Monday in 4th Week of Lent: Letter 21
The Scripture Lessons for today are HERE!
Today we begin the 4th Week of Lent with Letter 21 and I will tell you that this is definitely one of my favorites. In it, C. S. Lewis through Screwtape and Wormwood explores the philosophical and theological questions of what I am going to call “TIME and MINE.”
It seems that Wormwood needs a new approach with his temptations. Since the Patient has experienced a profound second conversion experience, many of the previously tried tactics are no longer working. So Screwtape suggests to his nephew demon an attack on the Patient’s PEEVISHNESS.
Now if you had to look that one up, so did I! Peevishness is another word for those times when we are CRANKY, IRRITABLE, and just plain GRUMPY. And this is best used as a subordinate attack. In other words, use something that makes the Patient feel GRUMPY and Screwtape suggests TIME.
Do we ever have enough time to get everything done? Screwtape instructs Wormwood on that common human misconception that time is ours. There is the unwelcome visitor who stops by at just the wrong time, or the meeting that goes on and on, or the line we are forced to stand in and wait for others who are taking up way too much time. These and many more examples we can all think of will make anyone PEEVISH. And this is the perfect opportunity for effective temptation.
Screwtape tells Wormwood:
They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels it is being stolen. You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption, “My time is my own.” Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours.
By the way, if you are wondering about SLOTHFUL in the sentence before – Sloth is another of the 7 Deadly Sins and it means to be excessively LAZY.
Now, Wormwood is to put in his Patient’s mind the idea that stolen time means he has suffered a personal injury. On the flip side, when he does devote time to anything, it is a GIFT of his personal time.
Screwtape immediately points out just how absurd this idea is:
The assumption which you want him to go on making is so absurd that, if once it is questioned, even we cannot find a shred of argument in its defence. The man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift….
Think of it this way. We are finite human beings with a beginning and end point in time – BIRTH and DEATH. We live in time with the future approaching and the past being what has already happened. We live moment to moment.
God acts in time but is not limited by it. God has always been and always will be. As we have said before, God has created everything that is - which includes time. Nothing can be created any other way. So, rather than being owners of the time that is given to us by God, we are instead called to be Stewards of this gift of time.
Our scripture lessons echo this theology of time. In our first reading from the Prophet Isaiah, the people of Israel have been reunited in Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile. Isaiah declares that God will create new heavens and a new earth. The prophecy looks to eternity when the recent history of invasion, war, and exile will be replaced. “No more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress.” In the new age, God will restore the fortunes of Zion and it shall be for all eternity.
Psalm 30 is a Psalm of Thanksgiving attributed to David. King David has repented of his sin and God has forgiven. Throughout the Psalm there is the clear message that God’s favor and love is not limited by time.
And in our Gospel reading from John, Jesus is in Galilee and heals the son of a royal official in Capernaum showing that Jesus is not limited by time or space. And our Gospel reading also leads us into the second part of Letter 21.
Screwtape also encourages Wormwood to use this sense of ownership to tempt his Patient.
The humans are always putting up claims to ownership which sound equally funny in Heaven and in Hell and we must keep them doing so.
He shows his nephew how a demon can take this sense of ownership to include just about everything in life. “My dog” and “my wife” lead to “my country” and “my God” with same sense of “Mine.”
And at the other end of the scale, we have taught men to say “My God” in a sense not really very different from “My boots”, meaning “The God on whom I have a claim for my distinguished services and whom I exploit from the pulpit – the God I have done a corner in”.
In other words, we create our own “god” in our own image who is supposed to act and do like we want him to do. And when God doesn’t or we don’t get what we want, we reject God. This is the history of the Israelites in a nutshell.
Now this temptation is countered by giving our whole lives to God. This is what we mean when we talk about a daily walk with God and the key is recognizing that nothing is actually “mine”. It may sound cliché but life and all that comes with it needs to be treated as a gift. Imagine if every encounter we have with another person can be understood that way rather than an inconvenience or a theft of “my time”. Loving our neighbor wouldn’t be quite so hard.
Screwtape closes out this letter telling his nephew that it all comes down to who his Patient chooses to serve. As Jesus says in the Gospels, we all serve God or the Devil, but you can’t serve both. God calls us “Mine” because he created us and calls us His own. Satan wants to claim us by conquest so he can consume all that we are.
Our prayer for today reminds us that God gives us the gift of eternal life with Him. We have the opportunity for a “foretaste” of the Kingdom of Heaven now and every day. A good Lenten discipline is to find something new to “give” yourself to in the Church. Give yourself to helping in Children’s Chapel just one Sunday or Founders Place on a Tuesday or Thursday. I guarantee you will receive a gift from God and find that it was time in your life that you have been truly blessed.
Let us Pray
O Lord our God, in your holy Sacraments you have given us a foretaste of the good things of your kingdom: Direct us, we pray, in the way that leads to eternal life, that we may come to appear before you in that place of light where you dwell for ever with your saints; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.