First Sunday in Lent-The Rev Melanie Lemburg
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.”[i]
[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
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.)
Fortunately, I’ve been really busy
lately, but in all of my free moments, y’all, I 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.”[i]
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]
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
Comments
Post a Comment