Good morning, my friends. It is so good to be here.
I want to wish us all a very blessed Lent, I want to pray that we may all use the time and opportunities afforded by this liturgical season for prayer, discernment, and service and, like today -when we meet as a Christian community- for listening to the Word, making common prayer, and being nourished by the Sacraments.
I pray that, despite their seeming somber tone, we may observe the disciplines of this season with a joyful heart, a confident and joyful heart.
Which is why I find so meaningful that our psalm in this first Sunday of Lent should begin with the word ‘Happy’: ‘Happy are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sin is put away’.
The Hebrew word asher means ‘happy’, yes, but it is more like, ‘of a joyful life’ or, even better, ‘driven to leading a blessed life’. Asher denotes intention, agency, and purpose, in our joy, moved by the acknowledgment of the mercy of God, who lifts transgressions, covers sins, and does not count iniquities, making Himself our joy and purpose.
The psalmist goes on to acknowledge that it was not until he chose to open his mouth, confess his transgressions, plea for forgiveness and remission, that the heavy weight of the hand of God was lifted off his soul.
There is some reluctance in the confession, which takes three verses, if we compare it to the swiftness of God’s pardon, which only takes one verse. But there is also the expressed happiness in submitting one’s self to the saving, merciful love of God: there is joy in committing one’s self to the guidance and teaching of the Lord, says the Psalmist.
As the Church, we step into this season of Lent, these forty days of intentional discernment, by hearing the account of the forty days that our Lord Jesus spent in the dessert in fasting and prayer.
Just like Jesus, the Church and her children are led by the Spirit, who nourishes and builds us all up in all things, throughout a season of penitence and growth. This season is meant to help us discern our true nature, call, and end, and to act accordingly.
And this discernment of our true nature, call, and end, even for the Church, here and now, is often marked by the experience of temptations. Just as it was for our Lord out in the desert, two thousand years ago.
What are temptations? Where do they come from? Is it God? Is it the Tempter, the Devil? Does it matter?
Years ago, I heard someone define temptations as coming from Satan, as opposed to trials, which come from God.
It may sound like an overly simplistic distinction, but I think it does the job of setting temptations, the fruits of our obsession with our ego, well apart from trials, one of many logical outcomes of our relationships in the world.
Trials speak to our embrace of the Cross, while temptations speak to the seduction of our ego.
Temptations are those yearnings we can all have for, basically, instant gratification.
They make the unfair seem plausible, nay, desirable -if only we would twist the rules a little bit…
Temptations make honesty and joy of living look redundant, and common sense always second to personal gain.
And, as you can imagine, for Jesus, as he was facing the most public and wounding part of his ministry, as he turns his face towards Jerusalem, there are plenty of temptations to be dealt with.
And it is not just those things Jesus might have struggled with. Mostly, I would think, they were about the very high hopes and expectations that others might have been throwing on him all along his ministry.
How could Jesus live up to these hopes, or delusions, who can tell for sure anymore?
In each of his openings, Satan, the Tempter, appeals to the divine sonship of Jesus –‘if you are the Son of God’- to trigger his pride and foolishness. ‘Who is your daddy?’, seems to ask the Devil, enticing Jesus to a move of power and arrogance.
And, each time, with each temptation, Jesus responds by grounding his identity and calling in his obedience and, in being obedient, in having surrendered his control and agenda to God, his freedom from insecurity and hunger for power.
Jesus responds by invoking the Covenant, that link of love and obedience which also renders temptations powerless.
In the way Jesus responds to the entreats of the Devil, the way Jesus responds to the temptations of power, might, and total autonomy from others, we are again, as before with the Psalmist, drawn into trusting our whole being, into embracing the saving confidence in the providence of God.
And I want to point out that this is a decisive factor in the recalling of these events. If you remember, last week we heard about Jesus going up the mount of the Transfiguration, when he took along three disciples who, predictably, came down with the experience and the story to eventually be told.
But today, right off the bat we are told that Jesus went into the wilderness on his own. No disciples. No witnesses. All by himself.
So, the gospel writers knew about this event in the desert through different means than when learning about the Transfiguration event.
If for the transfiguration, we now rely on the witness of those who were brought along by Jesus -Peter, John, James- in the case of the Temptations, I have to assume that the community only knew so much about any of it, and filled in the gaps for the most of the story.
If we look at Mark, for example, this entire story is told in but two verses. The Lord went out in the desert, was tempted by Satan, but He overcame.
Because this is as much as the disciples “really” knew, not having been witnesses to the events in the desert.
So, the disciples, the authors of St Matthew’s gospel, adorn the initial story with all these narrative bits we can read today, out of their experience with Jesus, whom they knew was being tempted, not only at this point in his ministry, but in fact throughout it all.
The personification of the Devil, the Accuser, is a very useful teaching device to bring our attention right away to the actual object of concern or temptation for Jesus: the place and importance Jesus gives of his covenanted relationship with God, versus the place and importance Jesus gives to his own way, to his own will, to his own agenda -the way away from God.
The experience of Jesus in the wilderness, facing these temptations, comes to us then as a parable in itself, a storied understanding of the true nature of Jesus and his calling to be fully God’s.
Accordingly, our own observance of Lent is, in few words, a sacramental remembrance of this struggle between the calling to be fully God’s, and the temptation to be plentiful, or at least the temptation of pretending to be plentiful -on our own strength and provision.
Which is what the lesson from the book of Genesis seems to be about. Man and woman are said to be in disobedience not because they chose, one way or another, to eat this or that fruit, but because they are shown to have done even so in concert with someone besides the same Lord God who gave them life and freedom primordial, untouched. They went to a third party, so to speak.
Walking away from God means succumbing to the temptation that we can be plentiful on our own, disregarding relationships, ignoring the joy and the cross of being one in community in the world.
And, once having broken that first seal of trust with God, it is no wonder that their mutual nakedness should inspire but distrust, the need to cover and hide away.
Such is very much the opposite of the joyful heart, a confident and joyful heart we were hearing about in the psalm, and which we have heard in how the gospel writers and their communities understood the struggles that Jesus experienced.
To have a confident, joyful heart, even in the midst of struggle, is possible when we acknowledge that our body, our health, our life and our death are ultimately in the hands of God.
To surrender joyfully to the mercies of God is possible when we acknowledge the supremacy of relationships over power.
To abide in the confident providence of God, when we face the utter reality of our life and our death, is within the realm of the possible when we accept that only in God does our death have much sense, even now.
It is relatively easy to resist the temptations of selfishness and certainty when we acknowledge, even joyfully so, that our lives and beyond are in the hands of a God of endless mercy.
This time of Lent is a season to be with Jesus, while also alone with ourselves, making community with others in our embrace of the covenant of love made true in the Incarnation, and made victorious in the Resurrection.
This time of Lent is a season for honest, loving self-examination, which because of being loving and honest, can only turn us outside of ourselves, with our friends in Christ who join us in this pilgrimage, and towards the Spirit, who leads us into every truth. Even the truth which renders temptations powerless.
Thanks be to God.
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