In celebrating the first Sunday of Lent
we hear each year the story
of Jesus’ temptation in the desert.
The Gospel of Mark’s account, however,
which we have just heard,
seems quite brief and spare
in comparison with the versions
we find in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew.
It makes no mention of Jesus fasting,
or of the great hunger he felt at the end of forty days,
or of the dramatic threefold temptation by which
the devil seeks to exploit his hunger.
It may strike us as lacking something
by comparison with the accounts
found in the other gospels,
but I believe its stark simplicity
has at least two advantages.
we hear each year the story
of Jesus’ temptation in the desert.
The Gospel of Mark’s account, however,
which we have just heard,
seems quite brief and spare
in comparison with the versions
we find in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew.
It makes no mention of Jesus fasting,
or of the great hunger he felt at the end of forty days,
or of the dramatic threefold temptation by which
the devil seeks to exploit his hunger.
It may strike us as lacking something
by comparison with the accounts
found in the other gospels,
but I believe its stark simplicity
has at least two advantages.
First, its spareness is both
evocative and provocative.
Phrases like “tempted by Satan”
or “he was among the wild beasts”
or “the angels ministered to him”
describe little but suggest much,
and they provoke us to ponder
what they might mean.
How was he tempted?
What were those wild beast?
What could it mean to be
ministered to by angels?
These words provoke the imagination,
because they have so much space in them
that the imagination might fill.
And as our imaginations fill in the story,
drawing upon our own experience,
we become a part of it:
our story merges with Jesus’ story.
The temptations of Jesus become
my temptations:
my compulsive and chaotic hungers,
my overweening pride and ambition,
my desire for admiration and control.
The wild beasts around Jesus become
the challenges and perils that I face:
my inability to do the good that I know I should do,
my discouragement in the face of disappointed hopes,
my struggles with misunderstanding, conflict, and rejection.
The ministrations of the angels become
my experience of the many and varied ways
in which God’s fills me with his grace:
friends and family who continually
support me in my struggles,
strangers who speak to me
just the right word at just the right moment,
the Church and her sacraments,
in which and through which
I have fellowship with Jesus himself.
The evocative and provocative simplicity
of Mark’s account of Jesus’ sojourn in the desert
suggests that what Lent invites us to do
is to join our stories to the story of Jesus;
to let the story of his journey
from cross to resurrection
envelop our stories,
to let Jesus be the Ark in which we make
our forty-day journey,
so that our weakness might become strength,
our struggle might become victory,
our dying might become living.
Though Mark’s story of Jesus’ temptation
invites us to enter imaginatively into it,
and through it into the story
of Jesus’s cross and resurrection,
it also has the advantage of reminding us
that we are not the heroes of the story.
God is.
The story’s silence
on what Jesus does and says in the wilderness
reminds us that what we do
through our prayer, fasting, and almsgiving
is not really what Lent is about.
Lent is about what God does for us.
If Mark’s story included
Jesus’ extraordinary feat
of fasting for forty days,
or his oh-so-clever responses
to the devil’s temptations,
then the invitation to enter into the story
might itself become a temptation:
the temptation to imagine that our fasting
and our responses to temptation
are what Lent is all about.
But Mark’s story of Jesus in the desert
focuses us instead on the action of God:
the way God shelters us and provides for us,
and through our Lenten discipline
makes us partakers
in the victory of Jesus,
who, as St. Peter says,
“suffered for sins once,
the righteous for the sake
of the unrighteous,
that he might lead you to God.”
The early Christian theologian Irenaeus
wrote that God created human beings
not because he needed us
to do something for him
that he could not do for himself,
but because he wanted
to bestow on us his blessings;
he calls us to serve him
not because he needs our service
but because by becoming servants
of so glorious a master
we come to share in his glory.
The disciplines of Lent are not
something we offer to God
but rather something God offers to us.
They are a chance to turn our focus
away from ourselves
and toward God,
away from what we can to
and toward what God can do.
something we offer to God
but rather something God offers to us.
They are a chance to turn our focus
away from ourselves
and toward God,
away from what we can to
and toward what God can do.
So let us enter with Christ
into the Lenten wilderness;
let us confront temptation and peril
with him to protect us
and his angels to minister
to us in our need.
Let us pray and fast and give alms,
confident that God, who is merciful,
will have mercy on us all.
into the Lenten wilderness;
let us confront temptation and peril
with him to protect us
and his angels to minister
to us in our need.
Let us pray and fast and give alms,
confident that God, who is merciful,
will have mercy on us all.
