Keep Lent Weird

Roman fresco from Herculaneum, depicting the Cult of Isis. First century AD

  

Lections: Ash Wednesday, AD 2026 A

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Lent is a season of divine mysteries. And Romans loved a good mystery religion.

In the time of the New Testament, people held a far broader understanding of religion than we tend to hold today. Everything was religious for them to one degree or another, because everything that people do, deals with what we value. Whatever you value most in life, that thing is your god. And however you structure your life around it, that is your religion. Thus there is no truly irreligious species of humanity.

The historian Varro, living in the century before Christ, spoke of three sorts of religion in which everyone participates: the civil, the natural, and the mythic. Now, civil religion has to do with public ceremonies. We might think of the SuperBowl, or perhaps the Fourth of July. Natural religion deals with our own personal philosophies, whether you’re a Stoic or an Epicurean or a Platonist or what-have-you. Most folks today are simply capitalists.

But Varro also recognized a deeper religious need, beyond civic displays and theoretical constructs. We need myth. We need mysticism. We all desire union with the divine. And throughout history, humans find this in ritual, in liturgy, in timeless sacred stories. That’s what the majority mean when we speak of religion today: mythic religion, mystic religion, as found now in our churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques.

In Jesus’ day, the Roman people liked to scratch that itch by joining mystery religions, or mystery cults. No two were quite the same, but they all had similar bones.

First there was the whiff of the exotic. Mystery cults were flavored after realms which Rome had conquered: Egypt, Greece, Syria, Anatolia. The gods they claimed were foreign, yet easily accessible. So, for instance, a devotee of Isis might learn that the Egyptian goddess was in fact the one true God behind all pagan rites. So you had the thrill of something alien, something novel, yet paired with imperial universality.

Next, any mystery cult worth its salt had secrets: periods of instruction and preparation leading up to one’s initiation behind closed doors. Once you were in, you were part of the club, part of the new community. This involved, amongst other things, pooling your resources.

And finally, there had to be a mystery. Now, in this context, a religious μυστήριον refers to something that you can only understand by going through it. Typically this involved a ritual death and rebirth: descending into the underworld in order to commune with the gods; then rising again to new life and new knowledge. This mystery served to liberate the initiate from fear of death, for the grave would no longer harbor secrets. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. The afterlife could now be viewed with hope.

Thus we see Rome primed for conversion to Christianity.

Think about it. The Romans reconquer Judea in the first of three Romano-Jewish Wars. Then this new cult, Jewish in origin yet universal in its preaching, spreads throughout the Empire, proclaiming the Good News of a Messiah, a God-King, who has overcome death and the grave, and so thrown wide the gates of Heaven to all who would believe. It’s got that Jewish flavor, that foreign spice, which Romans seem so to covet, yet speaks Greek and meets you where you’re at, regardless of culture, class, or caste.

After a period of instruction—of fasting, penance, and prayer, previously lasting several years, yet now pared down to roughly 40 days—you then enter into this new community, this Body of Jesus Christ, through a pair of sacred mysteries at the Easter Vigil. First you are baptized, not as a bath but as a death and resurrection. You drown to your sins, to the old creature within you, to rise anew with the life of God in your veins, His Holy Spirit in your lungs. And you are given a new name, “Christian.”

Then immediately the newly baptized Christian comes to the Altar and the Table of our Lord, there to receive His Body and Blood as a morsel of bread and wine. So now that you possess within you the Name of Christ, the Spirit of Christ, the Body and the Blood of Christ, what does that make you? Who does that make you? It makes you Jesus Christ for all the world, joined to His own death, already died for you, that you need never fear death again; and joined to His eternal life already here begun.

Freed from death, freed from sin, freed from Hell, made into a member of Christ’s Body and a temple of His Spirit, the Christian now is liberated to live without fear, without restraint, loving her neighbor and even her enemies with the limitless love of Jesus Christ. Little wonder, then, that Christianity spread like wildfire along those famous Roman roads. The Church was the mystery religion to end all mystery religions, the culmination of every cult. And keep in mind, the Latin word for mystery is sacrament.

I’m telling you all this, because I want you to keep Lent weird. It isn’t just a period when people give up chocolates. It isn’t only preparation for an Easter dinner. Lent is our initiation into the mysteries of Christ, into His death and Resurrection, into Hell and into Heaven! We die with Him, that we might rise in Him. And I want us to experience that in the way that the Romans heard it: as scandalous, shocking, terrifying, wonderful, glorious, and gory.

Most all of us here have been baptized. Most all of us here have communed. Few, if any, in this congregation shall approach the sacred mysteries for the very first time. And certainly no-one needs to be re-baptized, as though the promise of our God were insecure. But the depths of the Sacraments remain inexhaustible. There is no limit, no bottom, to the mercies of our Lord, no end to the extent to which He’ll go, in order to raise you and all of us up from the loamy earth of our graves.

Come to the Font and be forgiven. Come to the Table and be fed. Come to the Christ who comes to you in Spirit, Flesh, and Blood. Know that your tomb has been broken. Know that your devils are slain. Know that Christ is come for you and cannot be restrained.

I offer you death! —and life everlasting. I offer you the mysteries of faith.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pertinent Links

RDG Stout

Blog: https://rdgstout.blogspot.com/

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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsqiJiPAwfNS-nVhYeXkfOA

X: https://twitter.com/RDGStout

St Peter’s Lutheran

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Website: https://www.stpetersnymills.org/

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Nidaros Lutheran

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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@nidaroschurch6026