The Rev. Rob Merola

Last week I asked what you think the number one problem is that people face today.  This week I have another question for you:  What’s the secret of success?   Turn to the person next take and take a moment to talk about what you think the secret of success is.

A common answer is that the secret of success is hard work.  Well, that’s often part of it, isn’t it?  But not always.  We’ve probably all known people who have worked hard without succeeding.  What one does is more important than how hard or how often or how long we do it.

So what is it that successful people do that separates them from those who are not successful?  This morning I’d like to suggest that though in reality this may be a rather complex answer involving several factors, one essential characteristic that successful people share is their willingness to do what they don’t feel like doing

For this reason, many people find it is easier to settle for a poor living instead of doing the difficult and often painful work of making a better one.    Think, for example, of all the things people are willing to do without in order to avoid doing the things they don't want to do.   As we talked about last week, that’s why people who are married are so often willing to do without good our even satisfying marriages; they aren’t willing to do the difficult and painful work of making their marriages better.    It’s why people so often do without jobs that they love; they aren’t willing to do the difficult and painful work of first discovering what they are truly passionate about,  and then finding a way to do it.  It is why so many Christians will never do anything great for God; they aren’t willing to do the difficult and painful work that doing great things of any sort always requires.

Whether it is the student who is willing to study when she’d rather be on Facebook, the athlete who is willing to keep training when he’d rather be out having a good time with his friends, or the fisherman who gets up at the crack of dawn when what he really wants to do is stay in the cozy confines of his bed cuddled up next to the warmth of his wife, the secret of their succeeding is their willingness to do what they quite frankly do not feel like doing.

But if they don’t feel like doing these things, then why do they do them?  What’s the point of putting themselves out?  Well, they know that one of the basic principles in life is that in order to do the things we want to do in the long run, we sometimes have to do what we don’t want to do in the short run.  To achieve the ends we are pursuing, it is absolutely necessary to sometimes do things we don’t like doing.    

Put simply, if I want to have the best chances of succeeding in catching a fish, I have to get up early.  As one fine sermon recently put it, you need to go fishing early so the fish haven’t already eaten by the time you arrive and offer them bait.  You did read that sermon, didn’t you? (This was the sermon Anne wrote for the Sunday when services were cancelled due to snow, and which was posted on our website for people to read as they were stuck at home).

All this brings us to this morning’s Gospel.  In it, we see Jesus doing what needs to be done in order to be successful in accomplishing his purposes as God’s beloved son, the Messiah.  We see him willing to enter into the wilderness—the place bereft of comfort and convenience, marked instead by desolation, isolation, and the threat of very real creatures that go bump in the night.  In that barren landscape, he is able to clarify what is essential.

We see him willing to confront and solve the problems inherent in what it will mean for him to be the Messiah.  Nobody had ever been the Messiah before, and so being fully human like you are and I am, Jesus had to seek God’s leading in puzzling it out.  

It is in this context that the evil one tempts him to follow his strategy instead of God’s.  He says to Jesus, “Wow ‘em.  Do something spectacular.  Put on a good show.  People will flock to that!”  And, of course, people do flock to churches every Sunday that follow that strategy and put on a good show.

Then he says, “Feed them!  Turn stones into bread and there will be plenty of food for everybody.  Feed people, and they will come.”  The temptation was to appeal to people’s self interest, to preach a gospel of abundance, if you will, with health and wealth for all.  And surely that gospel draws lots and lots of people to it day in and day out as well.

And finally, the ringer.  “Worship me.  Do things my way,” the tempter says, “and you won’t have to suffer.      I can show you the short cuts to the top, the fast track to getting ahead.  Do what I’m telling you, and you’ll still get all of the glory, without any of the pain.  What could be easier?”

Jesus has to decide if this is indeed the way to be the Messiah, if this is what it means to be God’s beloved child.   And when he decides that this is not God’s way, choosing to resist these temptations, we see Jesus willing to suffer pain.    He will need to be able to do all these things over and over again in order to be successful in his mission as Messiah, in order to do the great things he discerns God would have him do. 

And, if we would be successful as parents, spouses, or friends, as students, homemakers, or business people, or as Christians, or if we would be successful in our homes, societies, churches, workplace, and world, we need to be able to do these things too.

We need to be able to enter the wilderness, pare down the landscape of our lives, and focus on what is essential.  We need to be able to confront and solve problems instead of avoiding them, even though the process of doing so is a painful one.    We need to be able to make the choice to suffer in the service of our highest callings.

Yes, problems make us feel things we don’t like to feel; things like anger, aggravation, or annoyance, sadness, anguish, or despair, guilt, shame or regret, fear, alarm, or anxiety. Nobody likes to feel this way because nobody likes to suffer, and sometimes our emotional anguish can be worse than even the most excruciating physical pain.

But it is our willingness to follow Jesus’ example and suffer pain in order to work through our problems that is the difference between success and failure in life.   It is in learning to solve our problems that we learn the basic skills in life; skills like self confidence, courage, persistence, wisdom, and grace.   The challenge of our problems by necessity calls forth growth. 

Even so, many people would rather avoid pain and thus avoid the problems that cause it.  They procrastinate, hoping their problems will magically go away. They use drugs or alcohol to deny them, deadening themselves to the pain so they can forget the problems that are its source.  They bury them under busyness and long hours at work.  They distract themselves from them by food, the internet, or incessant exercise.

In Lent, what we do is attempt to resist these tendencies.  That for instance, is why we gives things up; to clear away distractions so we can better see our interior landscape, be honest with ourselves about our current problem areas—and we all have them—so that we can then do a better job of working through these problems.   We do this for our own sake, for the sake of those we love, for the sake of the world.

For example, one of the chief things we give up is various foods, because food is one of the chief ways we avoid discomfort.  You’ve probably heard the old saying that inside me is a 300 pound man trying to get out.  But there is another saying that is less well known:  Inside me is a thin person struggling to be free, but I can knock him out with a few pieces of chocolate cake. 

There is a reason we call comfort food comfort food.   For many of us, we eat to suppress painful feelings.   That’s called “emotional eating”, and the trouble is that as good as food is, and as much joy as it can bring us when we eat well, food simply cannot solve our problems.    Using it do so only creates a vicious cycle.    When we us food to avoid our problems, the problems go unattended and only escalate; they “up the ante”, if you will.  So we stuff ourselves all over again, are filled with guilt and shame on top of our original problems, and they cycle starts all over again.    Food ends up being a poor means of trying to fill the emptiness of an unexamined life. 

In Lent, for 40 days—hey, that’s not too bad!—we attempt to break that cycle.  With God’s help, and the help of a supportive community called the church, we find the grace and courage to face that emptiness, examine it, and find a better way to address it.

Of course there are other ways we attempt to avoid our problems.  One of the best ways to get at them is to ask, What is it I can’t live without? 

Maybe, for instance, I can’t imagine life without going on the internet.  It is perhaps worth remembering that the human race got a long just fine without the internet for thousands and thousands of years.  In fact, many of us can remember when there was no internet, and we got a long just fine too—sometimes maybe better, even.

What would it be like if I didn’t distract or busy myself with the internet for 40 days?   Maybe I’d pay more attention to the people around me, to prayer and study and the things necessary for personal growth and mastery.

Or maybe it is alcohol.   Can you go 40 days without taking a drink?   For some people, the prospect of doing so is terrifying.  Never mind the fact that we did just fine without alcohol for at least 16 years of our life; we can’t imagine life without it now.  Without that daily glass of wine or cocktail or can of beer, we’d have to confront the true landscape of our lives, and were afraid it might not be too pretty.   But if we don’t address it, it will only get worse.  If we do, we might find our life will spring forth with unexpected pleasures like a beautiful garden.

So what about it?  Can you give alcohol up for 40 days?   If something pushes back against doing so, it is probably worth examining.  And if we really can’t do it, well, I hope we find the grace and the courage to see what a serious problem that is.

So this Lent, may we be willing to follow Jesus into the wilderness, face our problems, and suffer pain.  May we do so in the pursuit of greater mental, emotional, and spiritual health—for or own sake, the sake of those we love, and the sake of the world.   There are some tools to help us do this, and we’ll talk about them in the weeks to come, so as part of your commitment to improved health this Lent, I hope you be here every Sunday for church. 

But for now, for this morning, may we commit ourselves before God and one another to embracing the pain and suffering necessary for our personal and spiritual growth, knowing that if we find the courage to walk the admittedly difficult way of Jesus through Lent, the glorious joy of Easter awaits us in the end.

Amen.