#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.
