Lent 1

Readings: Deuteronomy 26:4-10; Romans 10:8-13; Luke 4:1-13

Temptation is often a subtle thing.
If it works the way the devil intends,
you may not even know you’re being tempted.
In our Gospel today,
temptation takes a fairly dramatic form:
Satan appearing and speaking directly to Jesus.
Perhaps he knew that Jesus 
would be able to see through any ruse,
and so he thought he might as well 
take a direct approach.
But with us, temptation rarely if ever
takes such an obvious form.

Think about it:
you start out in your life’s work 
with high ideals, firm principles,
and a desire to make the world a better place,
but then there comes the pay raise
or the promotion,
or the recognition,
or the power,
and all you are asked to do
is to lower your ideals just a tad,
to bend your principles just a little,
to make yourself just slightly less
than that person you set out to be
and one day you find
that there is nothing you will not do
to keep your pay or position or notoriety or power,
that your life has become 
only about you and your ambitions.

Or you and your spouse begin life together
promising to love, honor, and cherish
until you are parted by death,
but then comes routine and a bit of boredom
and distractions and other people and things
in which to invest your time,
and one day you find
that those promises you made
seem like something said by someone else,
and you no longer feel bound by your vows,
no longer feel bound
to love or honor or cherish.

Or you have a moment 
of profound certainty that God is real 
and that God’s reign is the pearl of great price 
for which you should give your all,
but then the feeling begins to fade,
and other things—
things good and worthy in themselves—
begin to assert their own claims on your life,
and in the busy hours of your day 
prayer gets crowded out,
and you tell yourself it is enough to make it
two Sundays out of four to Mass,
or you say you don’t really need 
the sacrament of reconciliation,
since you can settle your sins with God yourself,
and one day you find
that you can’t remember the last time
that you took a moment to pray,
or to receive Christ in the sacraments,
or to examine your conscience
and reckon with your sins,
and God seems like a once close friend
with whom you have lost touch.

No drama.
No devil with horns offering you
riches or power or glory
in exchange for you soul.
Just fleeting thoughts 
like water dripping on a stone,
tiny temptations that gradually
wear away your soul.
And one day you will look around
and no longer remember who you were
and what and who you once loved
and why you tried to live a life
that was about something more than yourself.

And the worst part is,
living this diminished life won’t even bother you;
it will seem natural and normal.

Lent is a call to face these temptations
and to return to ourselves,
to rediscover the convictions and desires
with which we set out on our journey,
above all our commitment
to the God we meet in Jesus Christ. 

It is for us what the offering of firstfruits were
for the ancient Israelites.
As described in the book of Deuteronomy,
this was not simply a sacrificial ritual
but the occasion to recall who they were
and who God had been for them:
“we cried to the LORD, the God of our fathers,
and he heard our cry and saw our affliction.”
It was a call to gather themselves 
together once more before the face of God
and bow down in worship and gratitude.

So too for us, 
Lent must be the occasion to recall who we are
by hearing the Word who has drawn near us,
the occasion to confess with our mouths 
that Jesus is Lord
and to believe in our hearts 
that God raised him from the dead,
and to let that Word dwell within us
so that our diminished selves 
might be enlarged.

This might sound dramatic,
but grace is typically no more dramatic 
than temptation is.
If temptation rarely takes the form 
of a horned devil blandishing enticements before us,
grace rarely takes the form 
of a shining angel grasping us by the hand.
Grace too is something that manifests itself
in the everyday events of our journey through life.
It too is like drops of water on a stone:
present in smalls acts of selflessness,
seemingly trivial gestures of love,
stolen moments of prayer,
the day-by-day ordinary life of the Christian,
the week-by-week celebration 
of Christ’s death and resurrection,
the year-by-year return to God in which
we offer small sacrifices with great love.
Rather than wearing away the true self 
that God has called us to be,
these tiny drops of grace 
transform and refresh us,
they make our souls blossom forth in beauty,
the first fruits of the harvest of God’s reign.

Let us pray that God would grant us a holy Lent
in which we turn from temptation
and bow down before the Lord who has loved us,
that the drops of grace would water
the parched land of our souls,
and that God in his mercy
would have mercy on us all.