Words for Pre-Lent
As highlighted in the first published volume of sermons, The Soul’s Pilgrimage: from Advent to Pentecost, each of the three Sundays before Ash Wednesday in the ancient Eucharistic Lectionary (this lectionary is still accessible for study in the Book of Common Prayer) was once the beginning of Lent, before Gregory the Great in the seventh century settled upon Ash Wednesday as the beginning of Lent, omitting only Sundays in the count of the forty days before Easter. Thus, Father Crouse reminds us how the three Sundays of Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima providentially provide a rich spiritual preparation for the beginning of Lent proper, a preparation that was dear to all Christians in the West for 1500 years. Today, parishioners who are not in Anglican Churches that follow the ancient one-year Eucharistic Lectionary can spiritually profit by reading these Epistles and Gospels found in your Prayer Books and reflect upon the themes for those Sundays. The following words are from a sermon delivered by Father Crouse on Quinquagesima, the Sunday before Ash Wednesday.
By the Rev’d Dr. Robert Darwin Crouse
“Behold we go up to Jerusalem”
Those words of Jesus, from today’s Gospel lesson, set before us the spiritual challenge of the Lenten season: "Behold, we go up to Jerusalem". We are called to undertake a pilgrimage with Jesus, to go with him to Jerusalem, to share in mind and heart - in our minds, and our hearts - his death and resurrection. Like the twelve disciples in the Gospel story, we scarcely know what that will mean for us: ‘They understood none of these things", says St. Luke. Like the blind man begging by the wayside, we must pray insistently that the Lord himself may open our eyes, that we may receive our sight, and come to see and understand the glory of salvation. The Scripture lessons appointed for the three Sundays of this Pre-Lenten season are all designed to prepare us to undertake that journey to Jerusalem. Remember how, on Septuagesima Sunday (the Sunday before last), St. Paul, in the Epistle lesson,compares the Christian life to an athletic contest: "Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run that ye may obtain”. He reminds us that the serious contestant must put aside distractions and concentrate his efforts: "I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air." And the Gospel lesson for that Sunday likens our vocation to the labours of workers in a vineyard. Called early in the morning, or late in the day, we labour for the Lord's purposes, and receive the one eternal reward, which we cannot really earn, but which God's free grace provides.
Sexagesima Sunday (last Sunday) reminds us, in the Gospel lesson, that the word of God is as a precious seed, planted in the soil of our hearts, and that the young seedling must be nurtured, and preserved from the drought of our neglect, the thorns of our worldly preoccupations, and all the insidious assaults of the devil. And the Epistle lesson tells us, in the words of St. Paul, something of the labours and the perils among which the word of God must be matured in us.
All of that has been preparation for the spiritual labours of Lent, and now today's lessons give us our final instructions for the journey. "Behold, we go up to Jerusalem". We are to go to Jerusalem with Jesus, to witness there the fulfilment of the ancient prophecies, to witness there the dying and the rising of the Son of God, for us and for our salvation. That is something God has done for us, once and for all: God the Son has borne our sins, in his own body, on the Tree, and has won for us forgiveness and new life.
That is what God has done for us. It is something finished, sufficient and complete, never to be done again. It is God’s own perfect satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world, of all times and all places. God’s infinite charity has done for us what we could never do. He has given us, each one, a new life, a new beginning. That is something which we could not do; it is the free gift of God's charity, which we can only thankfully receive. That is what we call "justification".
But what we witness in Jerusalem is not only what God, in Christ, has done for us. It is also something that must be done in us, day by day, and that is what the spiritual labour of Lent is all about. Looking upon the Crucified, we must learn to die and rise again, day by day, to die to all the corruptions of our old nature, to live again in the charity of God. That is the point which today’s Epistle lesson makes so forcefully. Without charity, all else is nothing worth. Without charity, prophecy and knowledge, and even faith, are useless. Without charity, good works and self-sacrifice are ultimately useless: "it profiteth me nothing", says St. Paul.
What then is this charity which must be the character and substance of our Lenten journey? First of all, it is, of course, God’s charity for us, that charity whereby he gave his only begotten Son. It is, first of all, our thankful recognition of the charity of God for us, but secondly, it is the working of that charity in us, transforming our own lives.
But just what is charity? It is not sentiment, it is not emotion, it is not good works, though all those things may sometimes be associated with it. Fundamentally, it is sheer good will: it is God's good will, manifest in Christ; it is our good will, God's gift of grace in us, when we genuinely and steadfastly will the good of one another for God's sake. Charity is a matter of clarity and purity of motive in all we are and do. Charity is our sanctification, as individuals, and as a community - and no doubt charity embraces and includes those more homely virtues of generosity and kindness and friendship.
That is the practical message of Lent for us, that is what our spiritual to Jerusalem is all about. It is our growing up in charity, putting off our own inclinations, desires and predilections. In the words of a beautiful hymn: “Let holy charity mine outward vesture be, And lowliness become mine inner clothing".
We are all, no doubt, busy about many things, a mixture of things, some of them good and some of them wicked. Lent should be a time when we put aside a bit our manifold distractions and look at what we are and what we do and realize afresh that the charity of God for us, and within us, is all that finally counts, and that without that, all else is sounding brass and tinkling cymbal.
The Scripture lessons of this Pre-Lenten season have set before us the meaning and the motive of our journey. It remains now to undertake it.
"Behold, we go up to Jerusalem".