First Sunday of Lent
Two days ago we sang a song entitled “Tree of Life”. A verse from that song, given for this first Sunday of Lent, reads:
“From the dawning of creation, you have loved us as your own.
Stay with us through all temptation; make us turn to you alone.”
In our readings this Sunday we hear the re-creation story of God’s saving love of Noah, and God’s continual saving presence with us mirrored in the temptation story of Jesus in the desert.
Lent is a time of emptying - a time of intimacy with God alone – and during Lent, many of us take more “alone” time with God. I think it speaks of the knowledge that we find our greatest home with God. That alone time is also an image of a desert experience.
The desert is depicted in various ways throughout Scripture.
In the 40 years of the Exodus journey, the Israelites were seeking a covenant relationship with God, and they met God in the desert. For them the desert was the place of transition where they moved from being slaves to being God’s own people.
In the prophet Hosea, the desert is where lovers meet.
In today’s Gospel from Mark, the desert is a site of temptations, beasts, and angels.
You no doubt noticed how brief Mark’s version of this story is. As usual, Mark cuts to the heart of the issue. He leaves out the individual temptations which the other evangelists tell us, and ignores the details. What Mark wants us to know is that Jesus confronted the temptations with the assistance of the angels – God’s messengers.
I like the image of Jesus being between the beasts and the angels. As humans that is the uniqueness of where we are: In Genesis God placed us over the beasts. However it was the angels - God’s own messengers - who throughout Scripture offered humans care and comfort.
We too will be and have been tested by many things which occur in our daily lives. This year it is the pandemic, the intense cold and weather which we have experienced (but which is so much worse in other parts of the country), the heat of fires, storms and unmarked paths, and for many who have lost jobs there has been hunger and homelessness.
The desert is a part of our humanity. Jesus and Noah are survivors of their ordeals, Jesus offers us survival through Baptism, repentance, and faith. Jesus becomes for us what the desert lacks most – water. For he becomes for us the water of Baptism.
We often refer to Lent as a Journey. Like the Israelites of old, we are a migrant people who are called by God and must constantly return to God through faithfulness. Each week of Lent we will walk in the steps of those in our Scripture readings: today it was Noah, and Jesus. As the weeks pass, we will go through towns, and up onto mountain tops, into the marketplace and the temple, on ordinary roads, and across the waters.
All these are the paths we take with one another to reach Easter.
This past Wednesday when we received the ashes, we heard the words “Repent and believe in the Gospel.” In this Gospel passage of Mark we again hear those words. We also hear that this is a new time of fulfillment of the reign of God. That is not just the Good News of Jesus. It is the best news! Let us welcome it this Lent!