Genesis 3:22,23; Matthew 4: 1-4, 7

The need for letting go

It is the first Sunday in Lent.  Lent is about refocusing, cutting out the non-essential and giving up something so we can be closer to God.  In a sense it is about letting go, letting go of the things that keep us from being spiritual. We have talked about Jesus and His temptation in the desert and we are reminded of the Creation story where Adam and Eve are thrown out of the Garden of Eden.  Friends, at the beginning of Lent we are supposed to go into that desert with Jesus.  The beauty of the desert is stark and simple and harsh.  It is a place of extreme temperatures and also a place of few distractions.  You can really survey the landscape in the desert, it isn’t obscured  by trees.  Every scar in the land is visible.  That kind of landscape does just not expose nature, but it has a way of exposing the people in it. It can make them reflect on life that is unobscured, make them see what really matters.  That is one reason why there were so many hermits and contemplatives in the desert. In the desert Jesus comes to terms with His desires and His power and He lets it go.  We who, in a metaphoric way, must travel with Jesus in Lent, are also asked to let go of something.  Traditionally, at least in the Roman Catholic tradition, that meant giving up some food or some favorite activity, but maybe that’s just a distraction for letting go of something in ourselves.  Adam and Eve are examples of how not to do it, as is the case with many of the stories in the Old Testament. They have it made but they want more. No letting go for them, until they are forced to give up everything they knew.

Idina Menzel won the Oscar for best song last Sunday. The title is –surprise-“Let it Go (The Disney Corporation):”  The snow glows white on the mountain tonight,not a footprint to be seen.Let it go, let it go! Can’t hold it back any more. Let it go, let it go! Turn away and slam the door….. Let the storm rage on. The cold never bothered me anyway. It’s funny how some distance, makes everything seem small. And the fears that once controlled me, can’t get to me at all.  I am one with the wind and sky. Let it go, let it go. You’ll never see me cry. Here I’ll stand, and here I’ll stay. Let the storm rage on. …. And one thought crystallizes like an icy blast I’m never going back; the past is in the past! Let it go, let it go. And I’ll rise like the break of dawn. Let it go, let it go That perfect girl is gone.  Here I stand, in the light of day. Let the storm rage on! The cold never bothered me anyway… “   The singer knows she has to relinquish something to grow, but she has to overcome something in herself to be able to do it.  Earlier we talked about movies and how so often the most beautiful are the ones where the main character has to find some strength within him or herself to give up the one she or he loves in a chaotic  situation.  In her 1862 poem entitled “after great pain, a formal feeling comes,” Emily Dickinson writes:” This is the hour of Lead, remembered if outlived, As freezing persons, recollect the Snow-First-Chill-the Stupor-then the letting go.”  “the letting go.”  The kind of letting go we are asked to know is not quite that dramatic or tragic, but maybe for Jesus it was.

What we should think of letting go perhaps is ego or a little bit of it or a little bit more of it.  It seems Vladimir Putin has just decided that he might want to risk another Crimean war. In the Crimean war of 1853-1856, the British and the Ottoman Turks and the French fought the Russians.  Russians wanted to protect their Orthodox subjects from the Ottoman Empire they said.  At the same time it was about the conflict between Roman Catholics and Orthodox Russians living in Palestine.  Russians always want to “protect” their people, because they are ethnically Russian.  But it is really an excuse.  Russia as the largest country in the world is 90% covered in snow for 8 months of the year, but like Sochi, the frozen Russians have always loved the Crimea.  It was a kind of Russian Riviera.  Leonid Brezhnev had huge dacha there.  It  was the Soviet Union’s south coast.  There is a huge nostalgic dimension here. Vladimir Putin is not singing “let it go,”or “The cold never bothered me anyway.” For the winter Olympics he chose one of the only Russian cities with palm trees!  There is a lot going on here. It is about resources, location, history, identity, but also ego.  And he is not going to let go of his ego.  It’s as big as his country.

So, friends, what about us? Can we come alongside Jesus a little and let something go, perhaps not insist so much on our own right or righteousness, perhaps not hold on to a grudge as long as we have, perhaps accept the fact that we didn’t get as much recognition as we thought we should have, perhaps not expect from God what was not or could not have been delivered.   So often ego sits there like a big ugly boulder in the driveway of our lives.  Maybe we kind of like it there. It gives us an excuse for not moving on.  Friends, where could your ego use a little trimming? May God give us insight.