Lent 5 C

Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 126; Philippians 3:4-14; John 12:1-8

Did anyone give anything up for Lent this year?

I didn’t, but maybe will next year…

• wet blanket, guilt-inducing, legalism … or
• holy experiment to redefine our relationship with stuff (like bread)

Paul talks about giving things up in his letter to the Philippians that we heard.

(That’s right, I’m not preaching on John…)

Different kind of giving up. Paul’s giving up everything and here’s why:

If Paul had a Lenten Discipline, his would have been almost perfect.

• circumcised on the eighth day
• tribe of Benjamin; Pharisee
• persecutor of the church

…and maybe most astounding, Paul brags that with regard to the law, he was blameless. (At least the way he interpreted law.) In other words, if anyone ever had lived blamelessly under the law, it was Paul. He must have lived with a single-minded obsession with keeping the law.

In terms of being righteous, Paul had felt in control. But because of his encounter with Christ, Paul discovered this was his biggest blind spot.

We need Grace most in the things that we think we need it the least. The things we do to feel in control are our biggest blind spots.

We need Grace most in the things that we think we need it the least.

If you made a list like Paul’s of all the things that help you feel in control, but which ultimately cannot save you, what would be on it? (Hint: probably the things that you worry about the most.)

• health? (eat only the right things…as to the South Beach Diet: blameless.)
• raising the perfect family?
• being the most independent? Never asking anything of anyone…never owing anything to anyone?
• financial security?
• for me: probably being an effective pastor

Getting what we do confused with the Grace that makes us who we are.

Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.

Everything that Paul had worked so hard for, had come to be loss for him. All the things that we struggle for, come to be loss for us. Not because they aren’t good. But because their goodness fools us into thinking that they can save us.

• it’s good that you eat the right things, but your health cannot save you
• it’s good that you want the best for your kids, but that will not save you (and it won’t save them)
• it’s good to work for financial security for your family, but it can’t last forever
• it’s good to be self-reliant and independent but there will be a time for all of us when we will need help

Ultimate and hardest thing to give up: control.

(Try giving up control for Lent!)

We can! We can give up needing to do everything ourselves. We can give up self-righteousness.

We can count it all as loss because of Christ. Because of Christ’s righteousness.

Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. (Philippians 3.12 NRSV)

Because we are baptized into Christ, we are made into something new. From the book of Isaiah, we hear:

Thus says the LORD, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. (Isaiah 43.16–19 NRSV)

Like new rivers in the desert of our life, God will take our old control-obsessed self and make something new. God will give rest to you when you’re weary from trying to be blameless under which laws you’re trying to follow.

And God will make a new thing — a better thing — of us as we give more and more control to God. As we trade our blind spots for Grace.

Until we can say with Paul that we count everything as loss because of what we have gained in Christ.