Give It Up!

            Ash Wednesday is February 10 this year.  After that, we will move into the season of Lent, which will last until Easter Sunday on March 27.

            One of the traditions of Lent, of course, is that we give something up.  The tradition is based on Luke 9:23, in which says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”  Giving something up is a way of “denying ourselves”.

            For a long time, though, the whole idea of giving something up for Lent really missed me.  Nothing against people who do it, or have done it.  It just seems to me like the things we give up are so trivial compared to what Jesus gave up for us.  Jesus gave up his life to save our sins.  I give up Diet Coke.  The two things have absolutely nothing to do with each other.  Any comparison between the two is clearly ludicrous.

            And that would be true of anything else I’d be likely to give up.  I could give up chocolate (which I’ve pretty much done anyway, because of my diet).  I could give up watching sports.  I could give up social media.  But while those things might, to varying degrees, be something I’d miss, none of them is anywhere near the sacrifice Jesus made for us.  They’re not even in the same ballpark.  Therefore, the whole exercise always seemed kind of pointless to me.

            The last couple of years I have given up Diet Coke, and I’ve given the money I’ve saved from that to the Gettysburg Construction Fund.  I’m going to do that again this year, and you’re welcome to join me if you like.  Giving away the money I save helps the exercise have some kind of point for me, but to be honest, it still does not give it any kind of spiritual dimension.  It does not make me feel closer to God or strengthen my faith or anything like that.  It still seems like it’s a pretty trivial thing to do.

            The thing is that, for me at least, “denying myself” has very little to do with whether I drink a certain beverage.  Denying ourselves should mean exactly that.  It should mean allowing the Holy Spirit to come into us so strongly that we are led by God, rather than by ourselves, in everything we do.

            If that’s true, then the things we give up should be things that are keeping us from letting the Holy Spirit come into us.  Things like greed and envy.  Things like selfishness and wanting to get our own way.  Things like arrogance and self-righteousness.  And lots of other things, too.

            Letting the Holy Spirit come into us does, to an extent, mean that we have to deny ourselves.  But, oddly, it is often through denying ourselves that we find ourselves.  We find our true selves.  We find the selves we were originally created to be.  We get rid of all the distractions and all the things we’ve done to try to fill the emptiness inside of us, and instead we let that emptiness be filled with the Holy Spirit.

            So that’s what our next sermon series is going to be about.  On Sundays during Lent, we’re going to look at some of the things we can give up that will get us closer to God.  We’ll look at what we can give up to try to be more like Jesus and to try to live the way Jesus told us to live.  We’ll look at what we can give up so we can truly be God’s people.  And we’ll look at how we can give these things up, so that we can give them up not just during Lent, but for the rest of our lives.

            It’s hard to give anything up, even when we know it’s bad for us.  But if we deny those things to ourselves, we’ll make room for the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit will help us become who we’re truly supposed to be.  And that will more than make up for anything we’ve given up.