This sermon was preached for the first Sunday in Lent, March 6, 2022 for St. Andrew's Episcopal Church. The texts for this sermon were Deuteronomy 26:1-11, Romans 10:8b-13, Luke 4:1-13, and Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16. Watch it here.
After my son was born, I had to take some time to reacquaint myself with my body and how it had changed. I remember standing in the shower, my first after returning from the hospital, simply thanking it for all it had done for me and my son the last nine months, for all that it had endured during labor.
One of the hardest parts was recognizing that my body was indeed changed forever, that some after-effects of pregnancy and birth are permanent. My abdomen is now etched with the same stretch marks that criss-cross my mother’s belly. There is no erasing them even if I wanted to.
My stretch marks became the final straw that shattered a secret, life-long illusion that if I just tried hard enough, lost enough weight, exercised the right way, my body could be perfected, unblemished, nothing but beautiful. What my stretch marks remind me now is this: perfection is not the goal; love is. These scars are the marks of the hardest and greatest thing I have ever done for love.
Perfection is not the goal; love is the goal.
The great irony of Lent, and much of Christian practice, is that we can be led away from this truth quite easily. That’s why I loved that our Lenten Meditation Guide began with a reflection by Al Bornemann on the pitfalls of perfectionism. See, Lent demands that we examine all the ways we fall short, it harps on us to recommit to being better in concrete and disciplined ways. A tantalizing whisper escapes from between the lines of our prayer of confession, it IS possible to be perfect. Our rituals and readings nudge us toward the conclusion: God wants us to be perfect.
After all, when the devil tempts Jesus in the desert, he uses scripture.
When Duke Christian theology professor Kate Bowler was diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer at age thirty-five, it shattered her own life-long illusion that the perfect life is possible, if only you make the right choices. In her 2021 book, Bowler confronts the modern self-help “best life now” advice industry for all its empty promises. As Americans, we are surrounded by books, advertisements, movements, and even sermon series that insist if we only try hard enough and think positive enough we can escape all these fragile and frustrating human limitations. Everything is possible, a perfect life is within your power - if only you follow the secret, the formula, the path. It is all fixable, overcomeable, in our control. Bowler’s title is her courageous and truthful reply: No cure for being human.
When the devil tempts Jesus in the desert, he offers Jesus the cure to the worst parts of being human: first, the embarrassing neediness of our bodies, second, our powerlessness over our lives and societies, third, our vulnerability to suffering, pain, and death. What if the discipline of Lent is not about overcoming these parts of being human? What if the discipline of Lent is about embracing what they can teach us about love? Jesus’ experience of real humanness is what gives him the empathy and compassion to live out his ministry on earth. Divine perfection is left behind when love is the goal.
The devil takes Jesus up to the pinnacle of the temple and tells him that if he just believes hard enough he can escape suffering and pain, he can sidestep the parts of being human that hurt and bruise and scar. Those taunts will be echoed again on Good Friday, by the bystanders who mock him on the cross. We know what Jesus chooses: love, love to even to the end. Standing there with Jesus at the pinnacle, though, we can see it, can’t we? The other choice. Our perfect, safe, blessed, fruitful life - right there for the taking, if we just believe hard enough. If we jump. Isn’t that what God has promised?
Bowler offers this blessing,
“Blessed are you, dear heart, when you feel it again. You had a moment there that felt perfect and certain and complete and you thought, I could live here forever. And then and then and then you were pulled unwillingly into this changed reality, you blinked and there was a new terrible address. Here, where there is something wrong, here in a place that is unfixable, unoutworkable. Here in a world that can’t stay still long enough to be perfected, at least not by us. So blessed are we, beloved, who gather up the truths we need to live here: beauty, love, joy, acceptance, community, and more than a touch of courage.”
I love this blessing because it admits that there are indeed moments when life takes us up to the pinnacle of all we dreamed it could be. And man, do we want to stay there forever. We imagine that if we throw ourselves wholeheartedly into perfection there will be no crashing down, not ever. That angels of happiness and perfection will bear us up.
But life, life is full of falling and shuddering halts and bruised heels. Some of those falls may even mark us forever.
Faith is not the absence of falling. Faith is getting back up again. Getting back up not to the top of the world, but simply back on our own two feet, scars and all.
When we sit down to commit to our Lenten practices, it can be so tempting to start from the goal of perfection. To think through the human weaknesses we long to conquer in ourselves, the limitations we wish to overcome if only we had enough willpower. The things that - if only I could fix this, erase this, then I could be perfect. Life would be perfect. But perhaps the question we should be asking is this: What, in this moment, is holding me back from choosing love? What would free me to more fully love God, love my neighbor, and love myself?
A commitment to running in the mornings these next forty days becomes less about toned thighs and more about a celebration of the bones and sinews and lungs that carry you through this life. My decision to uninstall the TikTok app less about removing a frivolous indulgence and more about being present to my husband, my son. We let go of punishing ourselves for being human, and limited, and weak. We explore loving who and how we are created to love - clumsily, imperfectly. Human.
Framed like this, with the example of Jesus before us, Lent becomes about turning away from the illusion of willpower, control, and invincibility. Love becomes the goal.
Comments
Post a Comment