I know this will come as a surprise, but this is the first time I have preached on Ash Wednesday since I became the pastor of this church 9 years ago. I know what you’re thinking: why break such an amazing streak now? Well, to be honest with you, I didn’t think it would be fair to Judy to have her preach immediately two days after she returned from her leave of absence and TC has had a lot of responsibility during February, so I figured I would take one for the team and blemish a perfectly good record.

No, the real reason I’m preaching today is because I thought I should be the one who starts my sermon series. Our Lenten series is called Breaking the Cycle: Discovering Our Spiritual Roots. This is a series that focuses on the various issues and impediments that prevent us from experiencing our spirituality. You might be thinking, “That sounds like a strange premise for a sermon series?” Trust me, it will make sense once you understand where we are going.  

For instance, one of the most interesting aspects of being human is the fact that we seem to constantly be dealing with competing interests within ourselves. On the one hand, we have a lot of bodily needs. We require air, shelter, clothes, food, water (and the excretion of food and water), exercise, medicine, sleep and sex. We also have a lot going on within our minds. We are constantly thinking about various things, whether it be tasks (what we have to do with our day) or ideas (thoughts about life or our employment or our relationships).

Directly underneath all of those thoughts are all of these emotions. Our emotions are a reflection of our current state of being. There are six primary emotions that we can feel: anger, sadness, surprise, joy, love and fear. Within each of these emotions are numerous subcategories that can define our mood. What complicates things is that we can feel multiple emotions at once and we can quickly slingshot between emotions without even realizing that it’s happening.

A fascinating aspect of most humans is that we are often not even aware of the emotions we are feeling. We can be very disconnected from the emotions that are right beneath the surface. Interestingly, these three components (body, mind and emotions) drive most human action. Moreover, they are constantly influencing each other.

For instance, if you are hungry, then that is going to impact your thoughts and your mood. When a person is sad, they have a tendency to become depressed, which makes them feel lethargic within their bodies and they have trouble motivating themselves to perform basic tasks.

This is where most people reside for their entire lives—body, mind, emotion. It’s kind of like a pinball machine when the pinball is just bouncing around at the top and never coming down to the paddles. These three elements are constantly ricocheting off of and influencing each other. This is a problem because underneath all of these things is our spiritual nature.

To access our spiritual nature, we have to be able to weed through our bodily needs, our mental thoughts and our emotions. Indeed, once we can access our spirituality that’s where we get in touch with God. That’s what this series is all about. We’re exploring how we can move past the body, mind and emotions towards the spirituality. The goal is to help you access the spiritual part of yourself, which is one of the best ways that we can bring balance to the bodily, mental and emotional aspects of our lives.

To begin this series, I want to start with Jesus being tempted by the devil while he’s out in the desert. This is the perfect scripture that exemplifies the problem we are addressing in this sermon series. Each of these temptations exemplifies a different aspect of the pinball machine in our heads. Let’s begin with the first temptation when devil tells Jesus to turn stone into bread.

We have to remember that according to the story, Jesus hasn’t eaten for 40 days and is starving. The number 40 in this instance is symbolic—a call back to the 40 years the Israelites wandered in the desert in the Old Testament. That said, just in case you might be thinking it is impossible for someone to survive 40 days without food, it’s not.

As long as you are not engaging in physical activity that requires a higher metabolism, you can survive on water for 40 days. In fact, Buddhist monks who meditate up in the Himalayan mountains have been documented to remain in their caves for upwards of three months without food. All that to say, the human body can do amazing things.

The devil in this instance is appealing to Jesus’ bodily need and is trying to make him focus on his desire for food. Yet, Jesus cuts through the bodily need to the spiritual foundation saying that humans do not live on bread alone. I have been doing intermittent fasting for the last two years. This means I eat for a window of 6 hours everyday and fast for the remaining 18 hours. Initially, I was very grumpy when noon rolled around and I could finally eat. It took about six months, but now I am used to the hunger pangs and I can focus on the needs of others, even when I am not fully nourished. The point is it takes practice for us to look past our bodily needs to focus on the spiritual and bodily needs come up a lot!

The second temptation is when the devil takes Jesus to the top of the temple. There was a belief that the messiah would appear at the top of the temple to call all Israel to himself in order to begin the creation of a new state of Israel. The devil tells Jesus that he should jump because if he’s truly God’s messiah, God will not allow his foot to be dashed against a stone. This is an appeal to Jesus’ emotions.

Jesus believes that he’s the messiah, but there’s always the fear that he could be wrong. Perhaps Jesus is misguided? Fear leads to worry, which leads to doubt. This is the rollercoaster of emotions that can easily take place in the mind. If Jesus were to jump, he could alleviate all of his anxiety and prove he’s not crazy. Again, Jesus cuts past the emotions towards the spiritual and says, do not put God to the test.

This is something we will spend a lot of time on during our Lenten series, but cutting through our emotions is something that many of us struggle to overcome. I have struggled with this problem for years. It took me a long time with a lot of therapists to even realize how I could fix this problem. Suffice it to say, emotions are major impediment to our spirituality.

Finally, the devil presents Jesus with the entire world. This is an appeal to Jesus’ mind. If Jesus worships the devil, then think of all the ways his job could be so much easier. He could solve the world’s problems with so much less effort. Jesus had to weigh the options in his mind. Do I take the easy way out or do I endure the road of suffering? Once again, Jesus cuts past these thoughts towards the spiritual and says worship the Lord your God.

When it comes to the pinball machine inside our mind, our thoughts are a constant source of tension. How many of you have had sleepless nights where you start obsessing over a thought or an idea that you can’t get out of your head? You stare at the ceiling trying to let it go, but you just can’t seem to release the thoughts. If you’re anything like me, I’ll just be walking along and a thought will pop into my head out of nowhere. Wrestling with that thought can derail my entire day if I can’t let it go and move on, which is why our thoughts are a major impediment in our quest for spirituality.

However, for those of you who have come here this evening, I’m going to give you the inside scoop on the key to moving past the pinball machine in your head. It has to do with our scripture from Exodus. The scripture depicts the Israelites are wandering in the desert. They have no food, so God sends them manna or bread from heaven each day.

So many people get caught up in the literal nature of the story of God giving the Israelites food. We think, “That would be pretty awesome if I could wake up every morning and there would be a buffet waiting for me on my lawn!” That’s not what this story is about. This story is a beautiful metaphor about how God provides nourishment for our souls.

The problem is you can’t receive that spiritual food if the pinball machine is ricocheting around causing you to focus on your mental, emotional and physical needs. We need to let the pinball fall down to the paddles. In this analogy, the paddles are where we access our spirituality. When we can quiet our mental, emotional and physical needs, then we can truly enjoy God’s nourishment for our souls. Once that happens, similar to the pinball being shot back up into the bumpers, now our spirituality is dictating how we approach our mental, emotional and physical needs.

So the secret that I am going to be unfolding for you over the next 6 weeks is how we can navigate this pinball machine in our head in such a way that it’s no longer preventing you from experiencing your spirituality that is at the core of our being. Therefore, as Jesus begins his journey to the cross through Lent, I hope you will begin your journey to be more like him in how he deals with his body, mind and emotions. Together we are going break the cycle and discover our spiritual roots.