Lent - Christless Christianity

John Ball writes:
There's a lot of ignorance in this world and most of it is self-imposed. It's like there is a lead ceiling that prevents people from letting their minds and spirits fly. This lead ceiling is their own narcissism. Most people are deeply interested in themselves, view their 'lives' as spectators, consume their own minds and spirits as commodity consumers.
On Sunday I went to church and yet again I heard a sermon about our relationship with God, a sermon which was virtually Christ free. The minister believes this is what his congregation wants to hear, but is he right, and is it what God wants to hear?
It is a false gospel to speak about our loving Father, how he has a plan for us, about our commitment to him, without hardly mentioning Jesus Christ. It is Christ who takes us out of ourselves on wings up to heaven, to his reality of selfless sacrificial love.
They talk about being forgiven, but what is forgiveness without Christ? And how can we forgive others?
If it is our commitment that has given us a new start, and our decision that has given us a relationship with God, and our own efforts that keep us within the bounds of the high end of bourgeois righteousness, then what place Christ, who has to be dragged out now and again  like an embarrassing older relative?
What place the terrible and awesome events of the crucifixion and the resurrection in a service of jolly songs and self congratulation?
But these preachers of the false gospel, the self absorbed gospel, the psychotherapeutic gospel, like those who preach the social gospel,  chose to ignore Christ. There is little compassion, humility, forgiveness in such people. They are wolves in sheep's clothing, people more concerned with maintaining their position than telling the Truth.
A sermon should always preach Christ - Christ crucified and Christ resurrected.
How else should we praise our Lord? How else can we rise from the grave of the self?
Here in the season of Lent let us contemplate the greatness of Christ's forgiveness, how it is he who rescues us from the trough of despair, keeps us from falling into the pit of selfish depravity; he and not ourselves who raises up to the heights of selfless love.