Our collect for this third Sunday in Lent reminds us to consider our lives “both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls.” “Outwardly in our bodies” relates to our behavior, our actions in the world, our relations with God and one another. In doing our Lenten self-examination, I suspect that most of us look outward. Looking at our lives in the light of the Ten Commandments, for example, that we find in our lesson from the Hebrew scriptures today, we think we’re doing pretty well. We tend to be like the rich young man responding to Jesus, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” (Mk.10:17-22) But Jesus says that’s just the beginning of our getting right with God. For that, we need to look inwardly in our soul; “For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come.” (Mk. 7:21) That says what we show forth outwardly has its birth inwardly. Our thoughts, our attitudes, our desires, our fears, all affect our actions, our choices for good or ill.

Looking inward is not always easy. It takes time. In fact, Dag Harramskjold points out that “The longest journey is the journey inward.” First, we have to get over the hurdle of avoidance, denial. If we are at all anxious about what we may discover hiding there in the dark, in the unknown, we are prone to ignore the call, to procrastinate, hoping it will go away, that it doesn’t matter. The apostle Paul, however, doesn’t let us off the hook; he asks, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” (I Cor.3:16) What is the condition of that temple within you? Lent calls us to go inward, into the temple of our souls, to check out what we’ve allowed to accumulate there, and based on what we uncover, it provides the perfect time for spring cleaning God’s temple, for sweeping out all the dark corners, to make God welcome in our hearts. Thankfully, God is the perfect guest who joins in with what needs to be done, whom we can trust to “cleanse the thoughts of our hearts” so that ”we may perfectly love [God] and worthily magnify [God’s] holy name,” outwardly and inwardly.