A Sermon

#2013-0217

A Sermon for/on the First Sunday in Lent
-- presented by Jerry Liang at St. James' Church, Taichung

The Readings for today:
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
Romans 10:8b-13
Luke 4:1-13

O Lord! Give me the sincerity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. [Amen.]

-- Reinhold Niebuhr 1892-1971

Good morning, my dear friends in Christ!

Some of you might be a little curious about my standing here as a preacher. “Why is it not Bishop John Chien that is giving a sermon here?” They may be asking this. Or you . . . you may be thinking of someone else, such as Rev. David Chee, Ms. Catherine Lee, and Rev. Charles Chen, who have come to minister to us on other Sundays -- more or less often than Bishop John does.

Well, when I asked Rev. David, Catherine, and Rev. Charles for help, I wished one of them would be available to come and preach this morning. But none of them is available. Rev. David is now in Kaohsiung, Catherine was said to be traveling in India, and Rev. Charles has just left from Taiwan, for the U.S.

So, finally, here I am! Under the guidance of Rev. Jason Ke (Thank you, Jason.) and with Warren’s encouragement, I’m trying to share with you tow topics: (1) the meaning of Lent, and (2) something about the lessons (that we’ve just read this morning). I hope that my English would not cause too much trouble in conveying what I really want to say.

First of all, I’d like to express my deep concern for Bishop John’s physical condition. To be honest, I was very sorry, or upset, to hear that Bishop John was diagnosed as having cancer of the pancreas. The news startled me, and it was also shocking to my wife, when we were informed of it. Then, we both started thinking of my father-in-law (Jean’s father) again. We thought of him again and again and we missed him so much during this past week, the Chinese New Year, because he (my father-in- law) had passed away about three years ago due to a serious cancer [of the pancreas].

Oh, my friends! Please forgive me for telling you this. But to tell the truth, since I got the news about Bishop John a week ago, I’ve kept praying for him and for his wife, Grace. I presume that from then on it would be a special period of time for Bishop John and his family -- a time for them to face (or confront) a big challenge.

Let’s keep them in our prayer. If you read the ANNOUNCEMENTS in today’s bulletin, you’ll see #2: “Let’s earnestly pray for Bishop John . . . It is our earnest prayer that God provide healing mercies and comfort to him.”

O Lord God! May the Lord our God provide healing mercies and comfort to all of us, as well. It can be assured that we’ll not only pray for one who is physically sick at the moment, but we’ll also pray for many other people, including ourselves, who are weak sometimes.

We will have to pray -- for our spiritual/eternal life and also for our temporal life on earth. Meanwhile, for some special/personal reasons and for some common reasons, each of us needs to pray in earnest, especially in this season -- the Season of Lent!

Today is the first Sunday in Lent. As you may have noticed, our church (the Episcopal Church) follows a particular calendar (called the liturgical calendar) in doing services on Sundays and other important feast days. According to this church calendar, the Season of Lent already started four days ago, on Wednesday that is called “Ash Wednesday.”

From that Wednesday [Feb. 13] to Easter Eve [Mar. 30 this year] is a period of 46 days, including 6 Sundays. If you take the 6 Sundays away from the 46 days, then you’ll have exactly 40 days before Easter Day [Mar. 31].

These 40 days can be compared to Jesus’s 40 days being tested in the wilderness. These 40 days are, in a sense, meant for us (= “followers of Jesus”) to prepare ourselves through prayer, repentance, almsgiving, and self-denial.

l  What is prayer? -- In my favorite dictionary, prayer is defined as “the activity of speaking to God” and a prayer is “the words a person says when he/she speaks to God.” Accordingly, we can refer to a strong hope that we have as our prayer.

l  What is repentance? -- When we show repentance for something wrong that we have done, we make it clear that we are sorry for doing it.

l  What is "alms" in the word almsgiving? -- Alms are gifts of money, clothes, or food to poor people. In the Season of Lent, we should, as expected by many real Christians, do our best to help others, in whatever way we can.

l  Finally, self-denial. What is it? -- Self-denial is the habit of refusing to do or to have things that you would like, either because you cannot afford them, or because you believe it is morally good for you not to do them or have them.

During the Season of Lent, many of the faithful commit to fasting (or giving up certain types of luxuries) as a form of penitence. Such kinds of self-denial would be, in my opinion, a very sensible practice of prayer in this special season. And this is prayer in action (or by action), rather than prayer just in words (or with words)!
    -- Compare this with the proverb Actions speak louder than words!

Well, I think I have explained the meaning of Lent to some extent. The key point is that Lent is a period of time for us (the believers) to do such things as prayer, repentance, almsgiving, and self-denial in order to improve (or purify) ourselves, so that we can be more like Jesus our Lord, and that we’ll be able to resist the temptation of the Devil, and . . . with Jesus Christ’s help, to bravely deal with any challenges and difficulties that we have to encounter in this world.

But how? How can we be better like our Lord? Or what? What can we learn from today’s biblical lessons?

This morning the Gospel teaches about Jesus’s 40 days in the wilderness, and his being tempted by the evil one. From Luke 4:1-13, we can learn something about Jesus and also something about ourselves:

-- Say, all of us (including you and me) experience challenges in our lives, whether it is on a personal/relationship level, or in our lives of faith. It is how we respond to those challenges that is the important thing.

Satan challenged the Lord in three areas:

(1)   Regarding loyalty to God -- Let’s ask ourselves: How deep is our commitment? What are the things in life that we tend to put before our relationship to Christ? Have we ever dreamed of “turning the stones to bread”?
     If bread stands for the material food while God’s word stands for the spiritual food, then we should remember that “one does not live by bread alone.” (= Human beings cannot live on bread alone.)

(2)   Regarding making unreasonable demands of God or Christ -- Are we asking the Lord to prove himself to us before we believe? Are we like Thomas described in The Gospel of John 20: 25?
Thomas made a demand after Jesus had been crucified, saying, "Unless I see the scars of the nails in his hands and put my finger on those scars and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
     In our lives of faith, we don’t have to be as dubious (or doubtful) as Thomas was; in fact, the saying “To see is to believe” is not always true. We should put our trust in the Lord our God and worship/serve only him.

(3)   Regarding the situation that one makes a foolish decision and expects God to save him from being irresponsible – Read the final part of the story (Luke 4:9-13) again. When the Devil says: “Jump . . . the angels will save you.” we should recall the words from the scripture: “Don’t put the Lord you God to the test.”

Yes, this and other quotations mentioned above are great verses in the Gospel of Luke to vividly depict a personal experience of temptation and challenge. Do you think the Gospel story today is meaningful and interesting to you? What would you say about how God and the scripture help us to overcome the temptation?

Since Lent commemorates the 40 days of Jesus’ temptation and fasting in the wilderness, the Lucan account of that period comes to the fore. The Gospel lection stresses that the response of Jesus to the temptations was faith in God and the confession of that faith.

The other readings for the day carry forward these themes:

l  To make a long story short, Deuteronomy 26:1-11 presents the instructions for the celebration of the festival of the first fruits, including the recital of the confession of faith.

l  The psalm, Psalm 91:1-16, is a meditation on God’s care for those who trust in the Lord.

l  And the text from Romans 10:8b-13 is a classical Pauline statement that justification follows belief and salvation follows confession.

I would like to emphasize that the reading from Romans is wonderful. How do I become a Christian? Paul tells us: “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."

Let’s always bear Paul’s teaching in mind, and put it this way: “If I confess with my lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in my heart that God raised him from the dead, I will be saved."

Let us pray.

O Lord, who are our mighty savior and protector! Help us not to fall into the traps that Devil would have us to. Help us to honor you, Lord, and to yield our lives to you. Amen.