So here we are, the first Sunday of Lent, 2025. Throughout my entire ministry I’ve always been energized by the concept of Lent. It’s never been a conscious choice. It just comes naturally to me. I love the notion of taking 40 days and 40 nights – and by the way, if you’ve ever used your calendar to count out the 40 days and 40 nights of Lent, Sundays don’t count. It’s 40 days and 40 nights without counting the Sundays because beginning in the fourth century the concept of Lent was that many Christians took the fasting aspect of Lent very seriously and they would fast, but on Sundays worship was so important that you were allowed to take nourishment so that you would be able to worship and refuel for the week.

In my ministry over the years, Christmas is Christmas. Yeah, Christmas is great for me most of the time. Sorry, hope that’s not too disappointing. Easter is always great for me, and so is Lent. Lent’s always been very meaningful to me. If you look up Lent, the experts will tell you that Lent is known as a solemn Christian religious observance in the liturgical year, which is interesting. When you parse the word “Lent” into an etymological study of the word it comes from an old English word that actually means “spring season.” This is something solemn about nature during spring, this is a very interesting paradox. But Lent is considered to be a time of solemnity, remembering the 40 days that Jesus spent fasting in the desert, enduring temptation by the devil. Traditionally, aspects of Lent include prayer, fasting, alms-giving, which is the old-fashioned church word for reaching out to others, the repentance of sins, simple living, self-denial.

Many years ago, and I’m talking before the Internet, I intuitively decided to give up the news every day. This was back in the day when Vicki and I still received the daily newspaper. I’m not going to ask if any of you still get the newspaper, I guess some of you do, but I’m just partial to the newspaper. We got the daily newspaper, and during Lent I allowed myself to look at the sports section and the comics, and I avoided the news. And I’ve got to tell you, it was wonderful. And of course, a cynic would say you were just living your life with your head in the sand, and my response to the cynic was, “You better believe it, buddy,” and it was great. I haven’t even tried to do that during the age of the Internet, I think it would be – I’ve just never tried it. Maybe I should. Self-denial, reading a daily devotional, or praying to a Lenten calendar, and the point of all of these things, it’s supposed to be that we are drawn closer to God. So welcome to the first Sunday in Lent.

When we read of Jesus – and by the way, Matthew, Mark and Luke, those three Gospels all had similar but not identical accounts of Jesus being in the wilderness 40 days and nights immediately following his baptism. They followed that logical progression. Not surprisingly, the Gospel of John does not. Jesus does not go out into the wilderness during the Gospel of John. But Matthew, Mark and Luke have it.

There’s something about Lent that calls us to what C.S. Lewis called the nearness of the approach of God. The nearness of the approach of God. In his book, “The Four Loves” – whenever I buy a book, and I rarely buy books anymore, I usually get them from the library because I don’t have much shelf space in my life anymore, but usually in the past when I’d buy a book I would write in the front my name and also when and where I bought the book. In the front of this book it says, “Jay Groat, Cleveland, Ohio, October 12, 1982.” I bought this book in a bookstore, it’s a paperback. Anyone want to guess what this paperback cost in 1982? Somebody guess. Two dollars and ninety-five cents, a new book. C.S. Lewis wrote it, his wife Joy published it, she was the publisher, it says in the beginning, in 1960. C.S. Lewis died three years later in 1963. “The Four Loves.” In the introduction – I blew it up on the copier so I could read it without my glasses – C.S. Lewis introduces us to the concept of “the nearness of the approach of God.” He writes this – “Perhaps an analogy here may help. Let us suppose that we are doing a mountain walk to the village which is our home.” We’re walking on the mountain toward the village which is our home. “At midday we come to the top of a cliff where we are in space very near our home because it is just below us.” In this analogy C.S. Lewis says we’re on the mountain, we’re on a cliff, and we can look down and we can see our home. He writes, “We could drop a stone onto it. But as we are not mountain goats we can’t walk down to our homes. We must go a long way around, perhaps as much as five miles. At many points during that detour, we shall be farther away from the village than we were when we sat upon the cliff, but only statically. In terms of progress, we shall be far nearer.” Isn’t that a wonderfully paradoxical phrase? He says in terms of progress we shall be far nearer home. And then he says, “This is what I call increasing nearness.”

I’m confessing to you publicly in this pulpit, for better or for worse, intuitively, that is how I have lived out my Christianity. I get up every morning and I feel like God is – now a Zen Buddhist would say, “Groat, you’ve got it all wrong,” and I understand all that. A Zen Buddhist would say you’re already there, you’re already where you need to be, and I would not disagree. But for me it’s been more of a sense of the nearness of approach, approaching God every day, and I look down from the cliff and I see my concept of God, and something inside of me says, “Keep moving, keep moving.” And for me it feels right, it feels good. Keep moving. C.S. Lewis talks about the fine line between belief in ourselves and the nearness of God. He goes on to talk about the more we believe in ourselves the nearer we are to God.

OK, I told you I was going to tell you the Frederick Buechner quote to begin the service, “Whistling in the Dark.” “After being baptized by John in the River Jordan, Jesus went off alone into the wilderness where he spent 40 days asking himself the question, what it meant to be Jesus. During Lent Christians are supposed to ask themselves what it means to be themselves.” And I’m going to ask you this, and the only advantage I have over you is I’ve been thinking about this for a few days. And I’m going to give you my answer, because it didn’t come to me at first, it took a couple of days. If you had only one last message to leave for the handful of people who are most important to you, what would the message be? What I have decided, and I pray to God this is not true, but if some angel came to me and said, “Groat, this is your last day. What are you going to say to your family? What are you going to say to your friends?” what would my last message to them be? And here’s what it would be – take care of each other. I say that to you. I say that to the world. Take care of each other. How do we do that? I don’t know. You’ll figure it out. Take care of each other, that would be my last message.

I’m grateful that this congregation has supported me and Vicki and my family in the time of the death of Vicki’s mother, Joanne. Last Sunday morning instead of being with you, about this time – I’ve got my watch here – we left Westerville around 8:30, about this time we were getting close to the Ohio River at Interstate 77 as we were going to head south to North Carolina to be with Ron, Vicki’s stepfather and husband of Joanne. One of the things that we had to do was go on the West Virginia Turnpike. We have an Ohio E-Z Pass, which works on the West Virginia Turnpike, and we’ve taken it before, so we knew it was coming. On the West Virginia Turnpike there are three tolls if you drive the whole thing. If you have an E-Z Pass you don’t have to stop. When you come up to the E-Z Pass, of course, there’s a red light that says “stop.” We always get such a kick out of it because when you pull up you slow down so that your E-Z Pass will do what it’s supposed to do, right? There is a green light, it doesn’t say “go,” but once your E-Z Pass kicks in there’s a green light that comes up and then below the green light there are two words flashing at you. You know what those two words are? “Keep moving.” (Laughter.) Keep moving. I always make dumb jokes like, “Boy, I’m sure glad they told me to keep moving. Otherwise, I would’ve stopped. Thanks for telling me.” It’s a great message. It’s what C.S. Lewis said. You look down there and see God and how do I get God? Keep moving. Keep moving.

I want to finish today with three pages, and I used a large font so don’t worry, it’s not that long. This is the three-page eulogy that I wrote for my mother-in-law, Joanne. And I share it with you for all of the obvious reasons, and also for the reason that Joanne was a wonderful woman who knew how to keep moving. She kept moving, she didn’t let anything stop her.

“Joanne Clemmer was born at home in a house in rural West Virginia. There was no road that ran by the house. The closest road was down the hill a bit. Her parents had little in the way of money or worldly possessions. She and her family eventually moved to Portage Lakes near Akron, Ohio. Joanne graduated from Coventry High School. Joanne married young and promptly birthed three children in quick succession. When her oldest child was 13 years old Joanne’s marriage ended in divorce. It is telling to her nature that one of the first things she did after her divorce was have each of her children baptized by a pastor in a local lake. Joanne soon married again, and the second time was good and loving and lasted the rest of her life. Forty-three years ago I married Joanne’s oldest child. This of course means Joanne was my mother-in-law. And now she has died. So, I can share some conclusions that I have come to. One of the conclusions is Joanne never, never spoke a cross word to me. I never heard her speak a cross word to anyone. It took a while in the beginning, but soon I was calling her “Mom”, and that’s what she was to me, her children and just about everyone else she encountered. Mom loved to please others, and she was good at it. Sources tell me that Mom knew challenge and hardship as a child, as a teenager, and she knew challenge and hardship in her first marriage. So, she entered the world poor and challenged in terms of relationships, and she also knew challenge and hardship as an adult. There wasn’t even a road that ran by the house where she was born, so she walked down the hill into her life taking the only road available to her. By the time I got to know her, she always walked that road with dignity and care for those who she encountered. Why do some people become bitter and others become better? Mom – Joanne – was one of the kindest, patient and loving persons I have ever known. We all do alchemy with what life gives us. Alchemy was medieval chemistry and it’s a mysterious thing. It was the science of transmutation of base metals like iron into silver or gold. We all do alchemy with the base metals that life gives us. This is how we evolve or stagnate as human beings. Most of the time we do the alchemy unconsciously. Life hands us lemons and sometimes we cringe at the sour taste. We might even become angry and resentful. We might even transmute this anger and resentment into a sour life. But other people take these lemons, and they do alchemy. They transmute ire and they transmute pain and unfairness and lemons into, well, you know, lemonade. And silver and gold. And Joanne became one of the kindest persons on earth. I love her and I miss her. Anyone can honor her by walking down a hill to the only road available to us today, the only road that is ever available to us – our lives – and walk it and walk it in kindness. And when life gives us lemons, well, do it for Joanne. You know what to do. Do alchemy. Walk that road. And when we do, she walks with us. There’s one more image I think of when I remember Mom. It comes from one of my favorite moments in the Bible. It is toward the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus says this to his disciples – ‘You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste what is it good for but to be thrown out and trodden underfoot? And you are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. No one lights a lamp and puts it under a bushel basket but puts it on a lamp stand so that it provides light for all in the house. Let your light so shine before others that they see your good works and give glory to God in heaven.’ Salt and light. I have known some people in my life who were the salt of the earth. It’s a hard thing to define but you know it when you see it. Salt-of-the-earth people are passionate in their love for life and people. Mom was always there for us, she was always available to us, she always loved us passionately. And she was a bright light that wanted to love people, and she wanted people to love her. Salt and light. Rest in peace, Mom. Rest in peace, Joanne. Well-done, good and faithful servant. Enter now into the joy of your master.”

Joanne followed the advice of her birth state, the West Virginia Turnpike. Can you hear that turnpike speaking to us today? I can. I want you to hear it. Keep moving, keep moving. Life is a great time to keep moving. Find the beauty, look for it amidst the ugliness. Find the beauty. That’s the point of Daylight-Saving Time, so that we have – are you ready for it? – so that we have more light. Amen? Amen.