First Sunday in Lent

The Wilderness

Lent 1 – 6 Mar

READINGS:
Deuteronomy 26:1-11

26When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, ²you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. ³You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, ‘Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.’ ⁴When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the Lord your God, ⁵you shall make this response before the Lord your God: ‘A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. ⁶When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labour on us, ⁷we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. ⁸The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; ⁹and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. ¹⁰So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.’ You shall set it down before the Lord your God and bow down before the Lord your God. ¹¹Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.

Romans 10: 8-13

⁸… ‘The word is near you,
   on your lips and in your heart’
(that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); ⁹because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. ¹⁰For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. ¹¹The scripture says, ‘No one who believes in him will be put to shame.’ ¹²For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. ¹³For, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

Luke 4:1-13

4Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, ²where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. ³The devil said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.’ ⁴Jesus answered him, ‘It is written, “One does not live by bread alone.” ’

5 Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. ⁶And the devil said to him, ‘To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. ⁷If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.’ ⁸Jesus answered him, ‘It is written,
“Worship the Lord your God,
   and serve only him.” ’

9 Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, ¹⁰for it is written,
“He will command his angels concerning you,
   to protect you”,
¹¹and
“On their hands they will bear you up,
   so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.” ’
¹²Jesus answered him, ‘It is said, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” ’ ¹³When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

Text from New Revised Standard Version taken from Oremus.org

Lent 1: Some thoughts

The Church of Scotland has a website that gives aids for sermon-writers for each Sunday.  They began their First Sunday in Lent commentary by saying:

On this first week in Lent with the forty days stretching out before us it might be of value to spend time setting our intentions for Lent. Intentions inspired by the themes in these passages of Scripture.

So, what are the themes of the readings?

The gospel appears at first to be relatively clear.  It is Jesus’s temptation in the wilderness.  But perhaps it is really The Wilderness that is the subject of the theme and not Jesus and his temptation. 

An exploration of the word ‘Wilderness’ as used in the Old and New Testaments is fascinating.  For the people of the Old Testament, The Wilderness helped to form them.  The years wandering in the Wilderness made them into the people they were and this they carried with them to subsequent generations.  It became a mixed experience of wild landscape, of searching for a promised land, and of encounters with God.

We have all heard that the Inuit language has so many words to describe snow.  So, too, the Hebrew language seems to have many words to describe what we call ‘wilderness’.  The people of Israel wandering in the wilderness for forty years took place in the midbar, uninhabited land where humans are nomads.  This common Hebrew word refers often to a wild field where domestic animals may be grazed and wild animals live, in contrast to cultivated land.  Another word is arabah, also translated into English as desert.  Isaiah tells us: “The wilderness [midbar] and the dry land [arabah] shall be glad, the desert [arabar] shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus.”  There are further Hebrew words that describe what we might simply call Wilderness in English, chorbah, land that lies waste and yeshimon which is land without water. 

Are these differences relevant to us today as we read about ‘The Wilderness’?  I think they are because it makes us realise the deep significance of The Wilderness to the Hebrew people and God’s response.  The wilderness is a place of intense experiences—of stark need for food and water (manna and quails), of isolation (Elijah and the still small voice), of danger and divine deliverance (Hagar and Ishmael), of renewal, of encounters with God (Moses, the burning bush, the revelation of the divine name, Mount Sinai).  There is a psychology as well as a geography of wilderness, a theology gained in the wilderness.  The Hebrews evidently knew the experience of confronting the wild. 

But what about Luke, a man from a Greek background?  Does The Wilderness plan a part in his thinking as he describes Jesus going into the wilderness.  And what about the rest of the New Testament? The New Testament is written in Greek and the word most often translated as “wilderness” is eremos (or eremia), an isolated place.  The Wilderness figures at important moments in the life of Jesus. Jesus is baptized by John and then is driven by the Spirit into the wilderness for forty days. The Devil is there, but so is the Spirit. “A great while before day, he rose and went out to a lonely place, and there he prayed” (in Mark’s version of this same reading Mark 1:35). This records a search for solitude, for self-discovery, for divine presence.

For the people of Israel in biblical time (both Old and New Testament), the wilderness was a complicated place. It was both a place of encounter with God and a place of testing, of punishment, of danger.  It was in the wilderness that God met them in cloud and fire, and it was in the wilderness that God’s law was revealed.  But it was also in the wilderness that they wandered for 40 years and they hungered and thirsted; it was in the wilderness that they succumbed to the temptations of power and comfort and worshiped a golden calf instead of the God who had rescued them.  So, The Wilderness has positive and negative characteristics for them and for us. It is in The Wilderness that our greatest vulnerabilities and needs are laid bare before God.  There is an interesting Arabic proverb that says, ‘The further you go into the desert, the closer you come to God.’  And that to me seems is a positive thing.

However, in a negative way, it is in solitude that the many inner voices of life often emerge. It is in the Wilderness that Jesus is visited by temptation. The temptations Jesus experiences involve good things, but good things that can come between God and ourselves.   In principle, there is nothing wrong with comfort food, nothing wrong with safety, and nothing wrong with power used for good.  Yet, all of these, when they become the sole focus of our lives, can lead us away from our deepest calling and relationship with God.

In the forty years of wandering in the wilderness the People of Israel were able to develop a relationship with God and this is demonstrated in the Deuteronomy reading.  This reading is the conclusion of Moses very, very long final address to the nation.  Our OT reading for the First Sunday in Lent gives clear instructions on the rituals for this once-oppressed people when they arrive in the land promised to them. The entire passage is, in fact, a liturgy for them to follow when presenting the first harvest to the Lord, even down to the words that they need to say.

Why does Moses give these detailed instructions for this liturgy?  By practising this liturgy, the people would loosen their grip on the belief that all possessions were theirs to own.  Presenting the first fruits back to the one from which they have been given was a helpful reminder that all of the earth is the Lord’s.

The liturgy also echoes the theme of remembering where they had come from when they finally arrive at the long-anticipated destination – the Promised Land. The people are called to remember the long literal journey – 40 years in the Wilderness – that they had been on.   ‘A wandering Armenian was my ancestor’ they are called upon to say in this liturgy.  To remember the affliction that was endured under harsh Egyptian captivity, and their dependence on God for a dramatic liberation.  This liturgy for arrival and settling on the land is used to demonstrate that they understood what the Lord had provided. They were called to remember God for God’s goodness and grace of liberating and guiding – even when things were challenging. 

Wilderness – positive and negative.  This reading from Deuteronomy 26 gratefully celebrates God’s deliverance of the Hebrew people.  Grace alone saved this wandering community. Against the odds, God brought the people out of captivity.  Thanksgiving was the appropriate response. The first fruits were given not to earn God’s favour, but in response to God’s blessings.

The practice of a Liturgy of Thankfulness is an outward demonstration of what one has in one’s heart.  And that is what Paul is telling the Romans, as well.  He is encouraging them to align their inner and outer faith.  Did you notice the number of times in our short passage the words ‘lips’ (outward) and ‘heart'(inner) were used?  Three times in the five verses.

And us in Lent? 

We have an opportunity in Lent to allow our inner and outer faith to become more and more aligned.  Lent becomes a time of allowing our shame and insecurities to be healed in the justifying and healing grace of God.  The negative things of our wildernesses are made positive by God’s grace.  Lent is forty days to walk closer with God.  It is forty days of trusting in God in the wilderness.  It is forty days giving us space and time to learn to imitate the Son of God.