Third Sunday of Lent – evening
Sunday 4th March 2018
Lent 3 – evening
Exodus5. 1-6.1
Phillippians 3. 4b-14
Revd Preb Maureen Hobbs
“No gain without pain”. It is something you will hear frequently – whether from the lips of sportsmen and women, talking about the hours of training they have to put in, if dreams of Olympic glory are to be realised. Or from great artists whose skills and natural talent need to be schooled and refined. Or even from those advising us on diets and keeping fit!
This may sound a bit obvious – but it is amazing how many people in life think you can take a short- cut – not put in the work – and still expect to achieve results… it is probably a lesson that all of us have had to learn at some stage – even if just when revising for those all-important exams. But I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that – not in real life. No gain without pain… that maybe hard to hear for those who are in the midst of real suffering – whether economic (with news of more businesses going into liquidation this week); or physical – thinking of those poor souls in Syria; or even just personal – as we have coped with the cold and snow of this week…
It must have been hard for the Israelites to understand too…
Pharoah is being unhelpful in the extreme –. In a bid to keep control of his immigrant population, Pharoah has decreed that the only way to control this rebellious, quarrelsome tribe of people from Canaan is to put them to work, and when they grow too numerous, to work them as hard as possible… As hard as he dare get away with.
Pharoah’s strategy seems to be working – at least in part – when along comes this Moses, demanding ‘time off’ if you please… and for worship of all things!
You can see Pharoah’s point. Here they are in great Egyptian cities brimming with foreign gods and temples – High Priests galore. And the Israelites want to go into the Desert to pray? Three days into the desert? Pharoah can just imagine what will happen as soon as he agrees to that little scheme! Bye-bye workers; bye-bye team of skilled international Pyramid construction labourers; by-bye pyramids and eventually by- bye hope for a smooth passage into the underworld for Pharoah when the time comes. If he lets them go, it’s the last he see of that lot! How would the other local rulers view such behaviour – He’d be a laughing stock!
So – to punish the whole tribe for the presumption of the advance party led by Moses, we know what he decrees. “Make bricks without straw”.
It is a biblical image that has stayed with us for a long time – a saying still in use when we are asked to take on an impossible job and put our heart and soul into it.
So Pharoah’s anger translates to the anger of the overseers and the ordinary folk that they are being asked to do the impossible. Anger that turns – understandably – onto Moses and his family themselves. Anger that Moses tries to deflect onto God – who predictably just absorbs it all and then sends Moses back to complete the job he, God, has in mind for him.
Churches are often places where there is a lot of anger floating about under the surface. Anger about unresolved issues, grief, loss. And often I find myself trying to explain and persuade people that it is all right to get angry with God – especially when we are hurting. God really is big enough to take everything we care to throw at him (or her!) That is why the psalms are such an important resource for us; why often they are full of lament and anger – even anger expressed about God and to God. “How long, O Lord, how long!”
St Paul often seems to be the classic example of repressed anger in the NT. As a Pharisee born and educated in the relatively sophisticated world of Greek Speaking Tarsus, he becomes the classic “angry young man” and soon finds someone to vent his spleen on – these Christians, followers of the Way, that seem to be springing up everywhere!.. As a Pharisee, he would have studied the scriptures in depth. He would have known all the rules and regulations by which Jews had to live and worship. For Paul, becoming a follower of the Way, of Christ, was very nearly unthinkable – a disgusting idea. It was such a huge shock to him to find God addressing him, personally. To discover that the wild stories that had begun to circulate that Jesus had risen from the dead and returned to the disciples after that first Easter, were actually true.
Paul has to throw away the old rule-book – and I suspect that is something that costs him a lot of effort – both spiritual and emotional and indeed physical – we know he was punished by dreadful beatings several times. But ‘no gain without pain’.
Paul throws it all away – so that he can embrace Christ, crucified and resurrected. All the other rules and regs, all the rituals by which Paul, presumably, has lived – all of it has to go. De-cluttering of his mind-set – it must have been a huge challenge for someone like Paul who is so rarely (it seems) wrong about anything!
So here we are in Lent – maybe you set yourselves a target or a discipline of something to do without, or maybe you are trying to do something positive? To declutter your lives? New rules and regulations that we put on ourselves – and which give us a focus for our anger when we fail to live up to the mark.
Self-discipline is a good thing to pursue – within reason – but it only brings us closer to God if we allow it to. Only if by our giving up something, we have more time to develop as a person, and to draw closer to God “To embrace Christ and be embraced by him.”
So let’s all try to do one impossible thing before breakfast every day between now and Easter (and maybe afterwards too!) Let’s look at ourselves in the mirror each morning and really try to believe that – whatever rules and laws we may have broken, God does really love us – and knows that we could do more to show that love to the rest of his world. And whatever pain that makes us feel – we can be confident of all we really have to gain. Amen.