The fifth day of Lent: Driven

We had a Lenten Songs of Praise at Bishop Monkton chapel tonight. We didn’t sing this hymn but I used it as a meditation.

Forgive us when our deeds ignore
your righteous rule of all the earth,
when our decisions harm the poor,
denying their eternal worth.

Forgive us when we turn aside
from what is honest, true and fair,
when dreams of pleasure, wealth and pride
supplant your clear commands to care.

Forgive us, Lord, our endless greed
for what was never truly ours,
when, driven more by want than need,
we harness this world's brutal powers.

Forgive us that we change the rules
by which the game of life is played,
and never learn to wield the tools
which could see joy and hope remade.

Forgive us, God! Our lives betray
our shallow, vague response to grace;
so help us walk your holy way,
to make your world a better place.

Martin E. Leckebusch 

Today on the first Sunday of Lent,  I’ve suggested to folk we might need to be driven out to a wilderness place to think about how we act and are as Christ’s people. We spend so much energy on the Church, I worry we are squeezing out Jesus and his example and teaching to us. In order to reject the ways of whatever we believe Satan to be, we need to know what we stand for or we need to be reminded what we stand for.

Lenten time out is a good discipline for us. I said this to my congregation in Ripon, both of my churches together this morning.

“After his baptism Jesus went into the wilderness to prepare for his ministry. He needed to spend time alone with God and he also had to overcome the temptations of Satan. In this Lenten season we too withdraw into the wilderness. We try and spend more time in prayer and maybe fast from something we enjoy. We hope that in this way we will be purified and better fitted to overcome our daily temptations. We come closer to God without distractions.

So in this period you might like to subscribe to my blog or my Facebook page and read a nightly reflection, or you might like to ask me to send you a weekly thought by e mail on a Saturday night which some people get and enjoy, or you might like to join my Lent group which begins on 16 March for four weeks on a Thursday evening looking at the cross, or you might like to do a quiet day with me on 25 March in Grewelthorpe, or you might just commit to doing Holy Week well when we get there. There are services around my churches (and by then Sarah’s churches) on the Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of Holy Week, or you might like to ring me up and ask me to chat to you about your prayer life or your Bible reading or your spiritual life. As churches maybe we need a wilderness time to seriously think about what God is saying to us and to seriously think about our priorities.”

Do we need time driven by God away just to think? I wonder…

It was a thing the early Christians did thinking about Jesus’ example.  St Cuthbert when Bishop of Lindisfarne  often withdrew to Hobthrush, the small tidal island off Lindisfarne, and for more extreme isolation and self-denial went to Farne; others, such as St Guthlac, withdrew to the wilderness of the Fens, not then drained and so notably inhospitable. And today going on retreat does some of that inner working for people.”

People have said to me this going away, this driven place is a waste of time. I just say to you on this first Sunday of Lent, we cannot possibly keep going and doing if we don’t take in and stop and reassess. Jesus had forty days. Can we spare forty days too??