If you’ve ever watched (or even taken part in!) marathon running or another endurance activity, they talk about “Hitting the wall”. The point at which you feel you can go no further. When it gets really difficult to put one foot in front of the other. The time when you want to give up. This quaint film on cycling from 1955 shows making sure you don’t ‘hit the wall’.
Well we’ve reached the third Sunday in Lent.
This is the point at which it begins to tell. If you’ve given something up for Lent, you’ll be beginning to miss it. If you’ve taken something on you’ll be beginning to feel the extra work – hopefully for good as well the strain. If we align it to the desert experience, it’s the stage at which you’re beginning to feel really hungry and thirsty, possibly where the temptation starts to creep in…
When you reach that point the temptation is to give up, or to do the wrong thing to meet the need. When I get really hungry I tend to need (or think I need!) cake or biscuits to fill me up – I don’t always think of fruit.
So we come to the lectionary reading from Isaiah. If we are hungry or thirsty, it is God to whom we should turn. He is the one who supplies food and drink that satisfies – the very best of foods. Don’t chase what will leave you still hungry. What we must not do is follow the wicked way of life – even if it seems easier or more satisfying at this point in time. God’s ways and our way’s can be so far apart. Whose are we going to follow?
This point is amplified in 1 Corinthians – lessons from Israel’s idolatry, not chasing after what does not satisfy. The Israelites were given everything they needed. They were kept safe and fed – yet still they wanted more. And it was the wanting more that led them into sin. One of the lessons of Lent is about not needing more. Being content with what we have. Realising what it is possible to live with and without.
We don’t talk about sin very much. It’s not a popular concept. But that is what our ways being a long way from God’s way is about. That is what sin is – the difference between our thoughts and Gods. And it is something we have to face up to. If following God is about anything it has to be about living God’s ways. We need to turn from our ways to God’s ways.
And that is what is born out in the reading from Luke. Jesus is looking for figs. That is what he expects to find on a fig tree. When he doesn’t find any he calls for the fig tree to be cut down.
The interesting thing here is that Jesus is quite clearly saying that no sin is worse than any other. Sin is sin. We can get hung up on thinking that some sins are way more important than others – and really focus on them, whilst sometimes ignoring others. Not so, says Jesus. If you set off on a journey to Aberdeen, it matters not whether you end up in Penzance or Inverness, neither is the right place. Being quite close is not being there. There is no ‘big’ sin, just sin. Getting it wrong.
So, on this third Sunday in Lent, we are called to keep the faith. To live God’s ways. To not be distracted or tempted to take the easy way.
And if we feel we have, then there is still hope. The fig tree is given another year. A year when it will be given special fertilizer, and lots of care and attention. God continues to offer us water to drink, his free gift of what will satisfy. We can turn to God, pray to him, and know he is near (Isaiah 55:6). He listens, he cares, he nourishes. However tired we are, however far from home we feel, God invites us to come to him, and receive the life that he offers.
