Over the last few years, I’ve begun to rely more and more on reading glasses. Last Sunday, I forgot to bring a pair to the pulpit when I went up to preach the sermon. I asked my son to run down to my office and grab a pair. He brought back a pair of black framed readers that came from a drawer in my desk. As soon as I saw them, I realized that they were a pair of fake glasses I picked up for Halloween a few years ago. I didn’t want to stop talking and explain why I needed a different pair, so I put them on and did the best I could by squinting and leaning on memory as best I could. This morning, I was thinking about the strangeness of wearing fake glasses and pretending they help me see better. I began preaching through a Lenten series in preparation for Easter. Historically, Lent has been a season of preparation and reflection for Christians. They would fast, pray, hold special worship services, and do all sorts of other disciplines to reflect on God’s grace for them by sending Jesus to die for their sins. Lent is generally understood to be 40 days before Easter and is a remembrance of the 40 days Jesus spent fasting in the wilderness and being tempted by the devil. For the early church, the days were considered to be a time of preparation, where they got into the right mindset for the most holy holiday on the calendar.
It’s a little like training for spirituality. We train for all sorts of things. We train for athletics. We study for tests. Expecting mothers practice breathing for when they are in labor. It makes sense that our spiritual lives would improve through practice. I would argue that this type of practice, though, is learning to step away from ourselves and see things from God’s perspective. It’s sort of like putting on a pair of God-colored glasses to look at our lives. This doesn’t come easily or naturally, but can be achieved. It is extremely easy to look at the world from our own perspective and to pretend it’s God’s. The times in my life when I have fallen into this pattern, it is like my morning of wearing fake reading glasses and pretending they worked. They didn’t change the fuzziness of my vision when reading text. They only existed for the benefit of the people in the room. Spirituality that is rooted in my selfish desires or self-centered perspectives doesn’t bring the world into focus at all. It just makes everyone think that I can see better than I actually can. You could call it play acting, or to use the greek based word for the concept: hypocrisy. The trick to training our spiritual self is that it requires effort, just as much as training for a marathon or practicing conjugating French verbs. Only instead of running or speaking French, we learn the teachings of Jesus and apply them. The easiest place to find a number of those teachings together is to look at the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. Jesus teaches about many different areas of life. For example, He talks about forgiving enemies and praying for folks you want to hate. Please understand that trying really hard to be good or follow these teachings is not the route to being good in the eyes of God. We can only become right in God’s sight through Jesus dying for us on the cross. However, as we follow Him, learning to live out His teachings changes us. It reshapes our hearts and helps us see the world through God’s eyes. If you find these passages difficult, you might find a spiritual personal trainer, like a pastor or someone who has learned to understand the Bible. I don’t believe that Lent is the only time we are called to be spiritually fit. It’s something we should do throughout our lives, the same way we watch our diet and try to exercise. However, Lent is an excellent time to engage in new habits of spiritual health. The season of Lent is a little like New Years, where we try to develop new life habits. You can do them any time, but this is a good time to start.
