How Long Are You in for This Time?

(#1 in the Lenten Sermon Series: “Dennis in the Corner”)

“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days . . .”
(Luke 4:1, 2a)

A sermon by Siegfried S. Johnson on the First Sunday in Lent, February 10, 2008
Volume 2 Number 32

First United Methodist Church, 605 West 6th, Mountain Home, Arkansas 72653

To guide us in our 2008 Lenten season I’m introducing a friend well-known to all of us, Dennis Mitchell. Dennis, a celebrity, is of course better known as Dennis the Menace, born on March 12, 1951 in 16 newspapers, the creation of cartoonist Hank Ketcham. As you can clearly see, Dennis hasn’t aged like the rest of us, yet he’s been with us all the way, a daily companion to millions. His creator retired in 1994 and passed away in 2001, but Dennis lives on through the creativity of Ketcham’s long-time associates, Marcus Hamilton and Ron Ferdinand.

I suppose for some fifteen years I’ve scanned each day’s newspaper, rarely failing to clip and save one particular genre of Dennis the Menace, what I call Dennis in the Corner. In these frames, Dennis is sitting down in the rocking chair, facing the corner into which his parents have banished him to think, to consider what he has done wrong, why he is being punished. The corner functioned to block out all distractions, leaving Dennis alone with his thoughts. That, it seems to me, is an entirely Lenten exercise. Yes, Dennis will make an excellent guide, leading us to an inspirational Lenten experience. I sincerely hope that you enjoy and profit from this 2008 Lenten series of sermons, Lenten reflections inspired by Dennis in the Corner.

In the two frames I’ve offered you today, first we see Margaret visiting a very upset Dennis who, once again, has been confined to his chair facing the corner. Margaret asks (in the words I’ve taken for my title) “How long are you in for this time?” In the second frame, we see Dennis hugging his Teddy, his dog Ruff at his feet, and Dennis is calling to his parents, saying, “Do I gotta keep sittin’ here even if I forgot what it’s for?” With these two frames, these two questions, Dennis will help us address the meaning of the Lenten season. “How long are we in for this time?” and “Do we have to keep doin’ this (Lenten thing), even if we forgot what it’s for?”

Our lectionary text is the temptation of Jesus in the Judean wilderness. I love Luke’s words describing the length of the temptation, “Where for forty days.” Well, Margaret, there’s your answer. Forty days. That’s how long we’re in for this time! Every time. Year after year. Forty is a number often used in the bible, symbolic of trial, of discipline, and of judgment.

In the days of Noah, Genesis 7:17 might have been written, “Where for forty days the flood continued on the earth, and the waters increased and rose high above the earth, and God blotted out every living thing., Those are words of judgment.

When Moses ascended Mt. Sinai to receive the tablets of the law, it might have been written, “Where for forty days” the Hebrew’s were tested by the absence of Moses, their allegiance to Yahweh failing as they gathered their gold and allowed Aaron to forge new gods, golden calves.

When Elijah scampered from Jezebel’s threats, he was comforted by an angel who said, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” Then it might have been written of the Judean wilderness into which he journeyed, “Where for forty days” he persevered in his journey to Mt. Horeb where his heart was opened to hear the still, small voice of God.

When Jonah preached judgment at Ninevah, it might have been written, “Where for forty days” the Ninevites were told by Jonah they would have space to search their souls and to prepare for the certain judgment of the living and angry God.

And now Jesus is led into the wilderness, “Where for forty days” he fasts and prays, and where his faith is tested.

Liturgically speaking, Lent is the church’s experience “Where for forty days” we are invited to sit In-the-Corner. During Lent’s forty days we are given liturgical space to be about the business of our own private reflections in that spiritual corner of our lives where we acknowledge our sins and seek redemption. Forty days. That’s how long we’re in for this time.

Now, the second question, “What’s it for?” Unless we know the answer to that question, we might as well get up from the corner. What is Lent for? Alice and Henry Mitchell would say to Dennis, “You need to consider what you did wrong. You need time to think about why you are being punished. Yes, we love you. You know that. When your time is up you may come and join us at the table, rejoin your friends outside to play, but for now you need time to think.”

Lessons are to be learned in the silence of the corner. Lent gives us spiritual space to learn these lessons, directing us into the corner through worship and liturgy, urging us to create time for reflection, to find moments of quiet from the world’s distractions. In the Corner we are alone. In the Corner we deal with guilt. In the Corner we recognize that our sin has separated us from God. In the Corner we seek forgiveness. In the Corner we crave for fellowship to be renewed with God, just as Dennis craved to be back in the good graces of his mom and dad.

Lent, our time In the Corner, provides liturgical and spiritual space do precisely those things. This is one reason for the tradition of giving something up at Lent. Eliminating certain patterns of our normal day creates space for reflection. Lent allows us to pull away from circumstances of our sin, the fatigue of our busyness, to find a moment of solitude along the way of our journey through life. It allows us to pray, to contemplate, and, at last, to find renewal.

Children, like Dennis, may consider their In the Corner moments an imprisonment, longing to hasten the time so they can get up and be back at life as normal. The more mature learn to cherish those times of silence, to see them as opportunities rather than punishments, growing to see Lent as precious and most valuable. We learn to crave what once we feared, and discover that what we once feared has at last become a part of us most precious.

On March 24, 1996 Leon Wieseltier’s father, a survivor of the Holocaust, died. Forty-four years old, Leon was the literary editor of The New Republic, a major political journal. Leon was busy. No time to sit in the corner. No time for soul-searching. Yet, like it or not, now he felt alone, his faith traditions compelling him to sit In the Corner. Grieving his father’s death, he felt drawn to the traditions of the faith his parents had instilled in him, even though as an adult he had long since left behind the practice of his Jewish faith.

But Leon chose to follow what mourning sons are supposed to do in Orthodox Judaism, praying the Mourner’s Kaddish three times daily. This is not a simple folding of the hands at one’s desk during a pause in the day, quickly to breathe a prayer. For the Orthodox, this is a considerable commitment involving a change in life’s patterns, requiring adjustment of daily schedules in order to be in the synagogue morning, noon, and evening for 11 months. Every day, three times a day, he would interrupt his day, find his way to the synagogue, and join others in praying the Kaddish. This is not a ritual about grief, pain, or loss. It is about praise. (Very like, by the way, how our own Methodist liturgy begins a service of memorial, “We are gathered, friends, to praise God, and to witness to our faith . . .”)

The Mourner’s Kaddish is not a prayer about our wounds. It is praise of God. “May his great Name be blessed forever and ever. Blessed, praised, glorified, exalted, extolled, mighty, upraised, and lauded be the name of the Holy One. Blessed is he.” Three times a day. “May his great name be blessed forever and ever. May his great name be blessed forever and ever.”

At first, Leon felt these In-the-Corner moments to be compulsory, and somewhat resented his own desire to follow his faith’s traditions. It was a moment his faith forced upon him, a prescribed, forced interruption of his busy day. Yet, Leon writes that, over the course of the year, something unexpected began to happen. He was being changed by the daily rhythm of the prayer. “The symbols were seeping into everything. A season of sorrow became a season of soul renovation.”

When Jesus was a boy, his life was full of such practices. Psalm 119:164 says, “Seven times a day I praise you.” Fixed-hour prayer was well known in Judaism, and Jesus would have observed these traditions, as the disciples. Acts 3 opens, “One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, at three o’clock in the afternoon, and a man lame from birth was being carried in.” The wonderful healing of this chapter, “Silver and gold have we none, but such as we have we give unto thee. In the name of Jesus Christ, of Nazareth, stand up and walk,” was a healing occurring as they were going to fixed-hour prayer.

So when Jesus was ultimately tested, not In-the-Corner, but On-the-Cross, he resorted to the scriptures he had learned in his own, In-the-Corner moments. And where did Jesus gain the moral courage it took to defeat his enemy in the wilderness? “It is written. It is written. It is written.” This comes from a lifetime of creating space for the disciplines of grace.

“May his great name be blessed forever and ever. Blessed, praised, glorified, exalted, extolled, mighty, upraised, and lauded be the name of the Holy One. Blessed is he.”

So it is with us. When life presses us to the wall, when life brings to us its almost unbearable crosses, the patterns of faithfulness learned through the years in worship, in liturgy, in the habits of our minds and hearts, will be there as our primary source of spiritual strength. Through the means of grace, through following the traditions of our faith, we won’t seek to avoid Lent, saying, “Do I have to keep sittin’ here, even if I forgot what it’s for?”

What It’s For? Lenten reflections prepare us for days of darkness, days of silence, days of aloneness. We live through that darkness, silence, and aloneness during Holy Week, the culmination of Lent, observing the Passion of the Christ. And, of course, it prepares us for our own personal experiences of crisis.

At the end of the year Leon went to cemetery for a service at his father’s grave. In a sense, for these 11 months, Leon had been In the Corner. Reflecting. Praying. Searching his soul. Now friends and family huddled in the cold, windswept graveyard. When the service was over, looking at his father’s grave, he recited one last time the Kaddish. “May his great name be blessed. May his great name be blessed.”

Leon wrote, “I stood in the ashes of fury, and spoke the sentences of praise. Was that my voice? It was no longer the effusion of woe. ‘Magnified,’ I said. ‘Sanctified,’ I said. I looked above me. I looked below me. With my own eyes, I saw magnificence.”

Speaking of the ashes of fury, I must share the excellent words our own Bishop Charles Crutchfield wrote to Methodist people this week, in the wake of the tornadoes, “Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Around us there are lives and hopes and dreams that are shattered, that are in ashes today. Let us remember that the season of the church year that begins in ashes on Ash Wednesday, ends in resurrection on Easter Sunday. We are an Easter people. We already know the way out of the tomb, out of despair, out of hopelessness. We know the way out from lives that are disrupted, and grief that seems overwhelming. We are an Easter people!"

Our lives, our journey from Here to There, often bring suffering. And we ask, Why? We ask, What’s It For? I don’t think the best answers are in print, not in excellent sermons, nor even in best-seller Christian titles. No, I think rather that the best answers are discovered in our private In the Corner moments, our disciplined aloneness with God. And they prepare us, so that when we find ourselves in the midst of the ashes of fury, we can, gradually, come to that place of the heart when we can look above us, and look below us, and with our own eyes, see magnificence.

Sources and notes:

The story of Leon Wieseltier is told in the sermon “Testing the Calling,” a sermon by Thomas G. Long in Pulpit Resource, Volume 32, Number 1 (January - March 2004).