First Sunday in Lent Year 3 – Bill Harkins
The Collect
Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan: Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
The Gospel: Luke 4:1-13
In the name of the God of creation who loves us all, Amen. Welcome to each of you on this First Sunday of Lent. We are so glad you are here, and if you are visiting this morning, please let us get a chance to know you. and, let me say welcome to you all. Like many of you, I made my way to worship on Ash Wednesday this past week, and just in time for the 6pm service a cold, steady rain and wind began. Although the root word for Lent comes from the Old English Lengten, meaning “the lengthening of days in the spring,” Wednesday seemed anything but spring-like. But let’s remember that our Lenten preparations are not in the service of Good Friday, but rather in preparation for Easter—for Resurrection.
Moreover, historically, Lent provided a time when converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism. These reminders point, then, to the paschal mystery, a mystery that the theologian Ronald Rolheiser has called “a process of transformation within which we are given both new life, and new spirit.”
Now, by this I do not mean to suggest that Good Friday is not essential to the journey. A seminary student of mine once said that his denomination, which shall remain nameless, prefers to skip over Good Friday altogether, and go from Palm Sunday straight to Easter Sunday. I found this instructive as I was making my way into the Episcopal Church many years ago. I am glad we take each step of the journey seriously. However, the observance of a Holy Lent as described in the Ash Wednesday service—of self-examination; repentance; prayer, fasting, and self-denial; reading and meditating on God’s word—all point finally not to Good Friday but to Easter. Hence, we hear at the end of the Ash Wednesday service, “at the last we may come to his eternal joy.” This is a joy made possible by resurrection, by the glorious paschal mystery of Easter. The ashes imposed upon us on Wednesday were outward and visible signs of this inward journey, and symbolic of the setting aside of 40 days as a time of reflection and repentance in the service of this joy, a liturgical, personal, communal journey, if you will, toward and in relation to, the source of that joy. This journey can be a harrowing one. Thus, the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples includes the phrase, “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” And as one who was tempted, Jesus was well acquainted with what it meant to face such trials. His forty days in the wilderness recall the fasts of Moses, and Elijah, as well as the desert wandering of the people of Israel. There are many rich possibilities in the images found in today’s readings. I want to focus for just a moment on one in particular—the spirituality of desire. Ron Rolheiser, a Catholic theologian whose work I admire, has defined spirituality as “what we do with the divine spark inside us, and how we channel and discipline that flame—that Eros.” Rolheiser suggests that healthy spirituality serves two purposes. First, it must put some fire in our souls; keep us energized, fully alive with hope and a deep abiding sense that life is worth living. Second, it must hold us together, with integrity and congruence. It must give us a narrative sense of who we are, where we have been, and where we are going. This divine spark, this internal, God given fire, can also be dangerous, because it is such a powerful force. As Dostoyevsky said, God’s terrible insistence on human freedom in the form of Jesus’ “miracle of restraint” in the Gospel narrative is so absolute, that he granted us that power to live as though God did not exist, indeed, to crucify him. Jesus knew this firsthand as he stood beside the Tempter in the desert. The single most important issue in this narrative is, I believe, how Jesus chooses to use his “vocatio,” his calling, his divine spark of love, of Eros—in short, how he chose to live. If we focus on Jesus’ death, on Good Friday, we miss the point. And it is fascinating how in this text from Luke, as in the Matthean account, Satan quotes scripture in his attempt to persuade Jesus to use his Divine spark for his own gain—to take advantage of Jesus’ own vulnerability borne of hunger, to turn stones into bread. This passage is what prompted Shakespeare to point out in “A Merchant of Venice,” “the devil can cite scripture for his own purpose.”
Seeing scripture used as a means of temptation reminds us of the ways we, too, can sometimes turn scripture into our own forms of idolatry. Jesus’ vocation, his use of his divine fire, draws him in a different direction as he seeks to discern God’s call. Think with me for a moment about this.
On the face of it, there is nothing theologically wrong with what Satan is telling Jesus in the desert. The power of God to which Jesus has access can provide food for the hungry, and, as we know, it will, in the form of loaves and fishes. Jesus does indeed bear “the name before which every knee shall bend, and every tongue confess” his lordship—and they will. God’s care for each one of God’s children is trustworthy. Every point that Satan makes is, in a sense, biblically inerrant. Every point is, in a sense, true. Thank God that Jesus is not the kind to have a bumper sticker on his chariot that reads:
“God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” Thank God that Jesus is not the type who believes that every word of scripture is applicable to his circumstances and to his immediate needs and agendas. Because while each of Satan’s points are, in a sense, “true,” they are used here in the service of the seductive lure of social, religious, and political power in favor of uncompromising obedience to God. Jesus must decide to what end his vocation shall serve: he must decide how to discipline and make use of his Divine spark of Eros—of God’s love. Later God will, through Jesus, bring vast crowds together for a feast; later, we believe, God will be revealed in a messianic banquet at the end of history; but now is not the time and these are not the circumstances for Jesus to use God’s power to provide. As the biblical scholar Sarah Dylan Breuer has noted, the kind of authority Jesus uses here—the kind of leadership he demonstrates—is most fully revealed through his self-giving love, radical openness, and forgiveness. Turn on the TV or radio, pick up a newspaper any day, and you can be sure someone is making a killing on Jesus’ death—how he died, who was to blame; someone is quoting scripture to consolidate power or achieve political gain; someone is searching the bible for indications that we deserve the privilege and prosperity we have and are justified in keeping others down to further it. But Jesus showed us a different way. He points us in a direction suggestive of keeping a Holy Lent. He demonstrates that spirituality is finally about how to handle the fire—the Divine spark of energy—that each of us has. As Rolheiser has suggested, we think that energy is ours, and it is not. We think we can control it all on our own, and we cannot. We think we have all the answers, by virtue of our personal interpretation of scripture. We do not. As our brother Basil Pennington (who was at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit, in Conyers) has said, “We don’t have all the answers. But we do, thank God, have some answers: answers that give birth to more questions…and it is good to live in the questions. An answer too simple is closed; it is finished; that’s it. It goes nowhere and leaves little room for hope. A question, the mystery, opens space for us. It is full of possibility. It gives hope of life and ever more abundant life. Our faith, solid as it might be, is full of questions. And therefore full of life and hope.” Indeed. The paschal mystery is the question of how we shall receive new life and new spirit—the new life and spirit of resurrection. Our preparation over these forty days and nights is in the service of discerning what form that that new life and spirit will take; how we shall use our vocation—our calling; and to what end our divine spark shall shine forth. And thanks be to God that we in this place do this in community. “Come in from the desert,” Jesus says be nourished by the body of Christ; Join with brothers and sisters to engage in this discernment and to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit; be suspicious of any voice that would suggest that God’s power is to be used for our own privilege; trust rather the call—that still, small voice in the wilderness, which extends good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed. These are the ends to which we suffer in the desert, and discern, and receive the new life of the paschal mystery. May we use Lent as a time for sitting still—for preparation for new life and new spirit. Let’s seek to discern how we shall live—and how we shall use the divine spark we have been given.. As the Welsh priest and poet RS Thomas said,
I think that maybe
I will be a little surer
of being a little nearer.
That’s all. Eternity
is in the understanding
that that little is more than enough.
Amen