this? In our ordinary way of living, we are swept along by the demands of time. Of all the things most of us complain about today, it is that we do not have enough time. And yet we have as much time as any generation has ever had. In fact, we have more time than previous generations had for two reasons: 1) we live longer, and 2) the earth has slowed its rotation ever so slightly over the millennia, so that today a day is actually longer than a day was in ancient times. And yet we find that the day is never long enough, nor the week, nor the month, to get everything done that we imagine that we have to get done. Why?

For some reason we as a society have decided that we must do as much as we possibly can. Perhaps it is a sign of our desperate search for meaning. Perhaps it is a sign of our natural greed, in the larger sense of greed as needing to acquire and hoard not only material things, but experiences and activities as well. Perhaps it is a sign that we never really learned how to say “no”. Whatever the reason or reasons, we allow ourselves to be swept along in the stream of time, and the landscape surrounding the river of time blurs by, usually unnoticed because we are too busy paddling and treading water to stop.

To stop, for a moment, to pull ourselves to the shore, and intentionally take notice of the landscape that channels the stream of time, that is, to stop and come into the presence of God, gives us a small taste of eternity, of calm and rest and wholeness and peace, here and now. It is the beginning of perspective. It is the beginning of groundedness. It is the beginning of wisdom.

You may be surprised to know that it does not take huge amounts of time to begin to stop and come intentionally into the presence of God. In the practice that I do, it only calls for 20 minutes a day. The other 23 hours and 40 minutes, you can continue to let yourself get swept along in the hurry scurry of frenetic time. But for 20 minutes you stop and come intentionally into the presence of God. To use my definition of fasting from last week, you let go of 20 minutes of business in order to embrace 20 minutes of eternity.

But here's the catch: as you do this, eternity begins to slowly and quietly invade the rest of your time. Not all at once; not even too noticeably at first. But slowly it does. Slowly, you begin to see the scurrying around for the short sightedness and, in many ways, foolishness that it is, and you begin to see the deep wisdom that only comes from God and from stopping to be in the presence of God intentionally. Slowly you are changed.

This Lent I invite you to stop, to let go of a little bit of your doing and hurrying, and come intentionally into the presence of God. Next week we will look at letting go and stopping in order to help those who need help.

      Over the Sundays of Lent, I am exploring some old Lenten practices with an eye to understanding them and appropriating them in new ways. The practices I mean are the three pillars of Lenten discipline (fasting, prayer, and almsgiving), plus a fourth often associated with Lent (study). On the Fifth Sunday in Lent I will look at the topic of conversion, which I think underlies these other topics. Two weeks ago I looked at fasting as “letting go of one thing in order to embrace another.” Last week I looked at prayer as “stopping to come intentionally into the presence of God.”

This week we continue with almsgiving. Let me say first that this has been the most difficult and problematic of these sermons so far to prepare. The whole idea of almsgiving, of “charity” as we think of it today, is fraught with pitfalls, traps, and complex emotional entanglements. I found it necessary to step back from the whole thing and take a long conceptual look at it, as well as do some social analysis.

Having said all this, I would like you to set aside the idea of almsgiving as charity for a moment, and think of it in terms of Jesus' proclamation to the people of his home town, when he was quoting from the prophet Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me... to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour.” (Luke 4:18-19 and parallels)

The process of giving aid to someone, of helping someone in need, must be a process which brings liberation from captivity to both the one being helped and the one helping. It must help to open the eyes of the one receiving the help, and of the one giving the help.

Today's reading from John can function as a kind of allegory for the process I mean. Jesus talked of his own body as a temple, and in Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians and in the First Letter of Peter, we the followers of Jesus are described as a temple or a house built out of living stones. Jesus came to the Temple in Jerusalem, the Temple built to be a house of prayer to God, and found that it had become a market place, a place of commerce. The main purpose of the house of prayer had become overshadowed by activities which were meant at first to be supportive of the worship functions of the Temple. The tail was wagging the dog, so to speak. Jesus cleansed the Temple by driving out those things which distracted from its intended purpose.

We as people are meant to be houses of prayer to God. We are designed, insofar as we are spiritual beings living a physical life, to be sanctuaries of God's Spirit. What happens is that the many things which seem to be necessary or desirable to live the physical life begin to take over the function of the temple, and to push aside the spiritual purpose of who we are.

Jesus, in his ministry, healed the sick, but more often than not did so by casting out demons. The maladies from which people suffered were associated with an alien presence having taken up residence and taken over in them. Again, this can serve as a kind of analogy to what I'm getting at. Things from outside of us come into us and take over. We are no longer in control of ourselves, but are possessed.

The most common ways in which this happens for us today is through our attachment to material things and material well being, and through our use of addictive substances. Often we come to these things quite naïvely, thinking they will enhance our quality of life, only to find that they begin to take control of our life, and we cannot imagine living without them, or, in the case of drugs and alcohol, perhaps cannot break free from them on a very profound physical level.

In the traditional Lenten disciplines, almsgiving was meant both as a discipline to help others, and a discipline to become personally free from attachment to money or wealth. In other words, it was meant to free some from want, while freeing others from possession by their possessions. It was meant to set the captives free at both ends of the equation.

This means that we have to look at the ways in which we help others and consider what we are doing. We also have to look at why we are not helping others and consider what the impediment is within us. If, for example, someone comes to me and asks for money, and, taking Jesus' words in the Sermon on the Mount literally and possibly a bit out of context (cf. Matthew 5:40-42), I simply give them what they ask, have I helped them, or have I done them great harm? Have I liberated them and myself, or have I kept one or both of us captive?

The Theologia Germanica, an anonymous Medieval work which Luther had republished in his own day, gives voice to an important principle: the more you help someone to stay stuck in their turned-in-on-self patterns, the more you have contributed to the very worst (chapter 32). If I give freely in order to feel better about myself, without considering what the other person really needs, or what the underlying causes of dysfunction are, then I have really given for my own turned-in-on-self reasons. I just don't want to feel guilty. At the same time, if I don't give, just because I don't want to get ripped off, then again, I have done so for turned-in-on-self reasons.

What I must do is to let go of both guilt and the fear of being ripped off, in order to come into the presence of God in the person before me. I must somehow try to make some kind of connexion that will open up some path of truth between us. That's the really hard part, especially when you are dealing with someone who may be addicted to drugs (I am thinking here about the kinds of scenarios that often come up at the church, or that may confront you on a walk through certain parts of Nanaimo). The addiction makes the person a slave to the substance, and they will tell any kind of lie and twist every piece of truth to serve their master. Truth becomes almost impossible. The image of God in them has become thickly obscured. Their need for liberation is so profound, that you or I probably are not able to facilitate it. What do we do? Ignore them? Give something just to feel better about ourselves? Engage in a conversation?

First, we must remind ourselves that we are not the Saviour, only Jesus Christ is the Saviour. We cannot save anyone. We can only let go and do so in a way which might help the other to also be a little bit freer. Second, we must be prepared to say that the best help we can give is not to help, but to send them to someone who can help. We must get over the idea that each of us has to provide all the answers and solutions to everyone who comes knocking. Better to send the person along to someone who might actually be able to do something, such as a member of AA, or a drug and alcohol counsellor. And then we must be prepared to receive the anger and resentment for not having given some money, and remember that like the demons who confronted Jesus, this is the voice of the thing which has taken hold of this person and possesses them. The point is, that what you or I have given here has the potential to liberate, to set free, while a $20 bill might just keep both the giver and the recipient trapped in their respective ego prisons.

But sometimes a person who asks for help may just need a little help. This is also possible. Without taking the time or risk to get to know a person, it is probably not possible to be sure. Here an element of faith, perhaps naïve faith, has to come in. It is probably more important to embody God's grace to people, than to embody Law or Judgment. Pastor Brian Heinrich, who is our BC Synod street priest on the downtown east side of Vancouver, makes it a practice to have a collection of dimes in his pocket. When approached for a handout, he will give a dime, as a gesture of good will, and in order to open up a conversation with the person in question. This is, of course, his parish, his congregation. But perhaps his use of a small symbol of generosity can be something of a middle ground for us. Just as when we come forward for communion, we receive only a small portion, but it is enough, so here too, the exchange is only a small token, but it can be enough to establish some sort of human and humane contact.

Finally, perhaps the very difficult nature of the reality of this topic, also has something to do with Jesus' statement that we will always have the poor with us. While some take this as an excuse to do little or nothing, I take it as both a harsh criticism by Jesus of the ways we organize human society, and a poignant reminder that there are always those among us who for reasons far too complicated for any of us to grasp, find themselves functioning at the margins of human society. We will always be confronted with the problem of how to help, where to help, and how much to help. As well, we may find ourselves confronted with the problem of how to get help, where to get help, and how much help can be gotten. Jesus came to set the captives free. May we open ourselves to free and be set free from all that holds and binds us.

Next week we look at study and filling the mind with the things of God.

      Over the Sundays of Lent, I am exploring some old Lenten practices with an eye to understanding them and appropriating them in new ways. The practices I mean are the three pillars of Lenten discipline (fasting, prayer, and almsgiving), plus a fourth often associated with Lent (study). On the Fifth Sunday in Lent I will look at the topic of conversion, which I think underlies these other topics. Three weeks ago I looked at fasting as “letting go of one thing in order to embrace another.” Two weeks ago I looked at prayer as “stopping to come intentionally into the presence of God.” Last week I looked at almsgiving as an act of mutual liberation, in the spirit of Jesus' declaration about himself that he had come to set the captives free.

This week I continue with study as a Lenten discipline. First I want you to set aside any notion of study as an intellectual pursuit. When I say study, I do not mean the sort of studying that we do when we are studying for an exam or studying to increase our knowledge. Study as a spiritual discipline has a very different goal from these ordinary types of studying. I want you to think of study as “filling the mind with the things of God.”

Study as a spiritual discipline is not so much about content or information, as it is about awareness or discernment. Spiritual study is looking deeply into things in order to become aware of or to discern God's hand or God's presence or God's will or God's love or some other aspect of God's abiding in them. Notice I said, “looking deeply into things” and did not say, “looking deeply into books.” I am using study in a very broad sense. It includes reading books, but it goes beyond mere books to reading the world around us. How does this happen?

To give you a picture of what I mean, I will turn to something which is a type of reading of the book called the Bible, but which can be applied beyond the text of a book. It is an ancient practice called Lectio Divina, which literally means “divine reading” or is sometimes translated as “spiritual reading.” Lectio Divina is probably the most ancient form of Christian study, reflection, prayer, and meditation all wrapped up into one.

The process is quite simple. First you quiet yourself down, and read a short passage of Scripture with the intent of letting God speak to you through the words of the text. After having let the words move into your consciousness, you read them again, more slowly and intentionally, allowing some word, phrase, or image in the text, in a sense, to leap out of the text and take hold of your attention. Having done this, you allow yourself to enter into prayer moved by the image or word or phrase that has taken hold of your attention. This time of prayer goes on until you come to a point at which you simply rest in God's presence.

Henry Nouwen, the famous Roman Catholic priest, author, and humanitarian wrote about Lectio Divina, calling it “reading with a desire to let God come closer to us... The purpose of the spiritual reading is not to master knowledge or information, but to let God's spirit master us. Strange as it may sound, spiritual reading means to let ourselves be read by God.” (from “Spiritual Literacy” by Frederic & Mary Ann Brussat, New York: Touchstone © 1996, p.242)

This idea of “letting ourselves be read by God” is important. In ordinary study, we strive to master a subject; to make it subject to ourselves. In spiritual study, we are turning our attention, our focus, our minds toward God in order for God to master us; for us to become subject to God. So, you can have someone who knows the contents of the Bible inside out, or who knows all there is to know about the background or mechanics of the Bible, but who has never been moved or touched or shaken or comforted by God through the Bible. Conversely, you can also have someone who actually has little theoretical grasp of the Bible, and perhaps doesn't even know that much of what's in it, but who, in reading patiently with the desire to have God know them and master them, finds themselves experiencing a sort of spiritual awakening, or even just having a deep abiding sense of God's presence in their lives. Those are extremes, of course. Most people who take the Bible seriously will find themselves somewhere in between.

But this study of the Bible can move over into the thoughtful, prayerful study of other spiritual writings, and even further, into the thoughtful, prayerful study of the world itself. Many of the ancient Christian writers and thinkers believed strongly that studying or contemplating the created world was a kind of window onto God. Gregory of Nazianzen, one of the most respected teachers of the 300's wrote in one of his poems,

“O you who are beyond all
How can you be called by another name?
What hymn can sing of you?
What mind can grasp you?
...You only are inexpressible...
The universal longing, the groaning of creation tends toward you.
Everything that exists prays to you
And to you every creature that can read your universe
Sends up a hymn of silence...”
(from his “Dogmatic Poems” emphasis mine)

In the 600's a spiritual writer named Isaac of Nineveh observed,

“What the eyes of the body are for physical objects, faith is for the hidden eyes of the soul... [with these] we see the glory of God hidden in creatures...” (from his “Ascetic Treatises”)

And finally, the most famous of the Desert Fathers, known generally as Anthony the Great (251-356), when someone asked him how he could stand living without books, he replied, “...my book is the nature of creatures; and this book is always in front of me when I want to read the words of God.” (from Pelagius the Deacon & John the Subdeacon “Sayings of the Fathers”, Book XXI saying 16)

This may explain why so many people say that they feel closest to God when they are out in nature. Even these ancient Christians recognized that God is somehow more blatantly or rawly present or discernible in the parts of the created world which have not been modified by human activity. Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist, and Jesus all went into the wilderness to pray and become still in God's presence.

Look at the difference between the world shaped by us and the world as God made it and makes it, and you will notice some key differences. God's creation is hugely diverse, things grow in complex, often apparently random patterns. No two of anything are exactly alike.

By contrast, the world we shape has lots of straight lines or perfect circles. We try to make things look uniform. We plant things in rows, and like to have them all be about the same size and same species. The complexity of God's version is greatly reduced in our version. No matter how much we say we like diversity, our actions in little and big ways say that we prefer uniformity, predictability, and sameness.

Studying the book of God's creation tells us many things, and not all the lessons are easy to discern. One has to look deeply, and reflect patiently, going back to the Bible for reality checks, just as in reading the Bible, one has to go back to nature for reality checks. For example, in nature, animals kill and eat other animals. Why is this, if we are told not to kill? Superficially, studying in the ordinary way to have knowledge and get answers and to be able to win an argument, we might sight chapter and verse to explain all this or that or derive some doctrine. But looking more deeply, we see that the death of one means life for the other. The salmon dies, but the eagle lives. We also see a complex interconnected organic system of balance and re-balance. In the creation as such, life and death exist in a complex relationship to each other. Studying this spiritually may actually lead one to a place of surrender before the mystery of what God has created, instead of the impulse to define and control it. I use this as an example of how spiritual study does not so much lead to answers, as it leads to a place of stopping and standing before God.

Study as a Lenten or spiritual discipline is as much an attitude or focus of the mind as it is any particular method. I look, I observe, I note, I am moved or awed or troubled, always with God in mind, always seeking to discern the presence and wisdom and love and otherness and unknowability and intimate closeness and simplicity and complexity of God. My study becomes God's study of me, and I am changed.

This Lent I invite you to focus your mind and attention in the practice of spiritual study in order to fill your mind with the things of God. Next week we will look at conversion as a course change of the will.

       Over the Sundays of Lent, I have been exploring some old Lenten practices with an eye to understanding them and appropriating them in new ways. The practices I mean are the three pillars of Lenten discipline (fasting, prayer, and almsgiving), plus a fourth often associated with Lent (study). Four weeks ago I looked at fasting as “letting go of one thing in order to embrace another.” Three weeks ago I looked at prayer as “stopping to come intentionally into the presence of God.” Two weeks ago I looked at almsgiving as an act of mutual liberation, in the spirit of Jesus' declaration about himself that he had come to set the captives free. Last week I looked at study as filling the mind with the things of God.

This week I conclude this series by looking at the topic of conversion. I think that underneath all of the Lenten disciplines we have been looking at lies the process of conversion. Each of these disciplines is a sort of spiritual skill that can aid in the process of conversion.

But before I get to that, let me say something about the process of conversion itself. We often misunderstand or misportray conversion as changing one's opinion about things. Conversion is seen mostly in terms of “I used to believe in that, but now I believe in this.” Certainly conversion often begins at this level, but this is at best only the most superficial kind of conversion. Really, it isn't a conversion at all, it is just a change of opinion, even if it may be an intense change of opinion, and even an intense change of feeling about whatever it is that one has a strong opinion about. But this change of opinion is really only the first step toward conversion. It is the first move in beginning to experience a course change in one's will.

In the Bible, and especially in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, the word “heart” is used as a metaphor to talk about the centre or core or innermost part of the spiritual side of a person, in other words, the will. When it says, “love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength,” (Deuteronomy 6:5), the heart is intended as a reference to the will. When it says, “My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast,” (Psalm 108:1), again this is a reference to a will which is directed toward God.

Conversion is turing one's heart, turning one's will toward God. But I would say that turning one's will toward God is still only the second step of conversion. There is a deeper, more profound aspect to conversion which still has not been touched. Just as a change of opinion could lead to a change of will. So our choice to change our will could lead one step further: to bring our will into line with God's will. But even here, this is only the third step in the ongoing process of conversion. Because in the end, the conversion is not complete until God's will becomes our will. I don't know if this ever really happens in this life, but it certainly would mark the completion of the move from self-will to God's will.

You could use sailing as an analogy for this process. Think of your will as a large sail boat. The winds are the pressures and movements of the society, the economy, family, and so on. The currents are those underlying impulses that drive us: instincts, emotions, old inner baggage. Mostly we sail around, letting the winds and the currents take us where they will. Then some of us get a set of charts into our hands, charts called the Bible. They tell us that there is actually a goal to this sailing. So we begin to try to sail toward this goal, but find that the winds and currents mostly go somewhere else. So we have to learn some new skills: tacking into the wind and compensating for drift. The Lenten practices are external tools to help us work on the internal process of bringing about a course of our wills so as to bring them into line with the goal, that is, to bring our wills into line with God's will.

For example, practicing fasting as a “letting go in order to embrace something else,” is a simple, external practice to first regain control of our own wills over against the habits and addictions which control us, so that then we can begin to shift our wills over to God. Each of the other disciplines is also a kind of fasting, that is, a kind of letting go of one thing and embracing of another, so each works in similar ways. Almsgiving helps us to let go of material possessions and to embrace the welfare of flesh and blood people (remember I referred to this as working toward a mutual liberation of the giver and the receiver so that both are in the end receivers of grace); prayer, as intentional stopping and coming into God's presence helps us to let go of time driven agendas so that we can embrace God's peace and presence at all times; study as the deep examination of the world around us to begin to see God's presence in all and in everyone is a letting go of the illusion of division and separateness, to embrace God's working in all, even though we will have to admit that God works in ways that we often cannot understand.

These disciplines work at the level of body and mind and perhaps emotion. But their goal is to help us reorient our wills. If I am a master of tacking and compensating for drift at sea, but forget the goal, I am no further ahead. The danger is that the disciplines and practices become distractions from real conversion. We can fool ourselves into thinking that because we engage in this or that spiritual practice that we have done our bit; that we have arrived.

Jesus said, “First clean the inside of the cup so that the outside also may become clean.” (Matthew 23:26). He said this in the context of criticizing those who were very meticulous about observing all the rules and practices, but who missed the point of them. So here too, we must be clear with ourselves that all spiritual disciplines are only tools, aids, to help us in this process of conversion, this process of turning our wills first toward God, and then bringing them into line with God's will.

When we pray, “Your will be done on earth as in heaven,” we are really praying that we would embrace God's will for ourselves. In the Lord's Prayer, Jesus has issued a challenge to us. Every time we pray it, we are challenging ourselves to bring our wills into line with God's will. If you haven't gotten that while praying this prayer, then you haven't really prayed this prayer. So again, you see the danger of going through the motions, but missing the point.

In fact, what we do to the Lord's prayer by saying it without taking it into ourselves, we also do in Sunday morning worship. The corporate worship is primarily a time for us to allow ourselves (notice I am using the passive voice here) to be gathered into a community by God; to allow ourselves to be gathered to hear the word (receiving from God), to offer up our prayers (returning to God), and to be fed in the meal (receiving from God), thus bringing our wills into an orientation that lines up with God's will. Unfortunately, Sunday morning is for some people “something that you do because that's just what we always did,” or it is “something that I go to to get something out of”, or it is “something that I do for God.” So we go through the motions, but we miss the point.

The opposite end of this is, of course, that we do nothing and fool ourselves into thinking that as long as we're nice people, we are doing the will of God. Certainly niceness is not a sin, but our souls yearn for something deeper. We get caught up in all the fads and fights and self-destructive behaviours and unsatisfactory relationships because our souls are looking for spiritually nutritious fulfillment, but we only give them the spiritual version of empty calories. Or, to go back to the sailing analogy, we keep crashing onto rocks or getting stuck on sandbars or colliding with other boats because we haven't figured out that we need to get somewhere but we haven't learned how to get there.

All through Lent I have ended my sermons by inviting you to engage in these disciplines. Lent is almost over. Today I will invite you to do something more profound, or if you have already begun the process, then to continue with it. I invite you to turn your will toward God's will, and even more, to have as your goal, that God's will should become your own. Amen.

      When the people of Jerusalem and the pilgrims coming to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover welcomed Jesus with shouts of "Hosanna! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!" they implied that Jesus had some claim to the ancient throne of Israel. It was probably this suggestion more than any other which later that week convinced Pontius Pilate that Jesus was best disposed of. The High Priest's accusations of blasphemy, of Jesus calling himself the Son of God, would not have meant much to a Roman whose traditional religion contained all sorts of sons and daughters of gods and goddesses. Of course to a religious Jew, claims of being Son of God, or of having access to God which did not require the Temple would have seemed more troubling than any claims to royal lineage.

We say in Christianity that Jesus is the rightful heir to the throne of David; that he is the Messiah of God, God's chosen one, sent by God to restore God's Kingdom. We also say that Jesus is our Great High Priest, interceding for us at the throne of God (Hebrews 7:11 - 8:13). These two claims about Jesus are repeated so much that we lose the great revolutionary and radical implications of what we are saying or hearing, and we miss some of the deep offense which both the Temple authorities and the Roman military administration took at what Jesus or the people around Jesus seemed to be implying.

When we say that Jesus is King or that Jesus is Lord, we are saying that no one else on planet earth, no other human, no one is King or Lord. It is so ironic, so almost comical and also unbelievable then that for so long rulers who claimed to be Christians insisted on the loyalty and obedience of those under them in the name of Christ, when, if they had really understood Christ as King, they would have known themselves to be illegitimate and lacking all authority. Furthermore, had ordinary folk realized what it meant for Jesus to be King, they would have objected to anyone coming alone and demanding their allegiance.

The Christians who lived under Roman rule before the time of the Emperor Constantine understood that the authority of earthly rulers is at best provisional. The Christians who have lived under rulers or in societies that considered themselves Christian since then have generally forgotten that even if a government is of a Christian inclination, Jesus is still King, Jesus is still Lord, and those who hold power are something less than that, no matter what they may call themselves or imagine themselves to be.

The traditional Christian claim that Jesus is Lord or that Jesus is King is profoundly anti-authoritarian, and maybe that's why so many have worked for so long to soften this claim, to tame it, and to bring it under the control of the people in power.

Saying that Jesus is our Great High Priest is also a revolutionary and radical statement. It means that no one else, no human religious figure of any sort, nor any other entity of any kind is necessary to approach the throne of God. Jesus does this for us. Jesus is our direct access to God.

I think that the Christians of the first few generations understood this, but somehow the leaders and overseers of the Christian communities managed to confer on themselves increasing control over this access to God. Once the Church became official, the institution somehow managed to insert itself into the relationship, so that now Jesus could only be gotten to through the intermediary of the Church.

Again, to say that Jesus is our Great High Priest has huge implications for the Church, implications which were recognized and acted on by the Reformers 500 years ago. It is one thing for the institution of the church to try to keep things in good order and to try to draw some parameters around teaching and practice. It is quite something else for any religious organization or religious leader to claim any sort of intermediary role between the ordinary person and God. Only Jesus is our Great High Priest.

But when we say that Jesus is King or Lord, and that Jesus is our Great High Priest, we do not only put limits on other people who might try to lord it over us, or try to insert themselves into our rightful relationship with God. We also set limits on ourselves.

If Jesus is Lord, I am not. If Jesus is High Priest, I am not. I cannot claim to hold power or authority over others. I cannot claim to have any High Priestly prerogatives. Although Christ intercedes for me, I do not displace Christ before God. My priesthood, which I share equally with all believers, is derivative: it flows out of Christ's High Priesthood.

What does this mean for us at a practical level? It means that we take our relationship to all governing authorities with a grain of salt. Someone has to organize things. Someone has to manage the structures of the society. But their role is purely functional. Our loyalty is to Jesus, who is King and Lord.

It also means that we take our relationship to religious leaders and institutions with a grain of salt. The real Church is something created by the Holy Spirit. The human version of it is functional: it meets the need to create some structure and order to things. But our loyalty and deference belongs to Jesus, who is our Great High Priest.

Finally, the understudying of Jesus as King/Lord and High Priest also reminds us of one of the key and underlying principles of the Reign or Realm of God: the first will be last and the last will be first; the greatest will be the least and the least will be the greatest.

In the Isaiah reading for today, this principle is expressed in another way. First we hear the words, "The Lord has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word." Then it says, "Morning by morning he wakens -- wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught."

In other words, those who teach must learn, those who lead must follow, those who assert themselves over against others must receive from others. Jesus is King and Lord, but in the reading from Philippians we read what kind of ruler he is: "...he did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave." The one who rules is servant of all. As Jesus said elsewhere, "whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all." (Mark 10:43-44).

Jesus did exactly this. He became servant and slave of all. This is one of the many layers of meaning of the cross. In order to be High Priest, which is a role set out in the regulations which governed the great Temple in Jerusalem, Christ also became the sacrifice. This is another of the many layers of meaning of the cross. Jesus said, "If any want to be my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." (Mark 8:34) To be a follower of Christ is to embrace this reversal in one's life.

Pontius Pilate and the High Priest of the Jerusalem Temple cannot have grasped what Jesus meant when he implied his kingship and his special relationship to God (nor for that matter did the ordinary people who greeted Jesus on his way into Jerusalem). They thought in ordinary terms. For Jesus to speak in this way could only mean to them that he was making a power play. In reality, he was emptying himself of all pretension. But by their very misunderstanding, they helped to fulfill the path which Jesus was walking.

When we say and sing that Jesus is Lord and King, or declare him to be our Great High Priest, let us consider what we are saying, and let us take up the cross of the realm and reign of God. Amen.