Sermon Preached on March 9, 2014
Lent 1A – Matthew 4:1-11
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church (Evanston, IL)
Lent 1A – Matthew 4:1-11
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church (Evanston, IL)
On Ash Wednesday, the
liturgy for the day includes an invitation to the observance of a Holy
Lent. The invitation includes a number
of specific acts to be undertaken during this 40 day season: self-examination
and repentance; prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and reading and meditating on
God’s holy Word. Historically, this 40
day period was a time in the early Church in during which converts to the faith
were prepared for Holy Baptism, that great sacrament through which we are
adopted as God’s children and made members of Christ’s Body, the Church. The 40 days of Lent are, as Bishop Jeff Lee,
wrote in his Ash Wednesday reflection, “about the pilgrim way we all walk
together toward the waters of new life waiting for us at Easter.”[1] In other words, our entire Lenten journey is
preparation for baptism – or for those who have already been baptized,
preparation for the renewal of the baptismal covenant.
The connection between
the Lenten wilderness of 40 days and baptism is made quite clear in this
morning’s passage from Matthew’s Gospel.
“After Jesus was baptized, he was led up by the Spirit into the
wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”[2] Baptism and wilderness: for Christian living, the wilderness is
unbearable without baptism and, perhaps more significantly, without the reality
of wilderness living - wilderness
temptations - our baptism is rendered meaningless.
“The tempter came and said to Jesus, ‘If you
are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.’ But Jesus
answered, ‘It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word
that comes from the mouth of God.’”[3] In Baptism, the candidates are asked, “Do you
renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against
God?”[4]
“Then the devil took Jesus to the holy city
and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, ‘If you are the
Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels
concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will
not dash your foot against a stone.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Again it is written,
‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”[5] In Baptism, the candidates are asked, “Do you
renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?”[6]
“Again, the devil took Jesus to a very high
mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and
he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship
me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘Worship the
Lord your God, and serve only him.’”[7] In Baptism, the candidates are asked, “Do you
renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures
of God?”[8] And In the
world of some of the best arcade games of the 1970s and 1980s, our response – “I
renounce them” – might be punctuated with flashing lights and the words, “GAME
OVER!”
“After Jesus was
baptized” he was in the wilderness for “forty days and forty nights, and
afterwards he was famished” and then, as if hunger wasn’t challenge enough, the
temptations began. But through the experience
of Baptism, Jesus was ready. For in
baptism, Jesus learned the most important truth when “as he came up from the
water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God
descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said,
‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’”[9] In
baptism, Jesus learned his true identity – beloved child of God – and in the
wilderness Jesus was given the opportunity to put on this new identity – an
identity rooted in the stories of his faith and an identity rooted in the
covenant relationship between God and humanity: “’Worship the Lord your God,
and serve only him ‘ . . .and suddenly angels came and waited on him.”[10]
Forty days in the
wilderness, forty days in the season of Lent, a season in which we are being
invited to put on our new identity in Christ – beloved children of God – and to
allow that identity to seep into our very being so that when faced with
temptation – whether the temptation is for more power, more recognition, more
money, more control – so that when faced with whatever temptation comes our
way, we can turn once again to the promises made in baptism to find that sure
footing in our true identity, beloved child of God.
A few weeks ago there
was a short essay in the Christian
Century called “A Fool’s Awakening.”
Its author, Brian Doyle, described a time when he was a teenager in
which he realized he was being a fool.
When his father announced that some relatives were coming over for
dinner the next weekend, Doyle recalls:
“I shoved my chair back and whined and snarled and
complained. I believe this had something to do with some vague plans of my own
that I had of course not shared with anyone else as yet, probably because they
were half-hatched or mostly imaginary.”[11]
When Doyle’s father responded calmly,
Doyle writes, “I said something rude.” When his mother added her own thoughts
to the conversation, Doyle writes, “I said something breathtakingly
selfish.” Then, when his sister added
her two cents to the conversation, Doyle writes, “I said something cutting and
sneering and angry.”[12] And then Doyle describes the moment of
transformation:
“As I remember it was just as my mother was putting
her teacup on the table. . . just as my father put his big hands on the table
and prepared to stand up and say something calm and blunt to me and cut the
moment before it spun out of control, that I realized I was being a fool.”[13]
Now, my guess is that
if you are anything like me and if we are anything like Doyle, we have all had moments where we recognize, in
an instant, the foolishness of our ways – the wrong path we have taken, the
words we have chosen poorly, the simple act of kindness
that we allowed to go undone. Unless you
are quite blessed, I suspect we have all had at least one of those kinds of
moments. And here is what I loved
reading in Doyle’s essay:
“For a second,” he writes, “I saw who I actually was rather than who I thought I was, or
wanted to be, or wanted other people to think I was. I understood, dimly, for
an instant – I believe for the first time in my life – that I was being a fool.
I kept right on being a fool, of course. You cannot escape yourself that
quickly, not as a teenager, or later either, it turns out. Often you keep playing
a bad hand even when you know it’s a terrible hand and you should laugh and
throw down your cards and say something self-deprecating and apologize and
tiptoe into the next moment.”[14]
It is just such a moment that I imagine when I hear theologian Frederick
Buechner’s words of wisdom:
“It can be a pretty depressing
business [to begin to hear something not only of who you are but of both what
you are becoming and what you are failing to become], but if sackcloth and
ashes are at the start of it, something like Easter may be at the end.”[15]
And that, my friends, is the
journey we are embarking upon in this season of Lent. A journey of self-examination and
repentance; prayer, fasting, and
self-denial; and reading and meditating on God’s holy Word. A challenging journey to be sure. A journey that threatens to take each of us
into the heart of the wilderness
where we will, no doubt, encounter our foolish
selves. But it is a journey we do not
take alone because we carry with us the living memory of God’s words to us in
baptism: You are a beloved child of God. You are a beloved child
of God. You are a beloved child of God.
“Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior?” “Do
you put your whole trust in his grace and love?” “Do you promise to follow and
obey him as your Lord?”[16] Let us take this journey together as we prepare once
again for the Easter renewal of our baptismal vows.
[1]
The Rt. Rev. Jeffrey D. Lee, “Gritty Resurrection,” in Renew a Right Spirit
within Me: Journeying Toward Easter with All Your Heart, Soul, Strength, and
Mind, (Living Compass, 2014).
[2]
Matthew 4:1.
[3]
Matthew 4:3-4.
[4]
BCP, 302.
[5]
Matthew 4:5-7.
[6]
BCP, 302.
[7]
Matthew 4:8-10.
[8]
BCP, 302.
[9]
Matthew 3:16-17.
[10]
Matthew 4:10-11.
[11]
Brian Doyle, “A Fool’s Awakening,” Christian Century (February 19,
2014), 12.
[12]
Ibid.
[13]
Ibid.
[14]
Ibid.
[15]
Frederick Buechner, “Lent”, originally published in Whistling in the Dark,
accessed online at The Frederick Buechner Center on March 5, 2014.
[16]
BCP, 302-303.
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