It is a strange and unusual circumstance that brings us to church on a Wednesday evening. This is not part of our Episcopal pattern of worship. We come on Sunday mornings, not mid-week evenings. We are about the out of the ordinary tonight. We’ve come to this holy place to participate in the beginning of another Lenten season and the call to observe a Holy Lent stirs the mind to consider, why did Jesus Christ come in the world? What was his real motivation and mission? Most Christians long schooled in the faith would answer, Christ came “To save Sinners.” Which leads immediately to the question, who are sinners and from what do they need saving? Again, our faith teaches us, “We are all sinners.” All humankind, every person ever born, every person who will ever be born is a sinner. And every sinner needs to be saved from a disordered life on earth and from certain death in eternity. This is a grim state of affairs and one wonders how this condition came to be. 

     When God called all things into being, He had a most marvelous plan. He had an expectation that men and women and children would turn to him easily and consistently. He intended that humankind would seek his guidance and naturally come after his affection. But rather than compel our love like drones, he gave us the gift of choice. We were created with the capacity to choose God’s plan or select instead the “devises and desires of our hearts.” We chose poorly and as a result we consigned ourselves to an existence of dis-ease, anxiety, fretfulness, disordered priorities, and a generalized sense of being apart from our true place and outside of our true natures. Our choice of self over God also consigned us to separation from bliss and perfection for all eternity. We denied ourselves an ideal life with God in His heaven. 

     God could have left us in this pitiful state. A lesser deity certainly would have done so. But the Lord God, from a place of infinite devotion called us back to himself. He created Covenants to establish our relationship anew. When we failed to keep our part of those promises, he created the Law. When we wandered away from his statues to keep us safe, he sent prophets to lead us back. When we ignored their wise advice, he sent kings to model proper order. When they failed in their charge, God saw that something much more dramatic was required. Only something supernatural would effect the change required to save us from ourselves and reunite us to his perfect plan. And so, God in his love for us, sent his Son to take on all the sins, all the darkness, all the weakness, and ugliness and laziness of humanity.  Christ came and at his death, He descended to the depths of the dead and took on the sins of all the souls who had walked the earth before him. He took on the sins of all souls alive in world that day. He took on the sins of all the souls yet to be born. He gathered up all that brokenness and dispelled it and made reunion with our creator possible. Christ made a path for us to travel when we fell away again. Just by acknowledging his great sacrifice for us we could find our way back. In giving his life for us, in taking on our waywardness he created an entryway into eternal life with the Father in the perfected realm of heaven.    

     But if Christ’s mission was only this divine feat, we would still be lost. We would not know how to avoid making poor choices again. We would not know how to order our lives with one another or how to orient ourselves to a loving God. Jesus didn’t come to earth in a cosmic metaphysical eruption, sucking all sin into a black hole and returning instantaneously into the heavens. Jesus walked on earth as a human prototype providing us a model on how to live as God intended. He showed us exactly how God meant for us to live in relationship with one another and with our creator. Jesus Christ did not spend years walking the earth to show us the daily to day existence of a God. He came to demonstrate proper human conduct. And notice how his life unfolded. Jesus engaged in work he loved.  He did not spend his time in a job that wore him down or defeated his spirit.    He took days off.  He invested time in wonderful friendships. He went to weddings and dinner parties. He drank wine and ate grilled fish. He prayed everyday but not in a cave on his knees for 23 hours straight. Everyday, everyday he communicated with God but not to the exclusion of everything else. Occasionally, he went apart and devoted himself to quiet reflection with God but more often he incorporated his prayer time with living in the world. Jesus lived a balanced life, a perfectly balanced life. He exercised, he walked everywhere. He ate well. He looked outside himself. He was not a self-centered, self absorbed individual. Balance was what he modeled for us.  If you were to take a psychological profile, an index of a perfectly well adjusted, self- actualized, mentally healthy human specimen and laid that profile over Jesus it would be a perfect match.

     Christ’s death was to accomplish our salvation. Jesus’ time on earth was to give us a reasonable, obtainable example.   His day to day life was a gift to us. Moderation in all human desires, balance in all commitments, daily orientation to God, and self sacrificing compassion- this is the life God made us for. Jesus showed us this life. Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking Jesus’ life on earth was a life without flaws. This isn’t so. Jesus as a fully human being had moments of anger and sadness, fear and temptation. He wasn’t sent to model perfection. He was sent to model an appropriately ordered life. Moderation, balance, orientation to God, self-sacrificing compassion.

     Because he is no longer here to demonstrate this pattern of life, He gave us the church. In the Church we model for one another and to hold each other accountable. The Church, keeping true to her mission gives us the gift of Lent. For a well considered, well balanced time we devote ourselves to our orientation to God, to understanding who Christ was for us and what his life and death means for us. For 40 days out of our 365 day year we look intentionally to our relationship with Christ. Not too long, not too short, just the perfect time. We pray, we study, we take on disciplines, and we give up distractions. This is a serious time but not a depressing, burdensome time. Lenten weeks are a call to exercise some spiritual muscles, to pay attention to an area too often forgotten, to create a much needed balance. The activities we take on, the things we put down are meant to be provisions for the journey not punishments. If giving up chocolate or wine keeps us irritated or feeling overly deprived, the point is missed. Our focus becomes the deprivation rather than the Lord. If putting coins into mite boxes makes us anxious about our financial future, the point is missed. Lent is a time for drawing nearer to Christ not a time to fret over self-imposed self-denials. Take the gift of these 40 days and use them in the most life giving way. Take on the disciplines that support your way to our Savior and set aside those that put distance between you. Let us enter this season with seriousness and thoughtfulness and yes, with hope for what may be revealed to us in our intentional time with Christ. Let say, “Yes” to the opportunity for balance and wholeness that the season of self examination and repentance provides us. And now let us be about our purpose this evening. I invite you to the observance of a holy Lent.