 |
| Rembrandt's Sketch of Jesus in Wilderness |
This weekend, many of us heard the Grand Prix cars racing through downtown St. Petersburg. In our high-speed world it’s a challenge to slow down, remember our purpose and get our priorities straight.
Last Wednesday we had our foreheads smudged with ashes and may have heard a prayer, “Remember, you are dust and to dust you will return.” Dust symbolizes nothingness. It’s commonplace. Yet God became dust in Jesus of Nazareth. And Jesus charged dust with the grandeur of God through his death/resurrection.
Lent tells us that it is time to get our priorities straight. It's a time for prayer; a time for doing without unnecessary things so the needy can have what’s necessary;and a time to reach out with a helping hand.
The word of God carries us back to the early history of ancient Israel. Deuteronomy focuses on identity, reminding the Hebrews of their roots: they were once at-risk nomads; exploited as cheap labor in Egypt; brought to a place of abundance; and now grateful to the God who saved them.
And our Christian identity? In baptism, we were branded and transformed into a “new creatures,” sons and daughters of God our Father, called to live a god-like life. That’s our identity.
Paul, in his letter, proclaimed fundamental truths: Jesus is our Lord to whom we owe our allegiance. Through faith, we have eternal life.
In the Gospel according to Luke, the devil appears as a seductive voice in the wilderness, tempting Jesus with earthly power and prestige. In some form, these are temptations that many human beings face. God’s word may be asking us how true we are to our identity as baptized Christians.
Yes, Lent is time to consider again our priorities. Leo Tolstoy can be a good resource. Many of us know of Anna Karenina and War and Peace. But Tolstoy also wrote shorter, profoundly religious novels. A Confession, for example, expresses his search for meaning and purpose.
Perhaps Tolstoy’s masterpiece was the 75-page novel The Death of Ivan Ilyich. A man on his deathbed realizes he wasted his life. In exchange for luxury and status, he sacrificed his authenticity and integrity. The result is a spiritual barrenness. Now he faces a mortality he never acknowledged, and he's terrified.
Avoiding thoughts about death, in favor of superficialities, is not reserved to nineteenth-century Russians. It's the story of everyone.
20th American writer Frederick Buechner gives us an examination:
If you had only one last message to leave to the handful of people who are most important to you, what would it be in twenty-five words or less? Of all the things you have done in your life, which is the one you would most like to undo? Which is the one that makes you happiest to remember? If this were the last day of your life, what would you do with it?
It can be depressing business, Buechner notes, “but if sackcloth and ashes are at the start of it, something like Easter may be at the end.”
As we enter the Lenten season, let us ask God for the grace to pursue single-mindedly the priority in life: eternal life in relationship with God and one another.
