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The First Sunday In Lent
Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted of Satan; Make speed to help thy servants who are assaulted by manifold temptations; and, as thou knowest their several infirmities, let each one find thee mighty to save; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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The First Sunday In Lent
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A Sermon by
Fr. Mead
✛
Jesus: Tried and True
The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
There is something particularly beautiful about Lent. It came through forcefully to me this past Ash Wednesday. The beauty may be seen in the people who come to have their foreheads smudged with ashes in the shape of a cross and to hear the words, “Remember, O Man, that thou art dust, and unto dust shalt thou return.” We priests do this all day and look into the faces, ranging from perfect strangers to parishioners we know well. Some smile, usually with a tinge of sadness as the ashes are imposed and the words said. Some have tears in their eyes. Some say gracious things. It is moving.
People are at their very best at such a time. They may not feel like it, but they are. We have been told this repeatedly in Scripture: The Lord dwells with the humble and contrite. The sacrifice of God is a broken spirit. I came not to call the righteous but sinners. The angels of God rejoice over the sinner who repents. I checked in with Father Stafford about my sense that we are at our best on Ash Wednesday. How are people on the big feasts, Easter and Christmas, I asked. They’re different, aren’t they? Yes, he said. “People get big ideas” at those times. Well, there are no big ideas on Ash Wednesday, but rather dust, humility, and surrender to the truth, to God. No big ideas.
Today, the first Sunday in Lent, the holy season progresses with our Lord out in the wilderness. Saint Mark’s one-verse account tells of Christ’s temptation by Satan, his vulnerability among the wild beasts, and his only companions, the angels. This follows immediately upon his Baptism. The Baptism contains a vivid self-revelation of the Trinity. Jesus sees the heavens “torn” open and the Spirit descending upon him as a dove, and he hears the voice of God, “Thou art my well-beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.” The same Spirit who descended as a dove at once drives Jesus into the wilderness.
Jesus’ baptism identifies him with sinners. Baptism is a cleansing from sin. Jesus has no sins to confess. He is in perfect union with God his Father. Yet he undergoes this rite for sinners at the hands of John the Baptist. Jesus’ deliberate identification with sinners leads him right into the wilderness where Satan tempts him. Saint Mark says nothing about the temptations (as Matthew and Luke do), because Mark means to stress that not just for forty days in the desert but for his whole ministry, Jesus had to face the Devil’s trials and temptations at point after point right to his death.
Jesus lived his whole life and ministry in the relationship revealed at his Baptism, Personal and Substantial Union, within God. Most amazingly, he did this as he identified with, befriended, and ministered to sinners, the likes of us. God’s eternal Son stands in line with us to receive the same smudge of ashes on his own forehead, but we cannot begin to imagine his temptations. All our temptations are his and more; more, because he did not succumb to them and so knows their full force and extent. “To err is human; to forgive is divine,” said Alexander Pope. Yet Jesus is not only divine; he is more fully and completely human than we, because he has fulfilled all human life by undergoing all its trials all the way to the end. He has experienced things we never reach, because we have long since defected and fallen. Jesus is perfectly qualified to be our Savior.
What about temptations? They are necessary. They reveal what we want and who we are. When we fall to the temptations, they show what we want other than God and who we are other than who God destines us to be. Either way, we come to know ourselves. Our pilgrim’s progress can only be measured by way of our trials. Our faith, hope, and love can only be seen in facing and passing through, or falling and repenting and trying, trying again. Thus our Lord has taught us to pray, Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. This could be rendered, Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil.
From childhood we begin the pilgrimage of temptation and, because we are born fallen sinners, we are in the process of dying. All along life’s way are intimations of mortality, little and not-so-little deaths, world-endings. Sometimes we try to save ourselves from them, one way or another. These efforts distract or postpone; but in the end, we die. Many have raged against this “dying of the light.” But we can surrender to death’s necessity for ourselves within the safekeeping of Christ who voluntarily embraced it for us, and who said both, “My God why have you forsaken me,” and “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit” as he breathed his last.
Jesus breathed, lived, moved and walked by the Spirit every instant of his life. He conveys that life to us through our Baptism, through repentance from dead works, and through faith. How does our salvation and deliverance occur? By our “putting on” Christ; by our being “in” Christ; by “dying” to this world and “rising” to life in Christ. This is a real, life-giving offer, the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God. We are in Christ by imitating his self-giving love. We are in Christ by hope in his victory: he has taken our nature, nailed our sin to his cross, and has been raised from death by the Spirit on the third day. He is the beloved Son, the One True Human Being who invites us into his life as God’s adopted sons and daughters.
There are no “big ideas” in surrender. But there is true life there, life in Christ, moment by moment in the Spirit – the Spirit who split open the heavens and descended on Jesus at his Baptism in the Jordan and who drove Jesus out into the wilderness, our wilderness, to be tempted. This is the Spirit by whom Jesus taught and healed and confronted the Devil in every imaginable way. This is the Spirit who guided Jesus to his cross and who raised him from the tomb. This Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, has been poured on the Church by Jesus from his Father at Pentecost, the Spirit by whom we are sealed in Holy Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever. This Spirit enables us to face our trials and temptations, to turn to God again when we fail, and to finish our pilgrim exile through this perishing world and enter the kingdom of heaven. Lord Jesus, Victor in our wilderness, save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil. Amen.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
