First Sunday in Lent Year A

The First Sunday in Lent-Year A February 26, 2023 Today we mark the first Sunday in Lent. Lent is a season of 40 days before Easter, and it offers an opportunity to us for a sort of spiritual spring cleaning. We are invited to deeper self-examination, increased prayer and study of scripture, and some folks opt to take on certain practices that may help them be more aware of God’s presence in their lives or give up certain practices that they feel draw them away from the love of God and neighbor. (I have a friend who gave up fear a number of Lents ago. This year, she told me that she was going to give up negativities and snarkiness and to choose positivity instead.) In our Lenten devotion by Kate Bowler titled Bless the Lent we Actually Have, Bowler writes about how “Lent is an incredible moment for …spiritual honesty…. She invites us through spiritual honesty to “bless the days we have while longing for the future God promised when there will be no tears, no pain, no email.” This week, I’ve been reflecting on a line from our Lenten Eucharistic prayer. It’s one of the seasonal proper prefaces, a sentence or two that is unique to the liturgical season that we can insert into the Eucharistic prayer to make it more tailored for the particular season. One of the proper prefaces for Lent talks about Jesus who “was tempted in every way as we are, yet did not sin.” Even though I’ve prayed that proper preface over the last 18+ years, it has taken on new meaning for me this Lent, as I’ve continued to wrestle with how I get along with my literal, immediate neighbors in the aftermath of an encounter that has resulted in the incarceration of our dog for well over two weeks. (I’m happy to report that our dog is home with us now, so at least that part of this horrible situation is over.)i. Fortunately, I’ve been really busy lately, but in all of my free moments, y’all, I still want to utterly destroy them. And I know that is not of God or how God would have me treat them. As another parishioner suggested, I’ve prayed that God’s will will be worked in their lives (and in mine). I’ve prayed some of the more graphic psalms which invites God’s smiting of one’s enemies. Psalm 3 vs 7 has been a cherished favorite of late: “Rise up, O LORD; set me free, O my God; * surely, you will strike all my enemies across the face, you will break the teeth of the wicked.” But I am struggling with the pull between self-righteousness and judgement, constantly wrestling with my own resentments, and it is not a healthy or whole-hearted place to be. So I’ve been thinking about the ways that Jesus was tempted just as we are, yet he did not sin. In our gospel reading for today, we see the devil offering Jesus three distinct temptations which can been seen as three great questions: Whom do you trust for your nourishment? Whom do you trust to love and care for you? And whom do you trust with your service? It’s tempting to view Jesus as some sort of stoic hero, resisting the temptations through sheer force of will and divine fortitude. But that doesn’t really help us out, does it? Because even though we all like to think that we are the hero of our own stories, we know that we often come up short. And the good news for us is that Matthew’s gospel doesn’t support this heroic view of Jesus either. “Matthew’s story actually points in a quite different direction: not toward closed-fisted fortitude, but rather toward open-handed, open-hearted, humble, humbling trust.”ii Jesus is tempted as we are yet did not sin because Jesus trusts God, and he will not allow anything to erode that. (Interestingly enough, our reading from Genesis gives us a picture of what it looks like when there is lack of trust in God and the dire consequences that spring from that.) It’s important to remember today, also, what has happened in Matthew just prior to this story of Jesus’s temptation in the wilderness. Jesus has been baptized by John, the Holy Spirit descended, like a dove upon Jesus and a voice from heaven said: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” The temptations that the devil offers Jesus in the wilderness are attacks against Jesus’s baptism, against his belovedness. And I don’t know about y’all, but this feels right to me—this schism between who I have promised to be in and through my baptism and who I am when I don’t fully trust God (and am at war with my neighbors). So, this week, I invite you to join me in daily reflecting on the three questions posed to Jesus in his temptation, as a way to remind myself to put my trust in God and to not be led astray from the promises of my baptism: Whom do you trust for your nourishment? Whom do you trust to love and care for you? And whom do you trust with your service? i. Bowler writes about this on page 3. You can access the full devotional here. https://files.constantcontact.com/00993281801/dc792944-8c38-440c-9b83-9c76da7812ec.pdf?rdr=true ii. The quote and the other ideas from this paragraph and the one preceding it are from Salt Lectionary commentary: https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/trust-saltlectionary-commentary-lent-1-year-a