Comfort, Complacency

Luke 4:1-13

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, 2where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. 3The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” 4Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’” 5Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. 7If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.”8Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” 9Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 10for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ 11and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” 12Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” 13When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

"Comfort, Complacency"

As we enter our journey into Lent, we probably shouldn’t spend our time looking for the word “lent” in our Bible indexes, in our concordances, or even googling the term “lent in the Bible.” Although there is Biblical evidence for the length of our days in Lenten time, it is not a Biblical practice—there was no such thing as Lent way back in those days. There are certainly stories about fasting and self-denial and prayer, but there is no evidence of this Lenten journey that we’ve all begun together. So where did Lent come from, how did all of this happen?

I love how Barbara Brown Taylor paints the scene for us, saying that the need for Lent

. . . did not arise until much later, when the initial rush of Christian adrenaline was over and the believers had gotten very ho-hum about their faith. When the world did not end as Jesus had said it would, his followers stopped expecting so much from God or from themselves. They hung a wooden cross on the wall and settled back into their more or less comfortable routines. . . little by little, Christians became devoted to their comforts instead: the soft couch, the flannel sheets, the leg of lamb with roasted rosemary. These things made them feel safe and cared for—if not by God, then by themselves. They decided there was no contradiction between being comfortable and being Christian, and before long it was very hard to pick them out from the population at large. They no longer distinguished themselves by their bold love for one another. They did not get arrested for championing the poor. They blended in. They avoided extremes. They decided to be nice instead of holy and God moaned out loud.

I love her description—that the first Christians got complacent. They got comfortable with their lives, began thinking that they could do everything and anything for themselves without God’s help, stopped being bold and forgot how to proclaim the Good News, started to blend in instead of living holy lives.

And luckily, in the 2nd century, some very smart and faithful person recognized all of this—saw it and knew that something better be done to change it. They looked to their Bibles and began to realize that the number 40 kept on coming up from the Old Testament to the New, from 40 days and nights of the great flood, to the 40 years that the Israelites spend wandering in the wilderness, to the 40 days that Elijah spent journeying to Mt. Horeb, and most certainly to the 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness being tested by the devil before his ministry began. Christian practices began to rise in many different forms around Easter time, some folks fasting from Good Friday until Easter Sunday morning, others fasting and praying for longer.

It was suggested that there be a Lenten time, the term “Lent” springing from the Anglo-Saxon word “lencten,” meaning Spring. It was also the word for “March,” the month in which our journey to Easter usually falls. The practice of Lent seems to have become more official during the Council of Nicaea in 325, very official in 373 after a priest suggested that his congregation fast for 40 days until the more intense fasting that would take place during the Holy Week leading up to Easter. I think these folks were very smart in suggesting that this Lenten time come during Spring, perhaps even hoping that it would be a springtime for the soul for all of the folks back then, a springtime of the soul for all of us. They were smart suggesting that we spend 40 days walking with Jesus to the cross, culminating in a resurrection from death for him, a resurrection for all of us and our lives. 40 days to pray, 40 days to fast. 40 days to examine our sin and confess. 40 days to open up our lives and souls, 40 days to look at how we are living our lives. 40 days to decide how we are blending in instead of stepping out and distinguishing ourselves as the true Christians we are called to be. 40 days to realize that, even though we think we can live without a Savior, we really can’t. 40 days to remember what is to live like we are people who are graced by God and God alone.

I think, in many ways, it’s pretty easy to find ourselves in the same place today as the early Christians so long ago. In so many ways, we have become complacent. We have become so comfortable with our lives, thinking that we can do everything for ourselves, that we don’t need anyone’s help with anything, especially God’s help. We are fitting in, no longer sticking out and standing up, no longer being bold in our proclamation.

Think about it. We have so much technology and information at our fingertips. As Patrick reminded us last week, we can simply google anything we’re interested in, any question we have, any phrase we want to learn about and have information show up in a matter of seconds. Most of us can walk into a Wal-Mart and have all of our needs met, whether we need a game or dog food or a movie or camping equipment or food for dinner. We can order our dinner online from restaurants and have it delivered to our car, not ever having to talk to anyone or hardly even move to eat. We can respond to other people’s comments and feelings on social media without ever having to see those folks face to face, to see their facial expressions or their pain or hear their voice inflections, making comments anonymously and without feeling. We can go through our days without being troubled by too much, and we can go through them without ever bothering to see what is troubling someone else. We are so often too scared to reach out to or defend someone who truly is the least of these, lest we take the risk of losing our livelihoods or our images or our standing in society. Life is, simply put, comfortable for us. And that comfort leads to complacency.

I’ve been struggling with this ever since I got back from Haiti in May—with the things that I took comfort in before the trip, with the things that allowed me to be complacent, with the things that helped me rely only on myself and not on God. After spending a week in the poorest country of the Western hemisphere, a country further devastated by disaster, everything changed for me. Life changed for me. After collecting bath water from rain that rolled down from the roof in Haiti, I’ve been struggling with how comfortable I am here using gallons of water daily for bathing and brushing my teeth and washing my face. After hearing that Haiti has an 80% unemployment rate and seeing so many people lining the streets trying to sell whatever goods they could scrounge up, I’ve been struggling with our stress over an 8-10% unemployment rate here (and please don’t get me wrong—I’m not trying to belittle anyone who is stressed out from unemployment at all—just trying to deal with the discrepancy). After seeing so many people cram into a tap tap in Haiti to get where they need to be, I have struggled with how easy it is for me to drive to and from work every day by myself here. After seeing so many people desperate for any kind of medical care—and so many folks who will never get it in Haiti—I have struggled with our heated debates about health care here, debates that have led to so much hatefulness. I have struggled with the fact that I get frustrated if I have to wait too long for the care I need here while so many in Haiti are thankful for any kind of health care they can scrounge up, not to mention those who will never get the care they need. No matter how we feel about health care, I have struggled mightily with our harsh words to each other over how we take care of eath other. After seeing a country that is so desperate for any kind of stable political infrastructure, I have struggled so much with our recent election. I hated it. I have struggled with our mean words to each other, struggled with the fact that each major candidate spent over a billion dollars to tear the other one down, struggled with the fact that I have been a very complacent participant in our system without ever really fighting for the changes I think we need.

Until I went to Haiti, I didn’t really realize how comfortable I was, how complacent I was, to just be in the world, to just be without ever really challenging the status quo, without doing as much as I could to help those in need. I didn’t really realize how comfortable I was proclaiming that I was a follower of Christ, a follower who wasn’t really willing to risk my place in the world or my livelihood or my life to truly follow him and do as Christ commands—to love my neighbor just as I have been so greatly loved. I didn’t realize how easy it was for me to settle by being nice instead of being holy. I didn’t realize the contradiction of being comfortable and being a Christian.

That is why I need these 40 days of Lent, this springtime for my soul, this resurrection for my soul, really, this time to fast and pray and reflect—to reflect about my place in the world, my complacency in it, and what I can do to challenge and change it. I’m sure many of you are in the same place. We all need this time to get ready—to get out hearts and minds together, to think about how our sin and spend time in confession, to realize, remember, and celebrate that Jesus truly is Lord, the Lord of our minds, hearts, lives.

I think about our Gospel story today, about how Jesus spent those terrible, gutwrenching, awful 4o days in the wilderness, spent them being tested and tempted to the very core of his being. He needed that time in the wilderness to get ready for his life of ministry, to be prepared for all that he would face along the way, to be set apart and to get ready for the cross that was awaiting him at the end of his journey. Jesus entered the wilderness for those 40 days and nights, and he was tempted by the devil to succumb to him, to succumb to power and privilege, to succumb to comfort, to succumb a god other than his own. Jesus needed that time to think about who he was, whose he was.

And so do we. We need these 40 days and 40 nights, this time to be a springtime and resurrection for our soul. We are entering into wilderness, a wilderness that is tough and long and fraught with temptations of power and privilege of comfort and complacency. We are entering the wilderness, but the good news is that we are not alone. We are still able to feel the mark of the cross on our foreheads from Ash Wednesday, and we are invited to the table today. This table is set for us, set to shake us out of our comfort, out of our complacency, set to remind us that we are given all we need right here. At this table, we are given the life of our Lord who lived and journeyed to the cross and died for every single one of us. Thanks be to God.