O God be in my mouth as I speak for you and fill this place with your great grace that we may leave this place less of what we use to be and more of what we ought to be through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
Today along with many other
Christian churches, we begin the forty-day season of Lent with our Ash
Wednesday services.
This period of spiritual
preparation prior to Holy Week observances was designed by the early church to
assist Christians in better preparing for the joy’s of Christ’s Easter
resurrection.
This forty-day period of
observance also mirrored the time that Jesus spent in the wilderness resisting
the temptations of Satan prior to his public ministry.
Forty has always been an
important biblical number. Remember in Genesis, it rained forty days and nights
while Noah floated in his ark. Forty days was also the amount of time that
Moses spent on the mountain fasting and praying before he received the Ten
Commandments.
Holy Scripture has always seemed
to put a special emphasis on this period of time particularly when it describes
how central biblical figures like Moses and Jesus found time to get themselves
reoriented to God.
This is probably a good way for
us to think about Lent as well.
Amidst the noise and frantic
pace of our daily lives, Lent calls us to renew ourselves and to find that our
life’s deepest purpose and meaning begin here at the rail each week nourished
by the Body and Blood of the Lord.
This is the reason, that we come
forward to this rail to receive ashes on our foreheads. It is not a sign of
practicing our piety before other as Jesus warns in our Gospel. Instead,
remembering that we are dust reminds us that our lives our gifts from God.
The very essence of who we are
finds its deepest meaning in the truth of our dust centered creation. Each day
on this earth is a blessing given to us by God.
Of course some people might
think that true change is not possible for us. A new beginning a new way of
life is somehow closed off from us.
Yet this is not the case for
Christians. God is always working his inscrutable way with us, gently prodding,
sometime shouting, trying to break through our own selfish arrogance and pride.
Honest personal transformation
is one of the most important themes in C. S. Lewis book the Voyage of the
Dawntreader.
This afternoon I wanted to share
with you one of my favorite sections from the book.
The book has one of the best
beginnings of any Lewis novel. “There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb,
and he almost deserved it.”
Although the book continues the
adventure of Edmund and Lucy from the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, it is
really is about the transformation that turns Eustace from a self-centered
prideful boy into having the possibility of being something more.
The key event of transformation
occurs when the ship, The Dawn Treader stops at an island in search of mission
noblemen. Eustace of course doesn’t want to help or do any work, so he steals
off to hide.
He finds a cave full of treasure.
After a long tiring climb up a hill he falls asleep in a valley in the cave
that he has found.
Upon waking up he discovers that
he has been transformed. As Lewis writes, “ He had turned into a dragon while
he was asleep. Sleeping on a dragons’ hoard with greedy dragonish thoughts in
his heart he had become a dragon himself.”
In other words the inner nature
of the boy had become the outer nature of the dragon.
His life as a dragon continues
for awhile and he even discovers that he does have some uses in helping out the
crew and King Caspian.
One morning though Eustace
appears back in camp magically transformed back into his human self. He
describes to his cousin Edmund the events surrounding this transformation.
He wakes up one night and sees
the great Lion Aslan, the Christ figure of the Narnia stories, who takes him up
to a pool in the mountain.
The Lion tells him though that
before bathing he must first undress. Eustace says, “I was just going to say
that I couldn’t undress because I hadn’t any clothes on when I suddenly thought
that dragons are snaky sorts of things and snakes can cast their skins. So I
started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place.
And then I scratched a little deeper and instead of scales coming off here and
there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully. In a minute or two, I
just stepped out of it. I could see it lying there beside me, looking rather
nasty.
Eustace begins to descend into
the pool to bathe but discovers that his dragon skin has somehow grown back. He
repeats this three times before the lion says to him, “You will have to let me
undress you.”
Eustace describes what happens
next: The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right
into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than
anything I ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the
pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off.
The great Lion then throws the
newly born boy Eustace into the water where he is rebaptized and reclothed and
restored once again to his human company of companions.
The story clearly demonstrates
that to abandon the scaly dragon self that dwells within us, we cannot do it
alone.
We need God’s help. This help
might first look worse than the disease, but for Eustace even though it felt
like the first tear went to his heart, he soon discovered that the pain of
change was more appealing than the old like he had been trapped in.
This is an important point that
should not be lost as we begin our Lenten journey today.
We cannot do it alone, if we are
serious about change we need to ask God’s guidance and help for taking off our
own dragon skins.
One further point needs to be
made about the kind of transformation that is described in Lewis’ book. This
point is important because it helps us to avoid unrealistic expectations for
ourselves during Lent.
The chapter on Eustace’s dragon
closes with the following observation: “It would be nice and fairly nearly true
to say that from that time forth Eustace was a different boy. To be strictly
accurate he began to be a different boy. He had relapses. There were still many
days when he could be very tiresome. But most of those I shall not notice. The
cure had begun.
This is a day for us to begin to
be different. To allow God into our lives and to let the cure take hold of our
lives. To ask God to peel away that old dragon skin that separates us from the
person God desires us to be.
It is my prayer this Lent you
will discover in worship, prayer, Scripture Study and service to others, the
wonderful person that dwells beneath the skin of your own dragon. That person
is there within you. You just need to ask God’s help in bringing them out.