by CCW | 17 February 2013 13:44
The Christian season of Lent traditionally begins with the temptations of Christ on the First Sunday of Lent. The whole idea of Lent, the quadragesima, is derived in part from Christ’s going into the wilderness and fasting for “forty days and forty nights.” It recapitulates the themes of the Exodus journey of the ancient Hebrews; the forty years in the wilderness of Sinai. It takes on a symbolic significance. At once a liberation from the yoke of slavery under the Egyptians, it was also a time of testing, and, above all, a time of learning. Learning what? Simply what it means to be the people of God, defined ultimately by God who reveals himself and his will in two ways: first, in the burning bush, and secondly, in the Ten Commandments, the moral code for our humanity, if you will.
These are astounding stories. And in a way they are recalled and reworked in the story of the temptations of Christ which sets us upon the Christian journey of life, a journey into the greater promised land of our redeemed humanity, our humanity forgiven and restored.
The temptations are our temptations brought to a certain kind of clarity in the exchange between Christ and the devil, also called here, “the tempter.” Christian baptism involves our threefold renunciation of “the devil and all his works, the pomps and vanity of this wicked world, and all the sinful desires of the flesh.” In a way, they present in reverse order what we see in the temptations of Christ: first, to turn stones into bread – the temptations of the flesh, as it were; he was, after all, “an-hungred”; secondly, to become a celebrity spectacle – “if thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down” from the pinnacle of the temple; the temptations of worldly renown, “the pomps and vanity of this wicked world,” to be sure; and thirdly, to “fall down and worship” Satan, the devil, the tempter, that ancient deceiver. The temptations are all about “the devil and all his works,” we might say. These we renounce in Jesus’ name, in the name of the one in whom we see with utter clarity the full force and weight of temptations and see even more the greater force and truth of our humanity in its deeper truth and power in its perfect unity with God. Such is our true calling and one which turns all our fastings into feastings.
And in a way, that is the deeper point. We are apt to look upon the disciplines of Lent with a kind of dreary acquiescence. Here we go again, as it were, more privation and hardship, but with a sense of wanting to get it all over and done with. Yet the disciplines of Lent, if we consider them at all, belong to the celebration of our life in Christ. Lent would remind us of the ways in which we are not with him, to be sure, but only so as to recall us to the truth of his presence with us.
I know, this seems so hard and confusing. It isn’t really. The simple point is that the disciplines of Lent belong entirely to the joys of Easter. In a way – spoiler alert! – it is all about the resurrection in us.
And yet, we need the seemingly sombre and sobering realities of the Lenten season. We need to reminded that Lent is not just the journey but already our participation in the purpose of the journey. Just so, our fasts are equally our feasts. And it is all the feast of love. God’s love is revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Lent is the pilgrimage of love.
We are with Christ in the wilderness. We are with him who bears all our temptations and, unlike us, overcomes them. His lesson to us is to see and know what he has done for us and to let that live in us.
Christ goes into the wilderness for us and for our sake. Will we go with him? Will we find the banquet of love in the wilderness, even the wilderness of our sins and folly? Such is Christ’s grace. He calls us to go with him in the journey of his love which seeks our good and perfection.
There can be no greater feast than our Lenten fast. Only so shall we know what he wants us to know – that he is God with us even in the wilderness of our confusions and uncertainties. There, and there alone shall we learn what God’s love for us really means.
Lent begins with the temptations of Christ, to be sure, but even more it begins with the realization that he has overcome all our temptations. And to what end? That we might “worship the Lord [our God], and him only serve.” Such is our freedom, our joy and our delight. God makes something grand and glorious out of the sad mess of our lives. It is captured in Christ’s final response to the devil, the tempter. If we have learned that, we have learned everything!
Fr. David Curry
Lent I, 2013
8:00am HC
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2013/02/17/sermon-for-the-first-sunday-in-lent-800am-service-2/
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