Are you giving up something for Lent? If
so, what?
If you don’t know yet, you’d better make up your mind.
Lent starts this Wednesday. We’ll
have our Ash Wednesday service this week, marking the beginning of Lent.
Nobody’s required to give up something for Lent, of course.
It’s not like it’s a salvation issue or something. The purpose behind it is good--we recognize
that Jesus sacrificed his life for us, so we sacrifice something for the forty
days of Lent in acknowledgement of that. We all need to recognize the
sacrifice Jesus made. If giving up
something for Lent helps you appreciate that sacrifice more, that’s a good
thing.
But here’s the thing. Whenever we give something
up--even if it’s a bad thing that we really need to give up--it kind of leaves
a hole. And we need to fill that hole with something. For example, a couple of times I gave up Diet
Coke for Lent. But I could not just not
drink anything--I had to find something to replace Diet Coke with--water,
juice, whatever. Those of you who’ve given up smoking know that you
cannot just stop smoking. You have to
have something you can do when the urge to smoke comes on.
It’s simply a rule of life that we cannot replace something
with nothing. We have to replace something with something. And so, as we prepare to enter Lent, we’re
going to look at some things most of us need to give up. But more importantly,
we’re going to look at what we can replace those things with.
The thing is, though, that for most of us, the things we
need to give up are not really things. Here’s what I mean. According to a survey of twitter, these are
the top eight things people give up for Lent:
1.
Social media
2.
Alcohol
3.
Chocolate
4.
Swearing
5.
Meat
6.
Soda
7.
Coffee
8.
Fast Food
Now, if you want to give up one of those things, or
something similar to that, that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with doing
that. But none of the things on that
list is sinful. I mean, they can be
taken to extremes and lead to sin, but there’s nothing inherently sinful about
fast food, or coffee, or soda, or any of the other things on that list.
What I’m proposing, and what we’re going to talk about in
our Lent sermon series, is that we give up things that can truly be sinful, and
replace them with things that are good. We’re going to start with
anger. We’re going to talk about giving
up anger, and replacing it with patience.
Now, when we talk about anger, we’re not talking about just
a passing annoyance at something that went wrong. We’re also not talking
about just being upset about something.
“Anger” is defined as a strong feeling of displeasure and usually of
expressed hostility. Words with a similar meaning are bitterness, malice,
wrath, and hatred. Those are not good
things. We need to get them out of our
lives.
But it’s not easy. And to do it, we need to replace
it with something. So I propose that we focus on replacing anger with
patience.
Our Bible reading for today talks about patience. The
Apostle Paul writes this: “As God’s
chosen people...clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility,
gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive each other if
any of you have a grievance against someone.
Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”
Let’s unpack that. Let’s start with the first four
words there, words that we sometimes skip over when we read this. Paul
tells us this is something we are to do “as God’s chosen people”.
I mention that because it is really easy, when we get
angry, for us to justify our anger. I know. I’ve done it many times. We tell ourselves that we have every right to
be angry. We tell ourselves that what’s
happened, whatever it is, is wrong. It’s unfair. It’s unjust.
We tell ourselves we should be angry about it.
And a lot of times, society will agree with us. Just
turn on the news sometime. It seems like
all you see on the news is people who are angry about something. In fact,
if you’ve followed the recently concluded United Methodist General Conference,
and the things that have been said since it ended, you’ve heard a lot of anger.
Society may agree that the anger is justified. But as
Christians, we are not supposed to look for approval from society. We’re
supposed to look for approval from God.
As God’s chosen people, we are not supposed to clothe ourselves with
anger. We are supposed to clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness,
humility, gentleness, and patience. As
God’s chosen people, we need to give up our anger. And we need to replace
it with patience.
Now that may sound good. But the tricky bit is, how
do we do that? How do we replace anger with patience?
I think Paul tells us. In fact, it’s in the very next
sentence. He says, “Bear with each other and forgive each other if any of
you have a grievance with someone.”
Bear with each other. We don’t have to agree with
someone. Just bear with them. We
don’t have to accept what someone says or does. Just bear with them.
Bear with them, and try to
understand them. Try to understand where they’re coming from. Try to understand why they act the way they
do. Try to understand why they believe what they do. Try to understand why they live the way they
live. Be patient with them. Bear
with them.
Being patient with someone
really involves two things. The first is just recognizing that we all
grow up differently. We grow up in different places. We grow up in different families. We
grow up with different experiences. We
grow up with different advantages or disadvantages. And all of those
things shape us. They shape our view of
life. They shape how we think and how we
act and what we believe.
Now, that’s not to say that
there’s no such thing as right or wrong. The Bible makes clear that there
is. But we’re not talking about winning
an argument. We’re talking about bearing with people. We’re talking about being patient with people.
We’re talking about understanding people.
If we do that, maybe we’ll be able to convince them that we’re right.
Maybe they’ll convince us that they’re right. Maybe neither of us will convince each
other. But we can still love each other.
Patience leads to love. Anger does
not.
And the other thing that
patience involves is understanding that everyone has stuff going on in their
lives that we know nothing about. And I believe that’s literally
true. Each one of you has stuff going on
in your life that I don’t know about.
And I have stuff going on in my life that none of you know about.
And to the extent we do know about some of those things, we forget about
them. We get caught up in our own lives
and don’t think about the stuff going on in someone else’s life.
And sometimes the stuff going
on is good stuff. But sometimes it’s not.
Sometimes it’s bad stuff. Sometimes it’s stuff that causes
depression. Sometimes it’s anxiety.
Sometimes it’s stuff that would not seem like any big deal to anyone
else, but to us it’s a major thing. And because it would not seem like a
big deal to anyone else, we cannot even really talk about to anyone. We don’t think anyone would understand or care.
Or, maybe we’re embarrassed about it.
Or maybe we figure it’s nobody else’s business anyway.
That’s why we need to be
patient with people. It’s why we need to bear with people. Because we don’t know. We don’t know
what happened in the past to make them the way they are and to make them think
and act the way they do. We don’t know what’s going on in their lives
right now that’s making them the way they are and making them think and act the
way they do. That’s not meant to be an excuse for bad behavior. It’s meant to be a plea for understanding. It’s meant to be a plea for putting aside our
grievances, bearing with people, and having patience. It’s meant to be,
really, a plea for love.
And again, I’m not saying that
I do this and you don’t. I’m no better than anyone else at this. In fact, I’m sure some of you are better at
it than I am. But it something we all can get better at doing. And with God’s help, we will.
Because that’s really the key
to it. It’s the key to everything we’re going to talk about in this
sermon series, really. We cannot, by the exercise of our own will, give
up our anger and replace it with patience. We might do it sometimes, for
a while, but eventually our own flawed, sinful nature will get in our way.
We can only really give up anger and replace it with patience with the
help of God.
So this week, let’s work on
this. Let’s pray about it. And
yes, I know that’s the clichéd answer pastors give to everything, to pray about
it. But if you believe, as I do, that this is something we cannot do by
ourselves, then the only way we’re going to do it is with some help. And
who better to ask help from than God?
So let’s all take this
seriously. Let’s spend some serious time in prayer. Let’s ask God
to help us get rid of anger and replace it with patience. And let’s not
just do that for Lent--let’s do it all the time. Then we’ll be much closer to being the people
God wants us to be.
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