1st Sunday of Lent, Year A
See TEXT below Matthew 4:1-11
March 13, 2011
Today is the first Sunday in the Church Season of Lent.
Lent is a time of heaviness; it is a time of serious heart-preparation for Resurrection Sunday. Lent involves personal soul-searching and an honest, clear-eyed assessment of the state of our relationship with the living, risen Christ.
The goal of Lent is for us to seek the Christ and to renew our practices of Christ-likeness. These practices associated with the Lenten season are fasting, the denial of the self, Godly repentance, daily conversion, sharing our resources with the other, and a simplicity of life. In short, Lent is about self-sacrifice and the way of the cross.
This emphasis on personal renewal toward the Christ actually fits very well as the invitation for these past few Sundays when we have been thinking-through the Sermon on the Mount and the calling of ourselves toward doing the will of the Father and the walking of the Jesus-way.
With Lent, however, the emphasis shifts from Jesus' sermon to his wilderness sojourn. We see Jesus paused, in hesitation, not immediately practicing his kingdom project. In fact, we see Jesus being led from the glorious, mountain-top moment of his Father's profession -- "this is my beloved son," and his Father's direction -- "listen to him," straight to a time of stillness and solitude and struggle.
Does it surprise you that the Father saw the need to prepare Jesus' heart for the treacherous journey which lay ahead? Does it surprise you that Jesus needed a period of quiet soul-provision before GOD, prior to his mission project?
Jesus is led by the Spirit to open his heart to the Father through fasting and prayer. It is in the wilderness where he prepares his heart by being alone with the Almighty, and by thinking-through how the Holy Scriptures applied to his calling. This is a lesson for us. Here Jesus models the necessity of the disciple's withdrawal into a close communion with the Almighty as the way to prepare the heart for the challenges of a world at war with itself. (More on this in a moment)
Like Jesus, we must often preserve our hearts and review the commitment to our calling, and Lent is specifically opened toward this endeavor. This personal renewal is needed for us because the stench of sin and the bitterness of life experiences can easily turn us aside from the narrow-way, offering us a false ease and and a premature rest. But we know there is no rest from discipleship.
Let us now turn to the text and briefly find what is there for us today.
First, we see Jesus is led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted. We would do well to remember that Jesus of Nazareth is being led by GOD's Spirit to do his Kingdom project, and that it is was not of his own design. That is, Jesus is about the Father’s business. Having said that, why would the Spirit lead Jesus into the wilderness to face the tempter? Is it not our prayer, "lead us not into temptation?" How is temptation's trial part of the Kingdom project?
At least as a partial answer, listen to this unusual text from the Book of Hebrews: "In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered..."(Hebrews 5:7-8. See also Hebrews 2:10)
This statement comes in the section in which the author describes Jesus as the great high-priest, and it opens to us the Christological reality that Jesus carried the burden of learning just as we do.
Again, we might well ask just what he learned in this forty-day desert crisis (and what especially he learned in Gethsemane and Calvary). I would assert that he began to learn the reality of the human condition. He learned temptations are real and bitter; deprivation is frightful and consuming; life can be hateful and violent.
The upshot of this is that we now have a high-priest who can be moved by our struggles and disasters. By living through these experiences that comprise humanity he now understands with personal empathy what we face daily.
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. (Hebrews 4:15)
Second, we see from the text that Jesus fed his soul from GOD's word. Three times we are told that the tempter comes to ply his trade, and each time Jesus counters these offers with Holy Scripture. It does not take speculation too far to imagine that throughout those forty-days of fasting Jesus is spiritually feasting off the Hebrew Bible.
St. Luke tells us that not long after these wilderness struggles Jesus goes to his hometown of Nazareth where he attends synagogue on the sabbath as was his custom. When the scroll of Isaiah is handed to him he finds this text:
"The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn..." (Isaiah 61:1,2)
Could it be that in the wilderness crisis he clarifies his true vocation, learning just what GOD would have him do? Could it be through his deprivation and temptation that his mission for the nation and the world is brought to the clear light of the desert sun by his meditation through the Spirit on the memorized Word of GOD?
Third, with both the destitution of being without food and the temptations grinding his soul, Jesus confronts the selflessness that would capture his daily practice and his daily pilgrimage to the cross. When later he offers this council to his followers, "Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me," he clearly knows whereof he speaks. His self-denial was breached during his forty-day desert trial.
For the disciple, the issue of self-denial is of paramount importance. Daily the disciple must carry the cross of sacrifice. Daily we are to say no to selfishness. Daily we are to push away false desires from the promptings of the flesh, the coveting from what we see and want, and the pride from being esteemed by others.
Clearly, the disciple cannot practice this self-sacrifice apart from silent-time spent alone before the GOD who is mystery and empowerment. Clearly, the disciple, without daily prayer, is a disciple in name only.
The decision, then, to "make a good Lent" begins with the understanding that to deny self -- as un-American and un-therapeutic as this sounds to the post-modern ear -- and to offer oneself to the silence of prayer, is actually the only path to discipleship.
Matthew 4:1-11
A Reading from the Holy Gospel of St. Matthew
At that time Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was hungry. The tempter approached and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread.” He said in reply, “It is written: One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.”
Then the devil took him to the holy city, and made him stand on the parapet of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written: He will command his angels concerning you and with their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone.” Jesus answered him, “Again it is written, You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.” Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence, and he said to him, "All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.” At this, Jesus said to him, “Get away, Satan! It is written: The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.” Then the devil left him and, behold, angels came and ministered to him.
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