3rd Sunday before Lent 2019 St. Paul’s Athens. Jer 17, 5-10; 1 Cor 15, 12-20; Luke 6, 17-26

Revd. Canon L W Doolan.

 

We have only 3 more Sundays until the holy season of Lent begins. We now call these weeks, nestled between the end of Epiphany until Ash Wednesday, ‘ordinary time’. A case can be made for turning the word ‘ordinary’ into an ‘extra-ordinary’ period of weeks, but just for today, I would like to remind us of what the ‘old’ Book of Common Prayer used to call these Sundays: Septuagesima, Sexagesima, Quinquagesima – names that provide a countdown to the great Paschal event of Easter – 70, 60, 50, then of course 40 days in the wilderness, which we call Lent, sarakosti (Orthodox Lent)

 

During last week someone sent me an email with a wonderful poem written by John Betjeman, a poem in which he humbly praises these Sunday names, unique to the Anglican tradition.

I am quoting only a part of the poem, but the hard copy (printed version) has the whole poem. It was first broadcast on BBC West of England Radio in February 1954.

 

Septuagesima

Septuagesima – seventy days
To Easter’s primrose tide of praise;
The Gesimas – Septua, Sexa, Quinc
Mean Lent is near, which makes you think.
Septuagesima – when we’re told
To “run the race”, to “keep our hold”,
Ignore injustice, not give in, and practise stern self-discipline;
A somewhat unattractive time
Which hardly lends itself to rhyme.

 

But still it gives the chance to me
To praise our dear old C. of E.
So other Churches please forgive
Lines on the Church in which I live,
The Church of England of my birth,
The kindest Church to me on earth.

In these Sundays of the Gesimas not only are we by grades looking away from Christmas and Epiphany towards Easter, it is also the time for each of us to start thinking about what shape our Lent will take – that discipline mentioned by Betjeman.

By ancient tradition, Lent was the period when the great bishops like St. John Chrysostom, would be preparing his candidates, the catechumens, for baptism, but also a time for the whole church to fast, examine the conscience, confess sin, study, and recalibrate prayer life.

Ancient tradition is not something of the past. It always has something to teach us in our contemporary lives. Tradition is something that is passed on, that is inherited, that live sin us as it lived in our ancestors. As is recorded in the prophecy of Jeremiah, ‘I the Lord test the mind and search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doing.’

‘Testing the mind, and searching the heart’ are both Lenten enterprises – they are ingredients of a School of Prayer and Study. So this morning we are launching our Lent programme for 2019. It is a balance of prayer, worship and study. It comes commended by Bishop Robert and Archdeacon Colin, and I urge you to seek the experience of a holy Lent provided by our programme.

 

It is easy for our faith to become dry and arid. The things that should give us life in our worship, in our scriptures, in our prayers, can become as lifeless as the rocks and sand of a wilderness. Yet we can feed and water our faith, so easily. All the ingredients are available to us in sacrament and scripture, and prayer so that we can be rejuvenated and refreshed as people of faith. Where our habitual and unimaginative turning out on a Sunday morning, even on Sundays with exotic names like Septuagesima, Sexagesima, Quinquagesima, has left us stale or hard hearted, we have the means during Lent, for the ‘leaves to remain green even when the heat comes; to bear fruit even in the drought, and we can be like the tree planted by the water, sending out our roots by the stream.’

Just a few days ago we had St. Valentine’s day. Some of you will have remembered, and some of you will have been remembered. Some of us remembered as the day went on – and so it became the most expensive single red rose I have ever purchased! On one of the doors into the shop at the Grande Bretagne hotel shop, these words have displayed, especially for this time, but it goes to the heart of our faith.

‘Love is not just what you feel, it is also what you do’. On the day before his death Jesus tells his followers to ‘love one another as I have loved you’ and I think it is the love I read on that doorway that Jesus refers to. Love not just as a feeling but as an action. Lent is not just a time to refresh our love of God, but also to refresh our love for our neighbours – faith turned into action.

Bishop Robert has chosen an Athens based organization called Hestia Hellas, whose focus is in offering psychological support, as his Lent Appeal. If you go on to our parish website or the Diocesan website, or if you use Facebook, or Twitter, you can find out about the Lent Appeal, and watch a brief video about the work of Hestia Hellas.

 

All across the Diocese of Europe, congregations will be responding financially to the Lent Appeal. How much money do I think we should be raising for a local organization?

Well, refreshingly, we are not responding to the Bishop’s Lent Appeal this year. Instead, I urge you to offer an hour a week, or an hour a fortnight, or an hour a month, to support Hestia Hellas as a volunteer. You can find out the contact details on the posters inside and outside church. Lent is about response, response to love God, and to love our neighbour, which is the heart of faith.

So, this week, we have sight of the Lent Programme, and we have the appeal to volunteer time and talent to Hestia Hellas. Next week we will be provided with a Short Guide booklet to help us understand Lent, Holy Week and Easter slightly better, and then the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, you will receive a little booklet to assist you to say a very simple form of Morning and Evening Prayer each day in Lent and in Eastertide.