A Morning Service for the First Sunday of Lent 2022

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March 5, 2022

Shrove Tuesday was St David’s day. St David was born around 520 AD and his lifetime's work was the establishment of some 12 monastic communities, including Glastonbury and Menevia, now known as St David’s. His regime was specially strict, based on the Egyptian monastic model. The life of his monks consisted of hard manual labour - they kept no oxen to help them plough, a frugal diet of bread and water and vegetables, and much prayer and study.

A Morning Service for the First Sunday of Lent 2022

HYMN – Forty days and forty nights NEH67 – Aus der tie

1 Forty days and forty nights

Thou wast fasting in the wild,

Forty days and forty nights

Tempted and yet undefiled.

2 Sunbeams scorching all the day,

Chilly dewdrops nightly shed,

Prowling beasts about thy way,

Stones thy pillow, earth thy bed.

3 Let us thine endurance share,

And awhile from joys abstain,

With thee watching unto prayer,

Strong with thee to suffer pain.

4 And if Satan, vexing sore,

Flesh or spirit should assail,

Thou, his vanquisher before,

Grant we may not faint nor fail.

5 So shall we have peace divine,

Holier gladness ours shall be,

Round us too shall angels shine,

Such as ministered to thee.

6 Keep, O keep us, Saviour dear,

Ever constant by thy side,

That with thee we may appear

At the eternal Eastertide.

PRAYER OF PREPARATION
Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open,
all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden:
cleanse the thoughts of our hearts
by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit,
that we may perfectly love you,
and worthily magnify your holy name;
through Christ our Lord. Amen

PRAYERS OF PENITENCE
God the Father forgives us in Christ and heals us by the Holy Spirit.
Let us therefore put away all anger and bitterness, all slander and malice,
and confess our sins to God our redeemer. cf. Ephesians 4.30,32

Almighty God, our heavenly Father,
we have sinned against you and against our neighbour,
through our own fault, in thought, and word, and deed,
and in what we have left undone.
We are truly sorry and repent of all our sins.
For your Son our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake,
forgive us all that is past;
and grant that we may serve you in newness of life
to the glory of your name. Amen.

May the God of love and power
forgive you and free you from your sins,
heal and strengthen you by his Spirit
and raise you to new life in Christ our Lord. Amen

THE COLLECT

Almighty God,

whose Son Jesus Christ fasted forty days in the wilderness,

and was tempted as we are, yet without sin:

give us grace to discipline ourselves in obedience to your Spirit;

and, as you know our weakness, so may we know your power to save;

through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen

FIRST READING – Deuteronomy 26.1-11

When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, “Today I declare to the LORD your God that I have come into the land that the LORD swore to our ancestors to give us.” When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the LORD your God, you shall make this response before the LORD your God: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors; the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O LORD, have given me.” You shall set it down before the LORD your God and bow down before the LORD your God. Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the LORD your God has given to you and to your house.

HYMN – Dear Lord and father of mankind NEH 353/AMR 184 – Repton

1 Dear Lord and Father of mankind,

Forgive our foolish ways!

Re-clothe us in our rightful mind,

In purer lives thy service find,

In deeper reverence praise.

2 In simple trust like theirs who heard,

Beside the Syrian sea,

The gracious calling of the Lord,

Let us, like them, without a word

Rise up and follow thee.

3 *O Sabbath rest by Galilee!

O calm of hills above,

Where Jesus knelt to share with thee

The silence of eternity,

Interpreted by love!

4 Drop thy still dews of quietness,

Till all our strivings cease;

Take from our souls the strain and stress,

And let our ordered lives confess

The beauty of thy peace.

5 Breathe through the heats of our desire

Thy coolness and thy balm;

Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;

Speak through the earthquake,

wind, and fire,

O still small voice of calm!

GOSPEL – Luke 4.1-13

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where 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. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’ ”

Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And 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. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.”

Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’ ”

Then 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, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’ ”

Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ” When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

SERMON

Shrove Tuesday was St David’s day. St David was born around 520 AD and his lifetime’s work was the establishment of some 12 monastic communities, including Glastonbury and Menevia, now known as St David’s. His regime was specially strict, based on the Egyptian monastic model. The life of his monks consisted of hard manual labour – they kept no oxen to help them plough, a frugal diet of bread and water and vegetables, and much prayer and study. It was an austere life where the flesh was subdued to allow the life of the Spirit to flourish. St David himself was said to be big on cold baths.

Such a saint is very appropriate for Lent. Lent, traditionally speaking is all about subduing the flesh. Lent is a rehearsal, it celebrates Jesus’ journey into the wilderness and prepares us for his passion. We enter into the disciplined walk of Christ on the road that could only lead to suffering. By some trivial act of deprivation we remind ourselves what it is to control our appetites and bridle our wants. But that isn’t all, such control is a part of everyday life, we diet to save an inch or two on the waistline, we give up sweets to save our teeth, and we don’t smoke because we’re not stupid. These disciplines we undertake for our flesh, or for the diminishing of it – we do not engage in them in order to produce a spiritual good, only a physical one. So how can some form of abstinence benefit our souls?

Jesus, Luke tells us, was led, straight after he was Baptised, into the desert by the Spirit. Luke then goes on to detail three particular temptations and how he responded to them. It is no accident that he whole scene seems to be very closely anchored to the Israelites’ wanderings in the desert. They were called to learn dependence on God in time of hunger, they were commanded to avoid all compromise with idolatry and the worship of false gods, and, most serious of all, they were told not to put God to the test. All these things they failed to do, and for the last Moses was refused entry to the promised land.

For Israel the desert had been a failure, they had been ‘proved’, they had been tried in the fire, and had failed miserably. Jesus does not fail, each trial he turns aside with a quotation from the book of Deuteronomy, underlining that he has understood the seriousness of the demands of God as his people had not. All this you’ll find in Luke and Matthew. Mark, is more terse, it is enough for him that Jesus is driven into the desert and is tempted, parallels with Moses are not important to him.

Whatever the detail the point is the same, right at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry the alternative paths are clear, the choice is his, and the place of choice is the desert. In the desert, or rather, in a deserted place, there is much that becomes clear. In its simplicity and solitude priorities become more obvious.

St David was, as many were of his time, inspired by the stories of the Desert Fathers. These were men and woman, who had gone out into the deserts of 3rd century Egypt and Palestine to find their salvation. This was for some, in the struggle with their personal demons, and for others as a pure response to the demands of the Gospel – They heard: ‘Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you that hunger now, for you will be satisfied.’ They heard: ‘Renounce yourself, and take up your cross and follow me.’ And they did. Their commitment, integrity and courage was uncompromising. To follow Christ was to empty themselves of all possessions, all material pleasures and comforts, so that they would be free to respond to God, totally and without restraint. For this they needed the emptiness and ‘aloneness’ of the desert.

Abba Ammoun came to Clysma one day to meet Abba Sisoes. Seeing that Abba Sisoes was grieved because he had left the desert, Abba Ammoun said to him, ‘Abba, why grieve about it? What would you do in the desert, now you are so old?’ The old man pondered this sorrowfully and said to him, ‘What are you saying to me, Ammoun? Was not the mere liberty of my soul enough for me in the desert?’

The charge often levelled at contemplatives is that they flee from the ‘real’ world, into a false world of heroic spiritual gymnastics. It is a serious point, for if the desert was an abrogation of ordinary life then we should be profoundly suspicious of its spirituality. Thomas Merton addresses the issue as one who has struggled with the concept of life as a contemplative, he wrote concerning these desert monks:

“The simple men who lived their lives among the rocks and sands… had come into the desert to be themselves, their ordinary selves, and to forget a world that divided them from themselves. The Coptic hermits who left the world as though escaping from a wreck, did not merely intend to save themselves. They knew that they were helpless to do any good for others as long as they floundered about in the wreckage. But once they got a foothold on solid ground, things were different. Then they had not only the power but even the obligation to pull the whole world to safety after them.”

‘That’s OK,’ I hear you say, ‘but I’m not about to join a monastery or fly off to the Sahara.’ True, but we all have our desert places, times of arid dryness, of deadening aloneness. Lent, in some small way prepares us for those times, when it is only through discipline of heart and mind that we will cling to the knowledge of the presence and the faithfulness of our God, cling to the fact that there are streams in the desert. That after the wondering Aramean passed through the desert, there were first fruits, there was a promised land.

It is interesting to note that the great move to the desert, eventually involving thousands, did not occur until Christianity had become, not only legal, but the most politically acceptable religion. The challenge of martyrdom had passed and it appears that a new form of sacrifice was sought. This time, a living sacrifice of devotion to God within the non-world of the desert. The first Apostles began by failing hopelessly to understand that the Messiah would have to suffer and die before glory and resurrection could take place. The monks of the desert never made that mistake. Their life there was one of continual death, death to ego and pride, death to possessiveness and greed, death to everything that was not of God and to God. In such deaths they sought to discover themselves as children of God dependant only on his care and love.

The desert denies the world its hold on its children, it proves that, in the final analysis, men and women are stronger and greater and lovelier than the false attractions of the world of our making. Merton wrote:

‘There is in my heart this great thirst to recognise totally the nothingness of all that is not God. My prayer then is a kind of praise rising up out of the centre of Nothing and Silence. If I am still present ‘myself’ this I recognise as an obstacle about which I can do nothing unless He himself removes the obstacle.’

This was the longing of the Desert Fathers, and indeed all those who have followed them into the desert of Nothingness and Silence. The longing is ever for the discovery that God was there all the time, waiting at our very soul’s centre. To discover that is to find both God and oneself.

I can’t guarantee it but it might help to give up something that you would really miss, and so, symbolically, to carve out a little portion of the desert for yourself. Who knows what you might find there.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH

Let us declare our faith in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ:

Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures;
he was buried; he was raised to life on the third day
in accordance with the scriptures;
afterwards he appeared to his followers,
and to all the apostles: this we have received,
and this we believe. Amen. 1 Corinthians 15.3-7

HYMN – Just as I am NEH 294/AMR 349 – Saffron Walden

1 Just as I am, without one plea

But that thy blood was shed for me,

And that thou bidd’st me come to thee,

O Lamb of God, I come.

2 Just as I am, though tossed about

With many a conflict, many a doubt,

Fightings within, and fears without,

O Lamb of God, I come.

3 Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind;

Sight, riches, healing of the mind,

Yea all I need, in thee to find,

O Lamb of God, I come.

4 Just as I am, thou wilt receive,

Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve:

Because thy promise I believe,

O Lamb of God, I come! I come!

5 Just as I am (thy love unknown

Has broken every barrier down),

Now to be thine, yea thine alone,

O Lamb of God, I come.

6 Just as I am, of that free love

The breadth, length, depth

and height to prove,

Here for a season then above,

O Lamb of God, I come.

INTERCESSIONS – Christine Hill

Gracious God, we thank you that we are able to meet together today to worship you free from fear of persecution, war and violence. We give thanks for our church, our communities and lifestyles, and for our beautiful countryside as signs of new life start to emerge this spring. Help us during this season of Lent to avoid complacency, to fix our sights on Jesus and follow his commands.