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14th February 2016 - Revd. Preb Maureen Hobbs

Sermon for Lent 1




Deuteronomy 26.1-11
Luke 4.1-13

Learning to love again.

It cannot have escaped anyone’s notice, that we meet this year – the first Sunday in Lent – on what is popularly held and remembered as St Valentine’s day? That great commercial event in the calendar when lovers are supposed to spend inordinate amounts of money on gifts and celebrations for eachother. Personally I always valued the gifts that came at other times of the year – more spontaneously – as holding far more romance.... but then maybe that is me just being cynical! No doubt there is much pleasure given and received throughout the land today along with the red roses, the breakfast in bed and the gushing or slightly riské greetings cards.

But this is the beginning of Lent – so naturally I want to turn our thoughts away from commercial marketing opportunities and more towards what I think the Holy Spirit is trying to say to us this morning through our Scripture and reason.

Well, our Lent course kicks off this week – on Tuesday (not too late to join in!) – and the first session is entitled “Learning to love again”. Which seems sort of apt for today! [and in fact we are planning to preach throughout Lent, picking up some of the themes in that course – so those of you who attend will have plenty of opportunity to comment on or argue against the sermon if you want to!]

Was that why the HS drove the newly baptised Jesus out into the wilderness to be tempted? To teach him how to love again? If this Man was indeed the son of God, he already knew quite how much God his Father loved him. It was an awareness that I think was with him from a very early age. It enabled the teenager to follow his calling and run off to learn from the scribes in the Temple – worrying his parents half to death! He saw no reason for their concern – he was about his Father’s business and his Father loved him – of course he did!

But just maybe Jesus needed to learn or to be reminded quite how much God loved all his creation – and especially his creatures, humankind... Loved them so much, that he would be prepared to give his very life for their sake...

Learning to love again. When are the times when you have had to learn the hard lessons (as well as the delight) that come from love? When we love, we are so all consumed by the beloved, that our sense of self can even disappear at times. “If you love someone, there is nothing you won’t do for them”– how often have we heard that said when someone goes off the rails yet again and a parent or a partner breaks the law themselves in an attempt to save them from inevitable justice?

The whole of our Lent Course (Learning to Dream Again) carries the subtitle “Rediscovering the Heart of God”– which neatly fits with one of our Diocesan aims. And Sam Wells – the author – reminds us that Christians have often characterised the God we see revealed in the Old Testament, as being mainly about war and revenge and punishment ; while the God of the New Testament is all about peace and love and mercy. But such simplifications won’t hold up to serious study. And in today’s readings we were reminded how God deals kindly with his children; how he rescues them from slavery and puts them into a position of relative prosperity – so that they are able then to offer as a sacrifice the fruits of the their labour.

And in reading of the struggle that Jesus has with the Tempter in the wilderness, we can sense the harshness, the real dilemma that troubles him. Should he take the easy way of celebrity? Pander to the needs and wants of the people to courtrapid popularity? Or should he hold to the more difficult and personally painful way to serve God and his kingdom?

God’s love is not all hearts and roses. God’s love is hard and tear-stained and worked out in the most difficult and desperate of circumstances. But it is a love that endures everything as Paul was to tell us later. A love that cannot, and will not die –whatever we as the beloved may say or do. A love that – once given, is for ever.

We all know – if we are honest with ourselves, - that we are pretty unloveable really. We mess up. We get things wrong. We forget important dates and anniversaries. We allow our selfish inclinations to get in the way of our desire to serve God and model ourselves on the person of Jesus. We turn a blind eye to so much suffering in the world – arguing that our interests should come first. “Because surely God loves us more than any other people?!” It may be unspoken, but that is the underlying belief perhaps?

It is the classic mistake that people have made through the centuries. To be God’s chosen people – his beloved ones, does not imply we will receive better treatment than any others –rather that we have a greater responsibility to share God’s love with a needy and desperate world!

Learning to love again.

It is a lesson that Jesus learnt so very, very well. And it is one that we struggle with. But that does not mean the struggle is not worth the effort. Jesus was acknowledged as God’s beloved Son – the one in whom he is well pleased; the one to whom we are told to listen. And Jesus was homeless, rejected, betrayed, tortured and executed. We cannot be surprised if we get a taste of these things too – as Sam Wells reminds us. But that does not mean that God no longer loves us and that – at the last – we will know that love in resurrected joy. So what is the wilderness that God has led you into? In order that you may learn to love again with him?

Amen