First Sunday of Lent
Readings: DT 26:4-10; ROM 10:8-13; LK 4:1-13
I want to offer a short reflection on each of today’s readings because they are so rich.
In the first reading, Moses is instructing the people. He recounts the history of all that they have been through but more importantly all that God has seen them through. And thus they are instructed to offer the “first fruits” of the harvest in gratitude.
More than anything else, the Hebrew scriptures keep coming back to this theme: remember what God has done for you! The great Jewish teacher Abraham Joshua Heschel said that the Hebrew scriptures can be summed up by one word – remember! During Lent, we’re invited to remember all that God has done for us – all of the blessings, all of the connections, all of the sustaining – and to say thank you in concrete ways with our lives.
Then we hear Paul tell the Romans that, “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart.” Even if we are unaware of it, God’s word and very presence are intimately with us. It reminds me of what we hear in Jeremiah 31 where God will write the law in our hearts.
This is why stillness, contemplation and understimulation are so crucial to our lives but especially during Lent. We need to stay connected to the presence of God that already exists within us (and is known by many different names). But this presence is not just within us, it’s within all humans, all creatures and the entire created order. When we hear, feel, touch, smell and see that presence inside of ourselves, we’re far more likely to hear, feel, touch, smell and see it everywhere else. It is then that we recognize that we are all kin.
And when we do this kind of inner work, we are not so easily seduced.
We read of Jesus’ temptations in the gospel. I know that I grew up with pictures of “the devil” coming to Jesus and offering him things. In so many ways, I wish that were how “the devil” worked.
I have always liked the name Lucifer for the devil. Lucifer comes from the root word “light” and, my experience of the seduction of evil is that it always offers something that looks like a good thing or has a little bit of “light” in it. And so Jesus is offered “good” things by the devil. I have always loved Richard Rohr’s take on this passage. He says,
I believe that all would-be Christians must face the same three temptations as Jesus did. These same demons are in all of us. The first temptation…[is] our need to be immediately impressive and effective, successful, relevant, and make things happen right now. It is our natural desire to look good….The second temptation [is] to think of yourself as saved, superior to others, the moral elite on the side of God and religion, and to quote arguable Scriptures for your own purpose…The third human temptation is the need for control, importance, and power….[where you] bow down before these little kingdoms, the corporations, the idols of militarism and materialism, race and nationality, and all imperialistic thinking. …When you can face these kinds of well-disguised demons, Satan doesn’t have a chance.
Just listen to these temptations: be impressive, successful, relevant, effective and important; feel superior, “right”, one-up and justified; be powerful, in control and dominant. I don’t know about you, but these sound a lot like the values of our dominant culture in the United States. And the gospel invites us not to give in to any of these…
When we remember where we came from and what the true source of our life is, we are less vulnerable to these temptations. When we remember that God’s word and life are intimately within us and that we are connected to everything and everyone, we are less vulnerable to these temptations. When we come together in a community of faith and do this together, we are less vulnerable to these temptations.
But just in case you’re wondering, the last verse of the gospel reminds us that the devil left him “for a time.” We don’t just face these once. We face them again and again. And that’s why we need to practice.
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