1st Sunday of Lent St Andrew’s Milngavie 2024
Today we marked the First Sunday of Lent with Lenten liturgy and hymns accompanied by Alison.
The Lent Group will start this Thursday 22nd February 3pm at All Saints, Bearsden. It will run throughout Lent on Thursday afternoons.
The book to be studied is “Rooted in Love” Lent reflections on Life in Christ introduced by Rt Rev Sarah Mullallay, The Bishop of London. Each session will study one of the five sections of the book beginning with the introduction and the first section. Let me know if you need me to order you a copy.
Also available is the Ignatius Spirituality Centre Lent Retreat both online and in book format which Steve Parratt is very kindly able to provide. The theme is Through Lent with Pope Francis, drawing on some of the wisdom in the Pope’s homilies and encyclicals over the past 10 years covering some important themes, such as mercy, friendship, love and care.
This week
Tuesday 10am – Prayer Group in the Garden Room.
Wednesday 2.30pm – Book Group – Clare’s
Thursday 10am – Said Holy Communion followed by coffee in Friendship House
Readings for next Sunday – 2nd Sunday in Lent – Genesis 17:1-7,15-16 Romans 4:13-25 Mark 8:31-38
Today’s readings – Genesis 9:8-17, 1 Peter 3:18-22, Mark 1:9-15
This week on Ash Wednesday we began the season of Lent. Lent is a season in the church’s year when Christians traditionally spend time in fasting, contemplation, denial and self-reflection, prayer and studying the scriptures. The purpose being to grow closer to God.
Shrove Tuesday, historically, was a day to use up all the extra food in the house in preparation for the fast ahead – and so it became a custom to make pancakes. A tradition still very much practised today but not perhaps for the same reasons.
Our Christian ancestors, however, would have taken Lent very seriously. In the fourth century, the desert fathers and mothers as they were known felt called to live out a life of extreme asceticism often in the inhospitable desert. There they starved themselves of food, drink and companionship. And they trained themselves, through these feats of asceticism to be dependent on the strength of God alone.
They did not set out to influence the rest of Church or society, they lived lives of poverty, withdrawn from everyday life and normal influences. But somehow their witness energised even those who knew they could never imitate this hard calling. So, their life in the wilderness brought encouragement, not just for those who embraced it but for others too.
The gospel this morning tells us that immediately after Jesus was baptised The Spirit sent him out into the wilderness. The wilderness in the bible is a place of preparation, a place for intercession, a place to wait on God, and a place to rest.
After crossing the waters of the Red Sea, God led Moses and his people into the wilderness and to the mountain, where Moses fasted for forty days and forty nights prior to receiving the tablets of the law.
Later, King David fled to the wilderness to fast and wait on God for deliverance after his lapse into adultery, and while his own son hunted him in open rebellion. Finally, Elijah fled for his life to the wilderness after displacing the religion of Baal, where he fell to the ground in a refusal of his calling, and yet where he was comforted, sustained and renewed.
And so, Jesus goes into the wilderness to prepare himself for his ministry. It may seem an odd way to prepare for leadership, by starving oneself alone in the desert. Jesus prepares for his ministry by making himself weak and utterly vulnerable, as though this is the only way in which he can be sure that the ministry he will exercise comes from God, and not just from his own strengths. He does not spend the time drawing up mission plans and identifying key people and setting goals. Instead, he reduces himself to the barest essentials leaving his character and instincts, starkly exposed with no externals to buttress them.
What was being tested in the wilderness was the core of Jesus’ being, stripped of all other defences. That core proved to be total dependence on God his father.
In our scripture today God does assure us of our need for this dependence. In the reading from Genesis, he confirms his covenant with his people that never again will they be destroyed by flood, he will always be there for them. And in the epistle Peter tells us we are saved by the resurrection of Christ “who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand – with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him” 1 Peter 3:22
We are not all called to go and live lives of harsh asceticism in the desert like the desert fathers and mothers. But in Lent we are offered this challenge – to ask ourselves what is at the heart and core of our lives. What would the devil offer to us to tempt us away from God? Do we even know what is essential to us and what is peripheral? Have we ever tried to live without some of the props of comfort and security that seem to us so necessary?
So Lent is not something to be dreaded, depressed about or overly hard on ourselves. It’s a journey we undertake together.
It is a chance to use wilderness time as an opportunity to grow and to know God better, so that we may find new ways to draw closer to him, and as a result find that his call on our lives will grow clearer and more understandable.
Whatever form our Lenten journey may take, Lent is really a preparation for the greater story. It gives us a focus into the wider picture, Easter.
Easter is the most exciting and important thing we celebrate as Christians. It is at Easter that we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord. It is at Easter that we remember Jesus’ victory over death and all that is bad – the greatest mystery that brings us the greatest hope and salvation to the world.