Let's Do Lent Properly - The Journey Home - Almsgiving

Listen to the story of The Two Pickpockets before you read or listen to the sermon. The story is read from 'Favourite Folk Tales from Around the World' edited by Jane Yolen and published by Pantheon.

If you prefer to hear the sermon as preached rather than reading it click here.

I'm sure we usually associate almsgiving with the giving of money. And so the gospel reading for today from St. John's gospel provides a good backdrop to what we have to think about. There's such a lot of emotion and movement in that scene, of Jesus wildly swinging a quickly improvised whip back and forth as he drives the animals and people out of the temple. You can fairly hear the tables going flying and the piles of money falling to the floor and rattling and rolling all around. If anyone thought that Jesus was the wimpy, meek and mild pushover that so many people imagine him to be, this scene puts the lie to that.

But that's not the point. Jesus was angry here for a number of reasons it seems. All the activity that was going on in the temple was an abomination, even a blasphemy. What was once honourable had become dishonourable. A bit like the activities of the financial sector over recent years. And they are having a hard time pulling themselves out of it because they still can't see the abomination of self interest yet at the heart of that sector. 'We are the best so we deserve more than most' seems to be the driving principle behind the top earners. It's nothing more than self-inflated grasping and greed. And that was one of the reasons Jesus got angry in his day.

Grasping and greed. Selfishness and self-interest. Mortal sins because they choke and kill the Spirit. They choke and kill the Spirit because they turn us away from that which gives us life which is God. It's as simple as that. And it usually begins with money and often ends with money. When I was in Environmental Health, we used to give grants for home improvement. And my experience there showed me that if anything turned the hearts and minds of people from peace and love to bitterness, grasping and hatred it was money. The nicest of people would become the nastiest, when money was involved. It's no wonder Jesus said that the love of money is the root of all evil.

And this reveals why almsgiving is regarded as one of the spiritual disciplines. Gathering money closes and clenches the heart, and mind. Giving money opens and extends the heart, and mind.

We've been over this so many times in the past and the point is made. But we do need to go over it time and again because we so easily go off track, as we do when it comes to those other disciplines of prayer and fasting. We lose attention and forget and then eventually lose interest and lose heart, so very easily. What is true of prayer and fasting is also true of almsgiving.

Almsgiving isn't just about money. It's about that spirit of giving that extends our heart and mind and soul in other peoples' direction and in the direction of creation at large. It's about giving back some of what we receive, in every way we can. Jesus himself says early on in his ministry that whatever measure we give out will be returned to us. (Mark 4.24) That's how life and love and the universe work. It really is that simple. But we simply disregard it most of the time, because we are fallen creatures. To both give and receive we have to unclench our heart and mind and soul. Grasping hold of all we've got, as I said earlier, closes us off to God and others. And so giving opens us up in all sorts of ways.

Almsgiving is love in action, whether it be in giving money, or time, or a helping hand, or service to another given freely from the heart. And that's why it opens us up; love opens us up to others, God and ourselves.

So these three disciplines of prayer, fasting and alsmgiving; there for our spiritual health and well-being, provided by the Church especially at this time of year, in Lent, are nothing more than what is ordinary life for the true Christian.

I was raking up and breaking up all sorts of dead stuff in the garden yesterday; clearing away so that new shoots could grow through. As well as reminding me how physically unfit I've become of late, it reminded me of a line in a book I read years ago entitled 'Compassion'. In it there's a section about 'discipline' in the spiritual life, where it considers the sorts of things we've been thinking about over the past few weeks. And one line in that section says that 'discipline is like raking up the leaves on the pathways in the garden of the soul'. I think it's a beautiful line; maybe that's why it's stayed with me.

What we've been considering over the past three weeks and what Lent is all about is that clearing away of all the deadness of sin in the garden of our soul, so that we can grow anew in love for God and for one another and for ourselves. In Lent, we simply make a special effort in what should be the normal way of life for a Christian.