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Lent I

2 Corinthians 5
We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin[b] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
1 As God’s co-workers we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain. 2 For he says,
“In the time of my favor I heard you,
and in the day of salvation I helped you.”[a]
I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.
3 We put no stumbling block in anyone’s path, so that our ministry will not be discredited. 4 Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; 5 in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; 6 in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; 7 in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; 8 through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; 9 known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; 10 sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.


The next time you worry that something you’ve done was a bad idea, remember the Hula Burger.

It was 1963 and McDonald’s franchisee Lou Groen spent every Friday looking out at a nearly empty restaurant. His McDonald’s, in a very Catholic part of Cincinnati, fell victim to the moral teaching that the faithful were to avoid meat on Friday. And Lou, a good Catholic, wouldn’t even eat his own food on Friday.

Lou knew, of course, that his customers weren’t staying home—no, they were at Frisch’s up the street, enjoying a fish sandwich. Try to say Frisch’s fish sandwich ten times. So Lou decided to make his own: breaded halibut, slice of cheese, bit of sauce. Everything was going well until McDonald’s “founder” Ray Kroc heard about it, and hit the roof.

Obviously not a fish fan, Ray tried to talk Lou out of the sandwich but failed. So he came up with an idea. Ray would launch his new meatless Hula Burger, and challenge Lou to a one-day sales contest. Would it be Lou’s Filet-O-Fish or would it be Ray’s Hula Burger—a fried slice of pineapple with two slices of cheese! Final score? Filet-O-Fish, 350; Hula Burger, 6.*

I didn’t grow up in the church, but I knew from an early age that Roman Catholics have a different approach to faith. ‘Giving up for Lent’ or avoiding meat on Fridays—these are the marks of a tradition that tries to live a little differently than non-Catholic neighbours and friends. Fasting is something you do before a blood test, not something that a religious person might do in the modern world. Or is it?

Just five years ago, it made headlines in Oregon when a group of evangelical millennials were found fasting in Lent. Apparently they were interested in ritual too, and even liturgy, things that their parents and grandparents would struggle to understand. Obviously the old divides are breaking down, but how did it start in the first place?

The Reformation is the quick answer, and the reformers’ belief that fasting in the 16th century Roman Catholic sense wasn’t biblical. And that seemed true enough: Jesus didn’t say ‘you should fast’ and he didn’t say ‘you shouldn’t fast.’ Instead, Jesus said ‘if you fast, do it in secret and don’t tell anyone,’ which is more or less what he said about prayer. (Mt. 6)

So the Reformation is still the quick answer to why we don’t fast, but the longer answer involves sausages, Swiss sausages to be exact—in Zurich, in Lent, in 1522. Turns out that Ulrich Zwingli, the eventual father of the Swiss Reformation, was having some sermons printed, and felt badly for the printers as they worked long into the night. His quick solution was a tray of sausages, which caused the Lenten police to hit the roof. Soon Zwingli was preaching against forcing people to fast—better they should act like Christians every day he said—and breaking with the Catholic Church.** Something to ponder over your next sausage. Is it lunch yet?

It’s not lunch yet, so sit tight. It’s time to give St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians a little context. And with everyone else who every sat down to read Paul, we don’t always understand what he’s on about after the first look. Paul was a first-class rhetorician, someone who sought to persuade and impress. But the words seem dense, so we read again:

We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

We need to be reconciled to God. This is the heart of the matter. God allowed the sinless one to die a sinners death, destroying once-and-for-all the power of death over us. He did this so that we might become examples of God’s righteousness—if we accept this offer of reconciliation. Paul says it again two verse later: we urge you—don’t receive God’s grace in vain. God has done the reconciling work needed to save us, all we have to do is accept it. It’s really that simple.

“I tell you,” Paul says, “now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.” But some could not accept it, and some turned away. Like anything we imagine we don’t deserve, we struggle to accept it. And what follows—his list of hardships—is a testament to the human capacity to resist God’s grace: “in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger.” All this, in trying to convince people that something free is truly free.

And it’s never really clear if Paul is encouraging the Corinthians in their reconciling ministry, or if he is trying to reconvert them to something they should have understood all along—maybe both. Whatever is really happening here, Paul goes the extra mile to give them a strategy, a methodology, to reach the people God wants to reach. ‘Meet them,’ he says, “in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left.”

I love the ‘weapons of righteousness’ in your hands, though I’m not fully sure what they are. My best theory is that the weapons of righteousness are the aforementioned virtues: purity, understanding, patience, kindness, sincere love, truthful speech. Taken together, these are the power of God, the power needed to convince people that God wants to be reconciled—a gift, freely given.

I’m thinking about the Filet-O-Fish again, and the desire to fast. Remembering that Jesus said fast or don’t fast, just don’t make a fuss—I think we can assume there is some value. In fasting, we realize that we are blessed enough to have something to give up. In fasting, we demonstrate that we are fed enough to miss a meal and be okay. In fasting we try to see our lives differently, life without this or that, even for a day. If your faith is strengthened, go ahead a fast, without making a fuss.

If however, you are fasting to be reconciled to God, that work is already done. Fasting won’t fix something that’s no longer broken, and fasting won’t reset something that’s already in place. We are already the righteousness of God, armed—to use Paul’s language—with purity, understanding, patience, kindness, sincere love, truthful speech. ‘Use them,’ Paul says, ‘because now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.’

One of the strangest—and not infrequent—questions I get is some variation of this: “can anyone come to your church?” It seems like an odd question, until you think about a few things. First, we are surrounded by rules, often absurd rules about who can do what and when. There’s that. And also there is a real lack of knowledge, now three generations after most people attended church. But there is one other issue, and that is worthiness. People want to know if they are good enough to join us, or is the church a club for the super-sinless?

The answer is an obvious no—I’ve been to church—but also no because the healthy have no need for a doctor. God has reconciled with everyone, and waits for them to understand—to feel it, in their heart of hearts. May God help us to help. Amen.


*https://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/how-a-catholic-businessman-put-the-filet-o-fish-on-the-mcdonalds-menu
**https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/october-web-only/illegal-sausage-dinner-that-sparked-swiss-reformation.html

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 7:44 AM