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Sermon 382 St. Martin’s 138 (Riverway) 3/9/25
Well, here we are in the familiar (yet uncomfortable) season of Lent. Can something be familiar and uncomfortable?
Isn’t that what every high school reunion is? “I know you. We used to be best friends, and then you dated that one person junior year, and then we never talked again, and look, here you here are…great. How are you?”
I think more people would compare Lent to that yearly check-up with the doctor. “Let’s look at your vitals, get you on a new diet, and find some healthier activities.” We don’t really like the check-up, even if we know it will be beneficial.
If it was up to us, we’d skip Lent altogether. It is known as the Debbie Downer of liturgical seasons; even the name is strange. Lent? It’s an Old English word for the lengthening days in springtime. Wouldn’t it be better if we just celebrated the end of the dark days of winter by saying, “I’m good. You’re good. Let’s skip to Easter, and keep things light and fun.”
But Lent reminds us that we’re not all good. The report that comes back after our vitals have been checked shows that we still have the terminal condition: we have sin-sick souls, and as our Prayer Book says, “there is no health in us.” There is no mincing of words—it may be stark but it is an honest assessment.
And so, we need Lent—whether we like it or not.
Today, I want to talk to you about the great Lenten themes of temptation and repentance, with the hope that this will help us begin our Lenten journey together on the right foot.
Temptation So, temptation.
One of C.S. Lewis’ most memorable works is a small book entitled The Screwtape Letters. He actually thought of the idea for the book while listening to a boring sermon in church. (You should have no problem writing a bestselling book once I’m done up here.)
If you haven’t read it (it might be a good book for Lent), it’s about a devil trying to tempt a man on earth. In it, a retired devil named Screwtape advises his young nephew on how to methodically lead one particular man away from their arch Enemy, God.
Much of their job entails shaping this man’s desires away from their heavenly Enemy. They plan to use all forms of distractions to keep him from thinking about God and becoming a believer.
In one letter, Screwtape writes to his protégé:
“You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy [God]. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
Lewis later said this was the hardest book he ever wrote because he had to get in the mind of the Temper. He found it an exhausting task. How would a devil think about temptation?
From Lewis’s own experience with temptation, he knew that it was rarely extreme. Instead, temptation is made up of a lot of small decisions—each one pushing us further and further from the Light and into the Nothing.
This is the entire premise of the show Breaking Bad. How does a schoolteacher end up making meth? The honorable desire to provide for your family, and to work hard in tough times, devolves into something truly sinister. The means do not always justify the ends. The small decisions we make will not only affect us but all those around us.
We are always being shaped and shaping others. We are not a fortress unto ourselves.
At the heart of it, temptation distorts our love and desires. St. Augustine said, “Love God and do as you please.” Those are not mutually exclusive.
It doesn’t mean I can truly love God and then gratify my desires however I want. We cannot be servants of God and slaves to sin. But if we love God—with all of our heart, soul, and strength—then our desires will be aligned with God’s desires, and we can do as we please because they will be the very thing that pleases God.
Remember how Genesis describes the forbidden fruit? “When [Eve] saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.”
From the very beginning, temptation has used that weakness in our hearts to go after what is pleasing and desirable in our own eyes so that we will do what we want. Humanity’s slogan is, “Love yourself and do as you please.”
As good as that sounds, from Genesis 3 to this very day, we have proven that we are not very good at making the right decisions. Individually and collectively, our choices have brought pain, suffering, and even death into this world.
Yes…all of us. We may want to shy away from the sins of others. “That’s their problem, not mine. Don’t put the sin of another on me,” are common mentalities today. Doesn’t that sound a lot like Cain asking God, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
“The line separating good and evil runs through all of us,” as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said, “and even the best of all hearts there remains…an uprooted small corner of evil.”
Repentance And so, repentance is something that we should desire to participate in as followers of Jesus. We know the world isn’t right, we know we have a part to play in that, and we come before the throne of God begging for help—for forgiveness and grace—because he is the only One whose forgiveness can set the world right.
We must implore for God’s to incline our hearts to keep his law–because it doesn’t come naturally.
But Federica Mathewes-Green has noted, “Repentance is not blubbering and self-loathing. Repentance is insight.”
Insight into ourselves, but also insight into the nature of God. It is having the maturity to recognize that we are sick and in desperate need of a heavenly cure.
Repentance helps us face the reality of our lives—and our world—and orients us back to the God who saves and who is the true lover of our souls and the source of all our desires.
As all the saints before us have discovered, repentance leads to freedom.
By acknowledging our need of God—and the ways we have failed—we are then able to take off the mask and stop pretending. We don’t have it all figured out, and that’s okay. God’s love is not dependent on our worthiness but on our willingness to receive the gift that he freely gives.
I have noticed that the people around me that have acknowledged their brokenness and thrown themselves on the mercy of God are the most honest, most refreshing Christians to be around. Many of them have gone through the 12 Step program. And they know better than any, that repentance can lead to a liberating freedom.
A repentant life, therefore, is marked by such characteristics as gratitude and grace. We have sinned, yet our Lord does not desire the death of sinners–he wants to make us whole again–he wants to form us into the image of his well-beloved Son who conquered Satan’s temptations through faithful obedience and unwavering trust.
The journey from temptation to repentance (and forgiveness) is bookended by grace. God’s grace is present as the Nothingness calls our name in temptation’s darkest hour, and there is grace on the other end when we confess our sins to God.
The strange, good news of Lent (if you ever doubted there was good news in Lent) is that repentance leads to restoration and back to a place where we can receive God’s gracious love with open arms.
Rather than being a season of doom and gloom, we are reminded more than ever to love God and do as we please.
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