- Who are the affluent comfortable and gay children is the product of tradition. (Indistinct) for some of you that Lent is the season of the Christian year, the 40 day period from Ash Wednesday to Easter, of penitence and penance in preparation for Easter. And in case you didn't notice what with basketball and all we are now in Lent. There have been a few Lenten signs around the campus. At least Hot cross buns were served in the cafeteria. I know that the Episcopalians with their characteristic pension to make the most of the Christian year through a Mardi Gras before Lent began. But for the large part, we don't know what to do about Lent. Maybe go to church or chapel a bit more often, or feel a little more guilty about not going. And maybe while they're look a little more serious than we usually do. And perhaps if we're very devout, follow the VR crutches by giving up ice cream, sundaes or cigarettes for the duration. But Lent means hardly more than a kind of frosting on our buns. A vague nudge to solemnity. I'm proud of our childhood memories. The real purpose of Lent largely neglected or forgotten is that it'd be a time of self-examination, of inner cleansing, of fasting and prayer in imitation of Christ, fasting and prayer in the wilderness. The spiritual logic behind it is that one cannot come into the joyous meaning of the Christian life, except by way of negative purging of self-denial. No cross, no crown. The positive meaning of redemption is found only along a via negativa. Through the disciplines of denial. The classic paradigm for the inner meaning of Lent is found in the scripture of the morning. The story of the rich young ruler. Here is dramatized the encounter of us all with the one who sets the ultimate terms of our life. We are in the rich young ruler who run up and asked, " What must I do to find eternal life?" Or to translate it into terms we would use, to find the point of it all, to find authentic existence. And God is in Christ, confronting us with the stringent answer. You lack one thing, go sell what you have give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven and come follow me. When taken, not in its extra and all or crude or literal sense, but in its internal sense, this word of Christ catches the meaning of Christian self-denial. There are three levels represented. Three dimensions of self-denial subtly interrelated. And the validity of each depends on the next level down. There are three directions of giving suggested by three preposition. And in the definitions of the moral life, prepositions count for everything. The first is suggested by the phrase, go sell what you have give up your possessions. Here is the usual and traditional discipline of denial and the most familiar in the Catholic tradition. The way of renunciation. To give up the things that one owns is the necessary beginning of self discovery. The obvious moral reason for giving up in the Christian sense is not that it does things for one's win or one's figure, but that it clears the sight clouded by distraction and preoccupied with things. Possessed by our possessions, as the law says. We cannot possibly make out the lineaments of eternal life bothered by this and that. All Martha's cumbered with many things lacking Mary's single eyed devotion to the one important thing. The monk, the nun really has something which today's operator in Suburbia lacks. Who is surrounded, almost drowned in things. A monk walking through a Supermarket drugstore is free knowing all the things he doesn't need. In calm possession of a detachment from the superficial junk to which we are frantically attached. Simplify. Simplify. This was Thoreau's counsel. We would do well to heed his word. If we could only hear it within the den of canned music, the racket of traffic. We might well take a leaf from the notebook of the monk, and give up for Lent, some cherished physical pleasure. The aesthetic from Eastern culture has a moral point. We in the West eat too much. To see clearly with a mind's eye into the nature of reality. There's a deep moral wisdom in the discipline of self denial of things. Lent should be the season to recall it. But giving up by itself is only superficial. Indeed it is laden with danger unless related to a deeper moral purpose. The second give. To give to self denial, renunciation for the good of neighbor. Go give up what you have and give to the poor. Here is a reading of the Christian life. More like that of the classical reformers we should renounce in order to fulfill the law of charity. We give up in order to give to. The discipline of sacrifice is one practiced not only in the context of the soul, in the world of things, but also in the context of the world of neighbor needs. And in the Protestant tradition especially we are to go without, in order that the neighbors should go with. The law of love surrounds the ethics of renunciation. Social concern, service. Returning of the goods one renounces for oneself to the common market. Here is fulfillment of the law. But even these two gives lack the one thing needful. "What lack I yet?" asks the Ernest attractive young ruler. One who has observed the law all the way up, from Sunday school, to give up and to give to may be done out of a pinched and narrow spirit. Jesus carried on a running attack against the Pharisees who practiced a conspicuous self mortification, a conspicuous arms giving on the street corners. Morally exactly like the conspicuous consumption of the suburban status seeker. Just in the Pharisees, it was conspicuous austerity. Both are done in order to be seen of men. The disciplines of self denial and of charity may be perverted in their spirit by a self centered spirit. Incurvatus in Se. To use Luther's phrase, a heart turned in on itself, which misses eternal life by doing all the right outward things for the wrong inward reason. The third give of the Christian life at the heart of the matter is to give in. And come follow me. At the circumference of existence, renunciation. Closer in charity, social concern at the core, the surrender of the self to the sovereignty of God. The validity of giving up and giving to rests upon the inner bent of the will that has given in to the overwhelming demand of God's grace. Oh I know there's much cheap and slick talk in church circles about surrender, conversion. This most difficult and subtle aspect of the Christian life is often by the evangelist perverted into some sort of emotional flip. To talk of surrender and self-denial, maybe an odd incongruity amid all this respectable elegance among the cautious and well satisfied generation, the term surrender is alien. Really impossible. This is the duke chapel, not a camp meeting or a revival. It's just not done to surrender around here. Yet despite the misuse, the misunderstanding of the term, it stands as indispensable to give in. It means in essence that the self centered self is taken out of its radical egocentricity. Is transformed by radical theo centricity into God-centered centered existence. It requires that the self come forth from its I castle, tear down all its elaborate self defenses and self justifications and give itself over to the sovereignty of the king of the universe. Then authentic existence, the great possession of eternal life is by the miracle of grace handed back to the self. Then to the giving up of renunciation is redeemed from cautious anxiety. It is made easy within its exaction's. And the giving to of charity is redeemed from paternalism or from the earning of merit badges by kindnesses. Lay this story of the rich young ruler against our Lenten life in this pleasant university, running through this four year dress rehearsal for life in Suburbia. Story all seems very far away and long ago yet we are mirrored in the story. It has a jarring contemporaneity about it. Story is reviewed and judgment before it is promised and renewal. As the gospel is always bad news before it is good news. Hold the story up against our life we do rather badly on all of the three gives. Giving up. We don't give up much. The report on the campus chest on West campus was, what was it? $700 this spring averaging out to 21 cents per student. Compare what we spend on ourselves in a day. Compare the budget for the Shanty Clear with a Campus Chest. Lent becomes an embarrassment. We don't give to very much. There are yes projects in town Edge Month, Project Nicaragua, summer projects on which we do well where Duke students are magnificently giving hours, energy, finding a kind of significance in it. A richness of possession lacking in the dorm. But mostly we feed ourselves in cozy and cotton splendor and fend off all consideration of the world's hurt and the world's hunger by practical considerations. And who gives in to the sovereign demands of God in Christ. Egocentricity is the spiritual ailment endemic to American university culture. We are all spoiled children and operators. With a curious deep bias in us, which expects our universe to hand a Suburban happiness to us on a platter. With all the fringe benefits. All we have to do is to offer the credentials of a college degree is our ticket. The story of the rich young ruler does not have a happy ending. He went away with a heavy heart for he had great possession. or so he thought. The encounter was a failure. So when we are encountered by the one who offers the terms of authentic existence, we are attracted, caught by this powerful winsomeness. But only for a moment. On second thought, we go away because we have a busy schedule and great possessions or so we think. But our hearts are restless as we move on to live in what Reese man calls the suburban sadness. Surfeited by honey and caught in traffic. Self denial, we shrug maybe all right for the monks and the missionaries, but not for me. Yet we are forever haunted by a summon from beyond ourselves. That we cannot quite shake off or drown out the word of perpetual relentless exacting rebuke and gracious invitation. Whoever shall seek his life shall lose it. Whoever will lose his life for my sake and the gospel will find it. Amen, let us pray. Almighty God who recalls us at this season to the special memory of the life and death of thy Son. And through his memory prompts us to the disciplines of self-examination and self-denial. Grant we beseech thee that the resolves we speak easily with our lips in worship, maybe self practiced in daily deed that we may come to understand the meaning of his death and resurrection whom we call our Lord and to a single obedience through him to be in knowledge of whom stands our eternal life. Now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the holy spirit be with you all.