Lent and the Sanctified Life

Sermon on the Mount by Henrik Olrik

“God is whoever raised Jesus from the dead, having before raised Israel from Egypt.”
-Robert Jenson

The coming weeks and months of the lectionary—toward Lent and into Lent—find Methodist and many other churches learning to follow Jesus with St Matthew. Specifically, we’re learning from Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount and, at the start of Lent, Jesus’ temptation in the desert in Matthew 4.

The extraordinary rigor of Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount is always cause for pause. Some interpreters are simply taken aback by the thought that any human living outside the walls of a monastery might actually live in accordance with Jesus’ teaching. Sometimes preachers are also too much influenced by Luther’s Law-Gospel dialectic. When the Law-Gospel dialectic empties out Jesus’ teachings of their practical summons, it contributes to the idolatrous conformity of Christian community to wider society – which itself increases the pressure not to take Jesus’ teachings as practically serious. These factors all contribute to a theological catastrophe in which the Sermon on the Mount is neglected as a word for practicing Methodist disciples.

But, praise be to God, we have open to us better paths of interpretation. Wesley offers a better method. In a way highlighted in William J. Abraham’s editions of Wesley’s canonical sermons, Wesley engages Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount as spiritual direction and instruction in how to be a Christian (rather than, say, as a foil to drive us to despair so that we might awaken and become a Christian). This approach views Jesus’ teachings as instruments of divine Wisdom incarnate employed for our sanctification. 

In this short article I want to help pastors and small group leaders walk God’s people toward and into Lent in the theologically richest way possible. That means, for many churches, finding vivid, transformational, and affective connections between the Sunday lections and this liturgical season. So in this article I’ll first attend to the parallels between Matthew 3-7 and the Exodus narrative. Then I’ll deepen these suggestive parallels through the paschal-trinitarian logic of the great 12th-century theologian-mystic Hugh of St Victor via his treatise On the Three Days. The main point I want to make is that the healthiest path for Wesleyan and paleo-orthodox, canonical theist interpreters is to associate the Sermon on the Mount with the Spirit-filled living that is possible now for those sharing in resurrection life. Lent, then, is associated with a time of burial and re-formation into the wisdom of Christ, the logos of the cross. 

In short, all the time between now and Easter is prime time for disciple-making.

The Exodus Movement of Matthew 3-7

Notice that the movement of Jesus in Matthew 3-7 echoes, in vivid ways, the dramatic movement of God’s relationship with Moses and Israel in the Exodus.

This can be grasped as a movement through water, into desert, and up a mountain.

Through Water

Israel is called to birth (delivered by the hand of Moses) through the Red Sea: simultaneously chaos—the place of drowning and death for the oppressive Egyptian army—and the passage to new life. Just as the crossing of the Red Sea inaugurates a new season in the life of the people of God, Jesus' baptism inaugurates the beginning of his public ministry. Just as the pursuers of Israel are swallowed up in the waters, so the forces of death will be defeated in God's work in and through Jesus. Jesus’ sinless baptism in turn prepares the way for our sinner’s cleansing in the baptismal font: we’re led by our sinless Deliverer through and ultimately beyond the Sin and Death that characterize the “Egypt” of our old life. Our passage through water points to our awakening unto justification.

Into Desert

After their birth through the Red Sea, Israel wanders in the wilderness for 40 years, led by Moses, taught and tempted, sometimes faithful, sometimes not. It is a place of death, penance, and learning to heed the voice of God. This parallels Jesus’ own Spirit-led temptation in the wilderness for 40 days. Where Israel is imperfectly faithful, Jesus is fully faithful, resisting the devil and cleaving to every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. This prepares our own post-baptismal journey from justification into sanctification: it is paradigmatically Lenten. By fits and starts, we too learn through the long Lent of life that Jesus’ way is the true wisdom, his earthy parables the true philosophy, the path of heeding the Spirit’s tugs unto penance and renewal the sure road to flourishing, our carried cross the divine instrument of enduring joy. We become progressively clearer in hearing the voice of our Shepherd, and we strive to heed it, becoming “wise unto salvation” (2 Tim 3:15).

Up a Mountain

Following Israel’s purgative sojourn in the desert, Israel is led to the foot of Mt Sinai. Moses ascends the mountain; the people do not. Moses encounters God in the cloud and descends with the Law. At the start of Matthew 5, Jesus ascends a mountain, like Moses. Then, like Moses and unlike the rest of Israel, the disciples leave “the crowd” and ascend to where Jesus is: Jesus’ disciples are called to learn from God immediately and personally. (The crowds will in 7:28 be astonished at Jesus’ teaching with authority, and perhaps represent disciples in a larger sense of the word, yet the 12 who ascend pursue a deeper commitment to their Teacher and his teachings.) Then, in the greatest surprise of all, Jesus begins teaching at the top of the mountain—unlike Moses, but exactly like God. The mountain is a place of theophany, and Jesus is God doing the teaching.

How do these rich parallels help us frame the journey from where we are into Lent? To see this in the richest way possible, I’d like to introduce briefly Hugh of St Victor and the conclusion of his treatise On the Three Days.

The Christian Wisdom of Hugh of St Victor

Hugh of St Victor (c. 1096-1141) was the first great theological teacher at the Abbey of St Victor in Paris. The Abbey’s theological happenings—and Hugh’s pedagogical teachings in his Didascalicon, as well as the theology of his De Sacramentis—were very influential on the thirteenth-century Franciscans and Dominicans at the University of Paris and beyond. The great Bonaventure (c. 1221-1274), in particular, seems to have thought of Hugh as a kind of ideal theologian. Hugh was sometimes seen as a “second Augustine.”

For our purposes here, the most important text of Hugh is the conclusion of his treatise On the Three Days (De Tribus Diebus). Here, Hugh shows the way to integrate seemingly everything—from the Trinity to the ages of history to the human soul in transformation—into the three days of Jesus’ dying, burial, and rising. Or rather, everything reflects at once the twin poles of its source and salvation: the three persons of the Trinity and the three days of salvation. I call this Hugonian signature “paschal-trinitarian.” 

Here is the culminating passage of On the Three Days, which will enable us to frame this part of the church year theologically:

When, therefore, the omnipotence of God is considered and arouses our heart to wonder, it is the day of the Father; when the wisdom of God is examined and enlightens our heart with recognition of the truth, it is the day of the Son; when the kindness of God is observed and enflames our hearts to love, it is the day of the Holy Spirit. Power arouses fear; wisdom enlightens; kindness brings joy. On the day of power, we die through fear. On the day of wisdom, we are buried away from the clamor of this world by contemplation of the truth. On the day of kindness, we rise through love and desire of eternal goods. Therefore, Christ died on the sixth day, lay buried in the tomb on the seventh, and rose on the eighth day, so that in a similar way through fear the power of God on its day may first cut us away from carnal desires outside, and then wisdom on his day may bury us within in the hidden place of contemplation; and finally, kindness on its day may cause us to rise revivified through desire of divine love. For the sixth day is for work; the seventh, for rest; the eighth, for resurrection (III.27.4).

Hugh shows the way in which our soul—along with everything else—is transformed in Christ’s passover through death into eschatological risen joy in a process that can be understood as a passage through the three days: dying, burial, rising. Hugh’s all-including, paschal-trinitarian logic can be a fountain of endlessly fruitful theological reflection. This passage from Hugh can be of inestimable worth, helping you frame and interpret almost any focus or season in ministry, as you let your mind be formed by the paschal-trinitarian associations he brings to light. Yet, for our present purposes, the key thing to notice is (1) that Hugh’s three days correspond to the Exodus movement of water-desert-mountain, and (2) that this whole movement is mirrored in Matthew 3-7.

And so the way we ought interpret the present liturgical “times and seasons” may emerge:

Presently, as we’re on the mountain with Jesus in this lectionary season after epiphany—hearing the Sermon on the Mount—we’re hearing Jesus sketch the way of life appropriate to the resurrection community of disciples walking in the Spirit. This is not, or not only, a dialectical law to accuse and condemn. It is the way of Christian perfection made possible by giving our lives into the dynamic momentum of Jesus’ entirely sanctifying love communicated in us by the Spirit. We have ascended the Sinai mountain to hear this wisdom: our souls gaze upward as our lives have been hidden with Christ in God. We sit at the feet of the risen Lord, Wisdom incarnate, learning from him personally. We’re in the heights with the “God with us” (Mt 1:23) disclosed at epiphany, on holy retreat, training in our new way of life, having separated ourselves from the crowd and the illusions of easy gain and cheap grace.  We’ve moved to a higher level of commitment than the crowd in order to hear from Jesus Christ personally the living way of his body: ek-klesia, called-out, church. Jesus’ wisdom is the wisdom of the cross, the word/logic (1 Cor. 1:18) of the cross, transfigured by the pneumatological and pentecostal life that abides in us in the Spirit even in this present evil age.

That’s the present, and it is, I submit, the richest register in which a pastor might contextualize the wonderful lections from the Sermon of Matthew 5-7 on which we’re feasting. Wesley’s sermons, of course, in volume 2 of the Abraham editions, provide consonant and resonant spiritual wisdom for this time.

As we move into Lent, then, we move into a season of desert and burial. It of course culminates in Holy Week with the celebration of Jesus’ dying, burial, and rising proper. Hugh associates burial—day “two” of our interior triduum—with “wisdom” and with “buried away from the clamor of this world by contemplation of the truth.” This, for Hugh, is the day of mental work, honing our meditative theological skills, de doctrina Christiana, Christian theological pedagogy proper. We’re being shaped by Truth. We’re having our intellects “re-formed” by Christian teaching in periods of study and silence “buried away” from the noise and distraction. Like Israel, we’re tempted in the desert as we learn to hear God’s voice and contemplate his doctrine. Yet Jesus, our champion, has gone before us victorious. 

Hence, our reading of the season of Lent with Hugh frames the forty days of Lenten trial as an ideal time for Christian catechesis, mystagogy, intensive biblical and theological study.

In recent years the cumulative wealth of “paleo-Orthodox” and “classical theist” Methodist resources for such study and teaching has become truly intimidating, encouraging, and enlivening. There’s William Abraham’s aforementioned editions of Wesley’s Sermons on Several Occasions and his valuable works on evangelism; Oden’s patristic-synthesizing catechetical systematics Classic Christianity: Systematic Theology and John Wesley’s Teachings and the earlier John Wesley’s Scriptural Christianity; Timothy Tennent’s Foundations of the Christian Faith: A Resource for Catechesis and Disciple Making; the significant retrieval that is Kevin Watson’s The Class Meeting; Phil Tallon and Justus Hunter’s The Absolute Basics of the Wesleyan Way—among many others. In my view, Abraham’s Canonical Theism: A Proposal for Theology and the Church appears even more perspicuously on point now than when it first appeared. We are more than adequately resourced to form every age group in Christian wisdom. Our work, this Lent, as we’re buried away spiritually in order to prepare to celebrate Easter with full joy, is to enthusiastically get to work.

Clifton Stringer is a pastor and theologian serving at First United Methodist Church in Lockhart, TX. You can learn more about his writing at www.cliftonstringer.com