40Days2011: ‘It is steadfast love, not sacrifice, that God desires’

‘What?!?’

That was the first reaction I had to these words from Psalm 50 when I read them on the 3^rd Saturday of Lent. That’s right, the THIRD Saturday of Lent is when the scriptures say God doesn’t want sacrifice but steadfast love.

‘So what have I been doing these last few weeks with the whole fasting thing?!?’ That was my second reaction to these words. Why are we sacrificing something for this time of Lent if that’s not what God wants. I already love God so I don’t need to give up anything, what a waste of time.

‘Wait, let’s think about this for a minute’ That was my third reaction to these words. I’ve never thought of myself as any good at interpreting scripture and usually stay out of any theological debates here at Lowe House, but I do quietly think about it, and especially when planning community prayer. So what were these words actually trying to say, have we all fallen for an early April Fool’s from God and we’ve starved ourselves of biscuits, tea, coffee, crisps, TV etc. for no reason. In a word, no. We’ve just gone about the steadfast love in a different way.

Lots of the reflections on here have spoken of love and that’s because that is what our faith is, love of God, love of each other and love of the world he gave us. It’s easy for us to sometimes forget the amazing world God gave us. I recently planned a retreat for a year 8 group based around stewardship. We explored these ideas of love and how we live them out in our lives. And just for some light relief in the middle of this reflection I thought you could watch the clip I showed them:

A bit different maybe, but a reminder that we have a God that loves us so much he gave us a world full of everything we could ever want or need and said ‘I love this world and I love you so much I want to give it to you, please take care of it, take care of yourselves, and each other!’ Okay that last bit was Jerry Springer but you get the point. This is where the steadfast love comes in. We show steadfast love to God by showing steadfast love to all of his creation - the whole world, everything and everyone in it. So what has sacrifice got to do with it I hear you say? Okay I bet none of you were thinking that because I’ve sort of gone away from the point, buuuut…we sacrifice something during Lent to remember the love God has for us and try and show some back. It’s no coincidence that the Psalm the following day was:

‘The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want’ Ps 23

The Lord has shown his love to us by giving us all we could ever need and yet we spend most of our lives just wanting more and more. Even when we try and give something up, we can end up just wanting it even more and sometimes we even slip up and give in to that ‘want‘. The other week I flicked onto BBC 1 and watched most of Comic Relief. Although the Church doesn’t completely endorse all that the Comic Relief money goes on, those bits that come in between the comedy, where we see those people who have so many ‘needs’ before they can think of any ‘wants’, really hits home what our role is in the world. The love of our neighbour, that can make so much of a difference. Giving up our ‘wants’ during Lent to simply give others their ‘needs’ is how we can show steadfast love to God and show His steadfast love to our fellow brothers and sisters. It’s not just people across the world in those clips but those on our very doorstep who can have ‘needs’ which we take for granted because we already have them. When we give up our time to listen to someone, when we let someone else have the last teabag, when we don’t start an argument about what’s on TV and let someone else choose, when we give that person on the street the pennies in our pocket without presuming what it is going to be spent on, AND we do these things out of love and not thinking of it as a sacrifice on our part. That…is when we show steadfast love to God. As the psalm says, he doesn’t want our sacrifices, just our love.

‘Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me’ Matt 25:40

I finish by asking you to enter into a time of prayer through song (one of my favourite ways to pray). If you’re anything like me, you may have to admit that you haven’t always been in the right frame of mind reading this blog and so haven’t always treated it as the prayer that it could be each day. So here’s what I want you to do, simply click play on the following link and make yourself comfortable: sitting, lying, standing, eyes open, eyes closed, hands together, hands open, hands up high, whatever feels right for you. Let the words be your prayer to ask God to help us to feel the power of His everlasting love for us, and to be able to be that love to the world.