It’s message I’ve often heard from the pulpit at this time of the year, and I dare say that you have heard it too: ‘A well-kept Lent makes for a glorious Easter.’ A positive and bracing exhortation it is: but it leaves some questions unanswered, not the least of them being: what precisely  might constitute a ‘well-kept Lent.’ And what – notwithstanding good intentions - might not?

A few years ago, a young friend of ours was in his first year of teaching in a primary school in the north of England. Knowing his head-teacher to be not only a  regular worshipper, but also a lay Canon of the  local cathedral, our friend, not himself a churchgoer, asked his headteacher whether he was giving up anything for Lent. ‘Ah well, you see’, said the headteacher, ‘Nowadays, many of us would sooner think positively in terms of taking something up, rather than negatively in terms of giving something up.’ ‘ I see’, said our young friend, ‘So, are you taking up something for Lent this year?’ ‘I am indeed’, the headteacher replied, becoming quite animated. ‘After giving it a good deal of thought, what I have decided to take up is: standing for the Eucharistic Prayer, instead of kneeling’. After recounting this exchange, our  young friend asked, in genuine puzzlement, ‘Am I missing something here?’  Would that we could have said yes!

Most Lenten resolutions – whether to give up or take up – are neither as insubstantial, nor as risible, as the  resolution of that headteacher! The value of self-denial in a self-indulgent world cannot be denied; and  taking up a good book, or  attendance at a discussion-group, may well be of spiritual benefit  – could even be life-changing. Yet there is a potential hazard in such resolutions, if they are all that Lent means to us. And the hazard lies not in the resolutions themselves, but in our human nature, which, as today’s reading from Genesis reminds us, often falls short of what we might like it to be. The hazard is simply this: the possibility that the end-result of our Lenten endeavours could be little more than a warm glow of achievement and self-congratulation. If that is our only measure of a good Lent, then pride - which, as Canon Angela reminded listeners to Radio 4,  in her ‘Thought for the Day’  on Ash Wednesday, is deadliest of all deadly sins  - will not be far away.

What we need to remember, beyond all our resolutions, is that the most important thing in Lent is to find a way of  following Jesus into the wilderness. How might we do that?  I believe help may lie in two words that we shall hear in the first part of the blessing pronounced at  end of this service: ‘Christ give you grace to grow in holiness’. My two words, each of them beginning with the same two letters, are grace and grow.

Lent is a time for grace – time to recognise once more  both our need of grace, and the reality of grace, freely offered to us in the unearned, undeserved, love and mercy  of the christlike God. Here are  some words from a recently-published book called ‘Finding the Language of Grace’  by Dom Christopher Jamison, former Abbot of the Benedictine Monastery at Worth, Sussex: ‘Grace is God’s way of restoring our trust in the goodness of life…grace is a goodness that nourishes the soul; it feeds the good in us so that we can trust each other and flourish together … Grace is the quality that transforms lives, even in their darkest moments.’ 

‘Even in their darkest moments.’ I think I might want say, especially in their darkest moments. The language of grace does not come easily to a culture such as ours, that  prizes self-reliance, competition, achievement, and success so highly. Thus, it may be that it is only when we find ourselves in some kind of personal wilderness of our own – perhaps of fear, loss, failure, loneliness, bewilderment, or disappointment - that we can see just how much we  need grace; and  only then that we come to know the  reality of grace.  And it may also be that we shall most fully know the reality of grace when we have experienced unconditional love, acceptance, and forgiveness from at least one other human being.

And if the wilderness can be the place where grace becomes real, it can also be the place where growth becomes possible, as we learn that it is not our unaided  effort, but the knowledge of being loved, as we are, which helps us grow towards what we might become. Our final blessing prays that we may grow in holiness. This is not, thank God, growth in religiosity, but growth in Christlikeness,  growth that makes it possible for us to say, with Paul, ‘Not I but Christ in me’. And that, in turn,  does not mean self-negation, still less self-hatred, but the gradual emergence of our true self. But for that to happen, we need to believe  that we are more than ego – the self-assertive, self-defensive me, who craves attention and obsesses over who I think I need to be in order to look good and impress people. Ego is part of who we  are – but our true self transcends the ego. Today’s gospel is about temptation - not the  temptations of the flesh, but the temptations of the ego. I see the  figure of Satan as a personification of Jesus’s own ego, trying to persuade him to abandon trust in the  Father. Be your own god, it says – be your own man. Feed the  hungry, make bread from stones; they will love you! Do something spectacular, leap off temple; they will wonder at you! Finally  assume  power over them; they will serve you! Each time the answer is ‘No’,  as the Son of Man, who is fully human,  points away from himself to the Father.   

Such temptations may not literally be ours. But the temptation to be our own gods – to let the ego rule - is deep-rooted. Taking time to recognise this in honest self-appraisal; taking time to recognise our own ego-protecting tendencies – which can include the deliberate  cultivation of a selfless image, so as to convey the impression of great saintliness – all that is work for the wilderness.  But to see ourselves as God sees us is also to glimpse something of what we might, through grace, become; for the truth is often that our greatest sin lies being less than all we could be. In his book, ‘Tales of Hasidim’, the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber tells the story of  Rabbi Zusya, who dreamt that he was standing before the  judgment seat of the Almighty. And the Almighty said to him, ‘Rabbi Zusya, I do not ask why you were not Abraham, Isaac, Jacob or Joseph. I do not ask why you were not Moses. I ask only this: why  were you not Zusya?’   

I pray that this Lent we might all find the time to be still, and wake up to the reality of grace – God’s amazing grace - that saves a wretch like me – and you.  And I pray also  that it  may  be for us all a time of growth – that, in the words of one of my favourite Lenten prayers, it may ‘a springtime for our souls in Christ.’