Ezekiel 37:1-4; Romans :7-9

Letting go of Lent

Today we see farewell to another Lenten season as we steam on to Palm Sunday and Easter.  The messages have been a series of sorts about letting go.  We started the season with an understanding of the importance of giving up something important as Jesus goes out into to the wilderness to face the temptation that comes with His power.  This led us to think about what we should let go of in Lent.  So we came to a discussion of ego and how our drive to be the center of the world gets us into trouble and gets in the way of making our contribution to God and the world.  It seems we are always starving for credit and recognition.

Next our topic was our identity.  What does that have to letting go you may ask. “I don’t remember you really focusing on that.”  Well, we came to the conclusion that at different times of the church year our identity is a bit different. At Advent we are “anticipators. ” At Christmas we are “celebrators” and “partiers.”  You get the point.  At Lent we are companions, companions of the suffering Jesus Who is on an inevitable collision course with the cruel and insecure authorities.  Being a companion as opposed to a guide or a leader means you go where the other goes.  That’s the whole idea of the stages of the cross, isn’t: to follow the footsteps of the Christ. A companion comes alongside, step by step. She or he is there when you look over.  You cannot be a true companion if you want to be in charge of the journey. So during we Lent we must also try to give up control of the journey and to follow alongside.

Friends, we also followed the lectionary readings to the topic of real conversations as we hear Moses talk to the angry people and a frustrated Moses to God. We also saw Jesus have a genuine conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well where He named what was going on, where He listened and where healing and transformation took place because of Him.  The topic was “real conversations.”  However, to gain real conversations, we need to give something up.  For one, there is a significant risk when we talk about real things.  So we give up safety.  We have to give up pretense and superficial talk and artificial talk.  We risk hurting people and the relationship in order to help them heal. It can be uncomfortable.  So we have to give up insincerity and a superficial attitude.

Then last week we talk about profoundly disorienting life can be, but also how profoundly disorienting it can be to follow to Word of God.  It makes our head spin sometimes. We often don’t know what it means in our day and age.  But this disorientation caused by the words of Jesus is a good thing.  It makes us think in new ways. It makes us reorient ourselves.

Then finally today, we face two passages in the lectionary that are not easy to swallow. They in themselves are disorienting.  In Ezekiel we get the vision of the dry bones, representing the people of Israel.  It is a bleak scene on the one hand and a hopeful one to the other.  The prophet is asked if the Spirit can breathe new life into these bones.  In Romans Paul also speaks about the Spirit. He contrasts Spirit with flesh.  Now flesh is everything that has to do with things that make us selfish, focus on the temporary and the outward.  Paul’s words in the verses of the week seem harsh to us:  if we do have the Spirit we do not belong to God.  But then he softens up in the third verse just as our anxiety level goes up: well, but you guys are okay.  Paul really shows his thinking, a difference between Spirit and body that is still alive in our culture.  The things of “the flesh” are like a heavy load we drag behind us as we try to be spiritual. We are so attached to everything of the world.  And in our day and age there is so much more to get attached to!  “Flesh” or things of the outward world are always getting in the way.  This includes physical things, things of the body and the things the body likes.  Isn’t it interesting, as our body slowly declines and we lose mobility, looks and flexibility, we have a chance to have a Spirit that has really grown and is very healthy! The body goes downhill as the Spirit grows more beautiful we hope. At least that’s how it is supposed to be.

Friends, let us recap our journey through Lent the lesson we learned from the lectionary. That catchy isn’t it: lessons learned from the lectionary during Lent?  Jesus teaches us and models for us that in order to do what God asks of us, there is something we have to relinquish. What we must try to relinquish is ego that gets in the way of growth, control that gets in the way of being a companion, insincerity that gets in the way of being real in our relationships, our orientation that gets in the way of seeing things in a new way and preoccupation with the outward that keeps us from being spiritual.  Ego, control, insincerity, orientation and outwardness.  May God help us to make them less powerful.