Sermon for the first Sunday in Lent

Sunday 13th February 2005

Preached by Rev Brian Parker

I like the story of the man who found a cocoon of an emperor moth. He took it home to watch the moth come out of the cocoon. One day a small opening appeared. The man sat and watched as the moth struggled to force its body through the little hole.

Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It seemed the moth had got as far as it could and was stuck. So he decided to help. He took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon to let the moth out.

Soon it emerged, but it had a swollen body and small-shrivelled wings. The man continued to watch the moth, expecting that in time the wings would enlarge and expand to support the body, which would simultaneously contract to its proper size.

Neither happened. In fact, the little moth spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shrivelled wings. It was never able to fly.

The man had failed to understand that the moth had to struggle to get through the tiny opening of the cocoon. In that struggle fluid is forced from the body into the wings so that the moth is ready to fly. It’s in the struggling that the moth finds its strength and its freedom.

‘Jesus was led by the Spirit’ into a struggle that made him strong and ready to fulfil his purpose on earth. It was a Lenten experience, a time of spiritual enlightenment because he had to struggle in a disciplined and determined way to do the right thing, to know the will of God and to understand the truth.

It would be wrong to think of his wilderness experience as a test as if it he was under some kind of examination. It was rather a time of discovery when he struggled to find out more about himself and what on earth he was meant to do.

In the process, in the wilderness, he found God’s grace and help. In struggling he grew more assured and confident in God: “Show me your ways O Lord. Teach me your paths, guide me in your truth, my hope is in you.”

But in this spiritual experience he was confronted by so many options, so many half-baked ideas, so many subtle diversions and so many vanities.

Rather than fulfil his true purpose he was tempted to consider any number of attractive ideas even perhaps the role of a social reformer?
But ‘Bread alone’ was not enough. Yes, Jesus acknowledged that material well-being is a basic human right – food, clean water and shelter. The restoration of human dignity, the healing of people was certainly his concern.

Yet underpinning such change for the better is a struggle that demands spiritual stamina and commitment.

The struggle to make poverty history, say in Africa, where there is so much blatant corruption and abuse of power.

The struggle to maintain a peace process in spite of relentless, brazen hypocrisy that stifles progress.

The struggle to live in community and to guard future generations from the forces of rampant bigotry and prejudice that rage against reconciliation.

The struggle to stand for decent ways of living on the shifting sands of values that is constantly under threat.

In all of these things and more, “Jesus was led by the Spirit” to understand that he had to exercise personal responsibility in order to fulfil his life’s purpose. He had to struggle with the issues and so have we.

The imperative of his struggle and ours meant that he could take no short cuts.

Of course he could have been a sensation, for example, a super star that would throw himself down from the pinnacle of the temple. What an entertainment – and it could all have been justified by scripture! “The scripture says, ‘He will put his angels in charge of you.’”

Of course Jesus affirms scripture but he rejects any manipulative and misguided interpretation of it. Being selective with scripture in order to get your own selfish, opinionated way is not what scripture is about.

The Lambeth Commission on Communion called for Christians to engage with the Bible together.

Scripture, said the Commission, had to be heard as God’s living and active word not just as ‘an echo of our own voices and opinions’.

So we need to struggle to listen. We need to struggle to listen to the Word of God and to understand it as part of the dynamic life of the Spirit, the light upon our path.

“Lord, thou hast given us Thy word for a light to shine upon our path: grant us so to meditate on that word, and to follow its teaching that we may find in it the light that shines more and more until the perfect day.”

Lent then is a word that speaks of the lengthening of the hours of daylight – in a spiritual sense we may think of it as a time of greater enlightenment, a time when we are challenged to struggle in heart and mind and to be open to the leading of the Spirit.

It’s a struggle St Paul relished. “All I can say is that I forget the past and I strain ahead for what is still to come.”

When James Roll struggled to live out his Christian Faith he embraced the three great principles of Lent – self-sacrifice, repentance and discipline.

At the age of 16 he set his course on a life of service to his fellow men. He was eventually ordained as a Church of England priest and served among the poor in the East End of London and later in some of the roughest neighbourhoods of Dagenham.

Throughout his ministry he conducted a daily service and the rest of the day he spent walking about the vast housing estates and high-rise flats – caring for the sick, the elderly, the housebound and anyone in trouble. He often said there were many kind hearts amidst the severest deprivation and poverty.

He accepted no stipend and lived in a small rented house in one of the estates in his parish. When he was asked about his vocation in life, he said: “I have chosen my way and I am happy in it”.

The fact that he was a multi-millionaire having inherited several properties and farmlands in the South of England made no difference. His ordered life, his dedicated service, his faith’s struggle was his chosen way.

It was a struggle but ‘I am happy in it’. Indeed as we think about that forlorn moth with its shrivelled wings he might have said, “I am happy in it - I can fly” – the struggle has made me strong, the fresh wind of the Spirit has carried me in the way of truth and righteousness.

“Led by the Spirit” -“I am happy in it” – “I can fly”.

Amen.