OK I have a confession to make. I really tried very very hard to write a heavy serious sermon about today’s Gospel – the transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain. And no matter how much I tried the more difficult it seemed to become. So, late last night I decided to give up and instead say something about Lent. Believe me it was much easier and this isn’t a heavy serious sermon at all.
I know that Ian and the choir are expecting – perhaps challenging me - to give words of wisdom about what was going on with Abraham and making complicated sandwiches by cutting animals in half. But no – I just wonder whether, as he wandered in the desert, he found some of those ancient herbal remedies made illegal by President Nixon’s war on drugs.
I actually asked AI for a sermon – and one arrived, it was quite good as well, but it would be cheating. I know a church where the rector finds a sermon on google each week and the person in the choir who is first to find where it comes from gets a prize. (The rector doesn’t know – choirs can be naughty.)
But I did find inspiration in an article I read (in the New Statesman no less) and a couple of short pieces on the radio. I learned a lot about Lent that I didn’t know before.
We talk about the forty days of Lent, forty days between Ash Wednesday and Easter – but if you check the calendar you will see there are actually 47 days. The first Sunday of Lent used to be called Quadragesima – forty days between it and Easter, but that’s not right either. Some argue that if you remove the Sundays then you get to forty, so the Sundays don’t count as Lent. And over the years people have questioned which day marks the end of Lent; is it Maundy Thursday, Holy Saturday or Easter Day itself. And when does Easter Day begin? Sunset on Holy Saturday or dawn on Easter Sunday.
The better explanation I heard on Radio Four is that forty days and forty nights – in good biblical tradition – just means after a while. Not a little while, but a good stretch of time.
And then, do you know what the word Lent means? Where it comes from, its etymology?
It’s from an old English word Lencten which means spring and its roots are from a Germanic verb meaning to lengthen. And there we have it, the days are lengthening, and we are moving into spring.
So how did Lent, meaning Spring, come to be taken over by the church?
To find that out we need to go back hundreds of years, even thousands. Humans became farmers rather than hunter gatherers. Resources were scarce – farm animals and farmers families all needed to be fed – so the animals were slaughtered and our ancestors feasted. (Well perhaps feasting is a bit of an exaggeration – but they ate as well as they could.) Fresh meat for as long as possible – then cheese and salted bacon in the tough first months of the year. Then came Collop Monday when left-over bacon or beef was used up, followed by eggs and dairy on Shrove Tuesday.
After that was a time to ration their food supplies until the new harvest. Animals by that time were either pregnant or had given birth. They came first. Food that was left was given to them.
So abstaining or fasting in Lent – or spring – really had nothing to do with religion or the church. It was a natural and essential part of the annual agricultural cycle. Abstinence during Lent or spring was completely natural to our Christian ancestors and the need for it was supported by the Church. There are lots of descriptions of fasting in the bible, including Jesus fasting forty days and forty nights. It became a religious requirement as well as a farming necessity. People were encouraged by state and church to eat fish. Then when Easter arrived it marked the end of fasting and brought the joy of a feast.
The reformation – and turnips – put an end to most of that. Turnips made it possible to keep more animals alive over winter. The church of the reformation saw fasting and fish eating as popish threat. Fasting and its big sister feasting were ways of bringing people together and were seen as a threat to the new religion. Feasts and fasts were banned – it’s within my lifetime that Christmas became a public holiday in Scotland and was recognised by our national church. (I remember an elderly lady from one of the outer islands in Shetland telling me that if the minister came along that was their Christmas day ruined.)
Lent, lengthening days, springtime. The time when our forebears fasted because they were running out of food and what little they had was needed for their livestock. Lent, forty days and nights in the church calendar – but forty symbolises a while, a long time, even a lifetime. And it is good to spend these weeks until Easter studying, reflecting, praying, giving something up, giving something away, giving to charity.
So there we have it; Lent - days lengthening, spring arriving. A time to reconnect with the world around us as winter gives up its hold and we welcome Spring (officially the first day of Spring is Friday this week, the 21st).
Lent; forty days and nights to reflect on our lives, our relationship with God and with the people around us and far off. Forty days and forty nights, a handful of days, a while, a lifetime.
And remember, just like our ancestors we need to make time for feasting, God, our God, is faithful, the days will lengthen, the sun will shine…
…the first rule of our celebration is to begin by giving thanks to God.
I said I wasn’t going to be heavy or too serious BUT…
Three Sundays ago, we celebrated the words of St Paul: The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible. We shall be changed.
I talked then about the parallel universes, the created world as we know it and the new creation to which we also belong here and now. I said that our Eucharist is a thin place where the two worlds, the old and the new, intersect, come together.
The Transfiguration Gospel tells of another thin place, a coming together of these two worlds. Peter, James and John witness Jesus transfigured, transformed, changed – they see him as he is in the new creation. His face changed, his clothes dazzling white – they saw his glory.
I’m pretty sure that this is what Paul means when he says we shall be changed. The dead shall be raised incorruptible and shall be changed as Jesus was changed on the Mount of Transfiguration. No wonder the three disciples wanted to stay there.
Graham Kendrick catches it in his hymn Shine Jesus Shine:
As we gaze on your kingly brightness
So our faces display your likeness
Ever changing from glory to glory
Mirrored here may our lives tell your story
Shine on me, shine on me.
We are inhabitants of both worlds. Sometimes in the thin places we catch a glimpse of the glory of our parallel world, of our new creation. And because we belong to both, sometimes it is we ourselves who are that thin place where others glimpse the unconditional love of God and the wonder of the life that is to come.
I never thought I’d say this, but Kendrick gives us a prayer we might want to reflect on as the days lengthen, the sun begins to warm our bones and we prepare to celebrate Easter and the promise of eternal life:
Blaze, Spirit, blaze
Set our hearts on fire
Flow, river, flow
Flood the nations with grace and mercy
Send forth your word
Lord, and let there be light.
We shall be changed; and in the power of the Spirit, we are called to be the agents of change, the ambassadors of the Kingdom of God.