3rd Sunday in Lent

The Reality of the Christian Life

What happens? We do so well for so long and then the shoe drops. We stop coming to church. Our lives get busy. How do we persevere in the midst of great challenges? What about facing the inner demons that seek to pull us down?

Someone has calculated how a typical lifespan of 70 years is spent. Here is the estimate:
Sleep................23 years...........32.9%
Work.................16 years...........22.8%
TV....................8 years...........11.4%
Eating................6 years............8.6%
Travel................6 years............8.6%
Leisure.............4.5 years............6.5%
Illness...............4 years............5.7%
Dressing..............2 years............2.8%
Religion............0.5 years............0.7%
Total................70 years............100%

We are consumed by the desire to find the cure for sleeplessness (thank goodness for Lunesta), we pass legislation to spur jobs and keep the economy afloat, I cannot begin to tell you how much energy is spent on the consumption of food – dieting – and equality when it comes to food, we love to travel thanks to Travelocity.Com … but at the end we hear about religion.

Priorities have run amuck. I wouldn’t be so quick to blame those who find themselves sleeping in on Sunday morning. We have done little to discourage such a hurried life in America.
On a recent day off I spent some time with a spiritual director in La Crosse. A person whose sole responsibility is to listen, pray, offer some guidance, but mostly pray. This was at the Franciscan Spirituality Center in La Crosse. While touring the facility I was shown the chapel where the nuns pray 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I asked, “They seriously pray all the time?” “Yes, that is their vocation.”

As we examine ourselves and our lives during Lent we see that we have it all wrong. When it comes to sin we see it that “living in sin is the new thing” according to the gospel of Britney Spiers. We are burdened by the quest to have it all but now see the great failure in that comes when the shoe drops.

A minister was planning a wedding at the close of the Sunday morning service.

After the benediction he had planned to call the couple down to be married for a brief ceremony before the congregation.

For the life of him, he couldn't think of the names of those who were to be married.

"Will those wanting to get married please come to the front?" he requested.

Immediately, nine single ladies, three widows, four widowers, and six single men stepped to the front.

It is a time for us to remember that we are dust and to dust we shall return. Remember our sins are forgiven and remembered no more. Remember that Lent is a time for us to embrace a God who is merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. We forget often the grace of God. We also forget that our life as Christians is not without challenge, not without hard times, not without moments of doubt, but is enfolded by the God who spreads a banquet before us today.

Applying the Word

1. Seek the Lord during those moments of doubt, regret, sin, and frustration.
a. 6Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; 7let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon
b. 12So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall. 13No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.

2. Cling to the hope and promises God offers to you today

a. 8My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.
b. Word and sacrament.

3. This is a season of pruning.

6Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. 7So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ 8He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. 9If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.”