So, it’s the first Sunday of Lent and I have to confess that
so far, anyway, I haven’t had a very Lenten Lent. On Thursday, the day after
Ash Wednesday, I had a couple glasses of wine. On Friday, I ate French fries,
and yesterday, Saturday, I ate a piece of black forest cake. Every day I’ve
drunk coffee, as well as my biggest temptation—Diet Cherry Dr. Pepper—well
maybe I’ve had a little less of that, but not considerably. If Lent is supposed to be about giving
things up, about denying ourselves things we like, little pleasures like French
fries, Black Forest cake or Dr Pepper—well, then, I am a miserable failure. Of
course, the good news is that there’s still over a month to go, so maybe I can
pick myself up, dust myself off, and start over again. Maybe.
But it’s so hard sometimes. Especially when we have gorgeous
spring-like days like yesterday. Under those conditions it’s hard to focus on
fasting and self-denial when outside it feels a lot more like Easter, a lot
more like resurrection and new life. That’s the trouble with Lent beginning as
late as it does this year. In other years, Lent starts in mid-February, when
its cold and dark and we already feel a little morose. It’s just not fair for
it to start when, after a long and torturous winter, we are already eagerly
anticipating the new life of spring. So, I am perfectly comfortable blaming my
Lenten failures on the calendar. It really won’t care.
Plus, the really good news is that Lent is actually about a
whole lot more than giving up wine or chocolate or fried potato products. It’s
really about journeying deeper into the heart and being of God. It’s about
letting go of whatever doesn’t matter, whatever clutters up our lives, so that
we can focus on the things that really do matter—who we are, who God made us to
be, who God hopes for us to become.
That’s what I think I would like to focus on this Lent, in
both my prayer and in my living: discovering who I am in Christ and who God
wants me to be. And I would invite and encourage you to do the same: focus on
who God made you to be and who God wants you to become. Those of you who were
here on Ash Wednesday this past week will remember that I spoke about the stark
dichotomy between the dark symbol of the ashes—a sign and reminder of our
mortality—and our society that seems so intent on denying or even somehow
trying to overcome that mortality, whether through exercise or diet, medicines,
face creams, or more dramatically with the very pleasant and breezy sounding
“lifestyle lift,” which is probably not all that pleasant or breezy in reality.
All are meant, in a way, to help us defy the odds and live forever—or at least
look like we are 20 years younger when the time of our mortality finally comes.
Now, as I said on Wednesday, there’s certainly nothing wrong
and a lot right with being healthy. And really, there’s nothing wrong with
looking young or younger than your years either. After a certain age we all
desire that. But what is problematic, I think, is when the attainment of a
perfect body or the perfect job or the most stunningly gorgeous spouse or
partner becomes so absorbing that we lose sight of who are, and whose we are.
The cross of ashes on our foreheads and the reminder that we are dust and to dust
we shall return serves, I think, in a very powerful way, to draw us, or even
jolt us, back to our center in God. Through the ashes, through the cross, we
are reminded, yet again, that none of this external stuff, none of the stuff or
the promises that are advertised on TV, radio, or the Internet really matters.
Because it won’t last. Like our mortal bodies, one day all that stuff will also
again be dust. It will return to the source from which it came: God. And so
will we.
I think, really, that’s the meaning in the wilderness
temptation story that we just heard in today’s gospel. Much like the voices
speaking to us through our TVs, radios, and computers, telling us that if we
only sign up or show up, take a pill or pay three easy installments of $29.99,
we can be skinnier, prettier, younger, richer, have a better partner, a better
house or a better car, much like those voices Satan tries in various ways to
lure Jesus away from his true self and center in God by suggesting that if he
just turned some stones into bread he wouldn’t be hungry any longer, or if he’d
bow down (in other words, turn to Satan and away from God) he’d have all the
power he could possibly want or need. Jesus doesn’t give in, as we know, but we
shouldn’t imagine that it wasn’t hard all the same—after all, after 40 days he
probably was really hungry. And who wouldn’t be drawn in by the promise of
wealth or power or prestige?
And here’s the thing. Because we are good Christians and
because we have been brought up to believe that Jesus lived sinlessly, we tend
also, sometimes, to think that Jesus was so perfect, so beyond corruption or
temptation, that nothing could or would have phased him, that these temptations
just sort of rolled off his back. But I don’t think that’s right. Because Jesus
was human. Fully, truly, really human. Human like you and me. And if these
temptations weren’t really tempting, well then, who cares? It’s easy not to
give into things you don’t like or want or need. What’s hard, what’s real,
what’s miraculous even, is standing firm in the face of something that is truly
alluring. That’s why, when we prepare to confront the power of temptation, we
shouldn’t imagine that we will get a proper warning—like seeing a little red
devil on our shoulders with horns and a pitch fork. Rather, it will be
pleasant, reassuring, alluring and seductive even. It is for us, and I imagine
that it was for Jesus, too.
In fact, if the Adam and Eve story in Genesis is to be
believed, being tempted in this way, being tempted into thinking that we can be
better or smarter, more attractive and more powerful, is something that humans
have struggled with from the beginning of time. Only, also, as long ago as
that, we humans have known, in a deep, inward, spiritual place, that by giving
into these temptations, we end up losing part of ourselves, even as we also
drift, little by little, and usually quite unintentionally, away from our
center in God. We forget who we are and whose we are.
That, I think, is why the Adam and Eve story was written down
in the first place—to try to help explain this weird inward pull we humans have
for making choices that, for whatever reasons, seem to be good in the passion
of the moment, but in retrospect are extraordinarily bad. In fact, when you
stop to think about it, the whole of the Bible is full of such stories—people,
good people, who are lured in by the promise of power, or prestige, or sensual
pleasures, only to find that they have sold themselves or lost themselves to
the highest (or even sometimes the lowest) bidder—Adam and Eve for a piece of
fruit, Esau for a bowl of lentil stew, Samson, David, and Solomon for the lure
of beautiful women.
But what we also learn, in reading the Bible, in
encountering these stories of Adam and Eve, Jacob and Esau, Samson and Delilah,
David and Bathsheba, Solomon and his 700 wives and 300 concubines (now there’s
a biblical approach to marriage—how did he even have time for actually ruling
Israel?), and so many more, what we learn through all of these stories is that
although we may wander far off into wildernesses of our own making, God is
steadfast, God is faithful, and God will always welcome us home again, welcome
us home into God’s heart, where we were born and where we belong, forever and
always.
And that, I think, is what this Lenten season is all about,
more than giving up fried potatoes or black forest cake. It is the journey
through temptations and out of our wildernesses. It is the journey back to God.
And for Christians, for us here this morning, that journey comes with and in
and through Christ. In following him, in striving to resist temptations the way
he did, in taking up our own crosses, and even dying to the lure of power and
prestige and beauty, dying to all of that, we will find that we are, in fact,
truly alive. We find that we are able to rise again.
You know, on Wednesday, when we were marked with ash crosses
and told that we are dust and to dust we shall return, we could just as well
have been reminded that earlier, on another occasion, on another day, at our
baptisms, after we were sprinkled or doused with water, we were likewise marked
with crosses, on our foreheads—crosses that day not of ash, not of death and
mortality, but of eternal life, life with and in God. And it is those crosses,
the baptismal crosses, the resurrection crosses, that we are journeying to
rediscover this Lent. So that when it really is Easter, when that glorious day
comes, we will be ready and able to leave our wildernesses, our tombs, and rise
with Christ.
To God be the glory: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
© The Rev. Matthew P. Cadwell, Ph.D.
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