Good morning…and welcome to Lent! This is the first Sunday out of many (6), and one thing I like about Lent is that it sets the tone, right? There are liturgical seasons where we may be a bit unsure of what it’s about, or how to feel about it, like during Advent or even the Epiphany we have just left, but we know kind of instinctively what Lent is about, don’t we? We know how we’re supposed to feel about it. It came to me early this season, while Xavier and I were heading downtown to attend the Ash Wednesday service. As we approached the church there was this big sport car that passed us by on Market Street in a roaring of engine, as if we were the slowest car in the world, and I must confess to some uncharitable thoughts because I immediately thought: Well, this one is obviously not going to the Ash Wednesday service (in my defense, indeed he wasn’t). But that’s how we feel about Lent, right? Lent is not loud, and it isn’t hurried, and it isn’t competitive, and it isn’t tacky. Rather, we find lent in the slowing down, the attentive listening, the humility. The passage of the Gospel we have heard today, that we hear every year on the first Sunday of Lent, shows us Jesus heading to the wilderness after he has just been baptized by John and a voice came from heaven to declare: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17), and this how the Son of God decides to walk on the earth: He treads softly.
Lent isn’t about sport cars, is it? Lent is about treading softly, we know that. There are many ways to read this passage of the Gospel famously called “Jesus’s temptations in the wilderness”, and of course it raises big questions about sin, about evil, about Satan even, but if we keep our eyes on Jesus, what may stand out to us is how Jesus refuses to perform, to put on a show, to display his powers. Three times he is going to refuse to do what he is perfectly capable of doing, he is going to refuse to take possession of what he already possesses: He won’t turn the stones into bread, he won’t provoke God to his rescue, he won’t claim the kingdoms of the earth. Jesus could have done anything as the Son of God, and he decides to live this life according to humankind’s terms. In the wilderness, Jesus becomes a man of dust and dirt, the perfect Ash Wednesday pilgrim. And it’s interesting if we think about it, because we talked about that last week, didn’t we? We talked about the Transfiguration last week, and it could come as a counter example of Jesus’s resolve to live this hidden and humble life he chose among his disciples, and yet when we looked closer at the text we realized that all we needed to understand about the Transfiguration is that is wasn’t meant for show, but to comfort and encourage Jesus’s friends as they faced suffering and death. And if you want to take the time at home to re-read the Gospel, look at Jesus’ other miracles because it is the same thing: Jesus does miracles most of the time quite reluctantly and only out of compassion, out of necessity, he begs the people not to mention it. My guess is actually that Jesus would have been perfectly happy keeping away from any kind of personal accomplishments and our Creed testifies to that very clearly, as we read: He became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. What are Jesus accomplishments? Nothing! He became a man, he suffered, he died and was buried.
Well, my friends, what an entrance into Lent. What an entrance into Lent, so counter intuitive and counter cultural in our society were we are so obsessed with achievements, performance, titles, honors and building a legacy. And for us Christians, we can only acknowledge how often even our religiosity can become about our own desire to do good, to be good, to be right or relevant, to go to heaven. But this is what our Gospel tells us: To please God, to be like the Beloved Son, the only thing you need to do is to become human, fully human. To be like Jesus in the wilderness: hungry, vulnerable, ignored, because it is our quest for power and honors that drives us away from God and from our true vocation. Actually, I love it that it is when Jesus pronounces the words of his true vocation, the human vocatiob, that’s when the devil flees. Jesus says: “Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only”. Our vocation is a call to worship and service. This is Israel’s call and the Messiah’s call from the beginning: Jesus is the embodiment of the suffering servant Isaiah talked about in his prophecies.
Now let’s not get this wrong. This is certainly not a call to do nothing. Jesus was anything but passive. But what we see very clearly in this passage is that Jesus will refuse to use his powers to his own advantage. Rather, he always uses his gifts and abilities in a spirit of service, to the people’s advantage, for their healing, for their comfort, for the increase of their faith, as he did on that day of the Transfiguration when he showed his glory on the mountain. In the same way, let’s not get it wrong about suffering either. The suffering Jesus encounters isn’t self inflicted or self punishing. He assumes the suffering that always comes along with being truly human, without pretense, without faking, truly obeying God’s call to love and serve.
Now all of this may seem daunting but the thing is, all of this is good news for us. I found a meditation this week that I liked so much I wanted to share it with you today. It is called “Ash Wednesday for the already weary”. And this is what it says: “If you’re looking at the next forty days and thinking: “I don’t know if I have anything left’ you’re not alone. Some of us aren’t starting Lent from strength, we’re starting Lent from exhaustion. For some of you, the desert didn’t start today. It started with the ache you cannot quite name, with the constant anxiety, with trying to hold everything together. And now we’re asked to walk into Lent, it can feel like more. But Lent is not God adding weight to your shoulders. It is the church making space for what is already true. That you are finite, that you are not in control, that you need mercy. The wilderness is not where God proves your weakness. It is where he reminds you you were never meant to carry everything alone. Lent teaches us to fast, to make space by laying something down.” (It goes on…)
So indeed, there is a certain tone to Lent, a certain mood. We can call it austerity, privation or discipline, some may even call it (self) punishment, but what it should really be about is liberation. God is not adding weight to our shoulders but rather God is taking the weight off our shoulders. This weight we’re all carrying around each day that we call our success, our accomplishment, our happiness, even our own desire to be good and to do good. Lent allows us to walk around with our masks down, and just be honest about our finitude, our limitations and our need for help. Lent allows us to just be human in front of God. Again, we can see in our passage that all of Jesus’s temptations are about being more, doing better. These are the temptations of all human beings. But how does Jesus fight these temptations off? He just says no, no to proving himself, no to seeking approval. Three times Jesus will say no to the devil, without debating, without arguing, just leaning on the Scriptures and his trust in God. As I was re-reading this passage of Genesis we have heard this morning, I was thinking about the way Eve had been criticized throughout the ages as being this weak woman who yielded to everything evil. But as I was considering our Gospel, I started thinking to myself: Well, maybe Eve just didn’t know how to say no. Maybe she had compassion for the snake, she could not believe he was bad, maybe she didn’t trust her own reasoning, maybe she wanted to be a good, nice, accommodating girl. And maybe Adam didn’t know how to say no either, maybe he didn’t want any conflict with his wife, maybe he wanted to support her, to show himself loyal, a good man, a trustworthy husband. Who knows? But the thing is Jesus teaches us to say no and God’s Law teaches us to say no: You shall not steal, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery…It’s not meant to burden us, but to set us free. Like an enclosed garden, God’s Law puts boundaries to our quest for unlimited power, pleasure or control, a quest that leaves us alone, exhausted and empty. And so, to say no to temptation though, to obey the law, the foundation of it all is that we have to trust that God wants what’s best for us.
Indeed if we look closer at the text of Genesis, we will notices with the author Jordan Peterson, that Adam and Eve’s desire to get a hold of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is rooted in their distrust in God. They want knowledge, control, because they cannot trust God to be on their side. And that’s the temptation the serpent brings, isn’t it? The serpent implies that God withhold knowledge from the man and the woman because God does not want to them to be like God, God wants to keep them in submission, if you will. For us as well, most of our temptation comes from the anxiety (and despair) of not really believing that God is on our side and wants what’s best for us, and so we need to save and soothe ourselves by all means. But Jesus shows us that it’s only trust in God and in God’s word that can deliver us. Jesus has nothing to prove. He wants to serve God only, but notice that as he claims that, angels come to serve him. Help is available for those who trust in God. What does it mean for us during this Lent? To fight sin, we don’t have so much to torture or punish ourselves, or to do even more, actually maybe we have nothing to accomplish, maybe we just need to let go of our anxiety, to trust God a little bit more, to trust God’s love for each one of us. This is also what it means to be human: Aware of our limitations but not dismayed by them, rather acknowledging God’s power instead.