Becoming better lovers
Matthew 4:1-11
The Rev. Sara Fischer
I once served a church that did a Friday night compline service every week. I wasn’t sure how it would be received: it was all chanted, in the dark, at 9:30 on a Friday. A friend came and it stuck. It took me awhile to ask her what it was about the service that brought her back each week and she said “It’s kind of a rinse for my spirit at the end of the week.”
That’s kind of how I feel about the Great Litany. It’s a rinse for our spirits at the end of one season and the beginning of the next. I don’t know about you, but the start of this calendar year has been a little rocky. It seems like all the year-end stuff that happens in January was more onerous than usual, finishing up grant reports, preparing for the annual meeting, doing the parochial report, meeting with families experiencing loss and death. All the things.
With the Great Litany we turn toward what matters. This is what Jesus does in the desert. Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness. Sometimes that is where God wants us to be.
Jesus is fasting in the desert—this is not where the devil tempts him. Sometimes we envision the tempter with cakes and pastries, trying to get Jesus to break his fast—which would likely work for me—but Jesus is training for the temptation to far more than pastry. The tempter wants Jesus to focus on power, wealth, and world domination. The devil might not offer us world domination any time soon, but we are faced constantly with distractions from what matters.
We hear this desert story every year as our entrance into Lent, not because we are supposed to give up chocolate but as a window onto all of the temptations that plague human experience: power, relevance, quick fixes, all of it. These are the temptations the devil offers Jesus, the temptations that the world offers us every day. The temptations that even the institutional church offers us.
What is the alternative? What is it that truly matters? It is, quite simply, love. Here’s a reading from Uncommon Prayers by Brian Doyle. (I know at least one of you is familiar with this book because you gave it to me ☺.) It’s a long prayer with a long title:
"Furious Prayer for the Church I Love and Have Always Loved but Which Drives Me Insane with Its Fussy Fidgety Prim Tin-Eared Thirst for Control and Rules and Power and Money Rather Than the One Simple Thing the Founder Insisted On."
The prayer itself goes like this:
Granted, it's a tough assignment, the original assignment. I get that. Love -- Lord help us, could we not have been assigned something easier, like astrophysics or quantum mechanics? But no -- love those you cannot love. Love those who are poor and broken and fouled and dirty and sick with sores. Love those who wish to strike you on both cheeks. Love the blowhard, the pompous ass, the arrogant liar. Find the Christ in each heart, even those. Preach the Gospel and only if necessary talk about it. Be the Word. It is easy to advise and pronounce and counsel and suggest and lecture; it is not so easy to do what must be done without sometimes shrieking. Bring love like a bright weapon against the dark. The Rabbi did not say build churches, or retreat houses, or secure a fleet of cars for general use, or convene conferences, or issue position papers. He was pretty blunt about the hungry and the naked and the sick. He was not reasonable; we forget this. The Church is not a reasonable idea. The Church should be a verb. When it is only a noun it is not what the Founder asked of us. Let us pray that we are ever after dissolving the formal officious arrogant thing that wants to rise, and ever fomenting the contradictory revolutionary counter-cultural thing that could change life on this planet. It could, you know. Let's try again today. And so: amen.
How can we love in a way that will change life on this planet? I am not great at this kind of love, the love that Doyle describes and that Jesus preached out his whole life. I fail at it all the time, particularly when it comes to loving people who behave in ways that I can only describe as hateful. What saves me, and what I think can change the world and bring on the kingdom is being a community that is collectively striving to practice this kind of love.
When we gather, we imitate the earliest communities of Christians. St. Paul and others called what we do with bread and wine a “love feast.” I’m pretty sure they did not have altars, or organs, or vestments or beautiful but expensive buildings. I do know they gathered to share a meal, blessings over bread and wine, reflections on Jesus’ teachings, communion, and community. And I think they probably did so because you can’t do this stuff on your own. Well, maybe you can; I can’t. I need Jesus and all of you.
I have a friend who recently created a piece of art and in the center are the words: “Whatever the problem, the answer is community.” Perhaps our Lenten practice is to say yes to community. Perhaps it is to keep showing up in hopes that we become better at love. Perhaps then we can be the angels who show up in the desert when Jesus needs them most.
