Jesus "fasted for forty days and forty nights." Imagine!
Our Lenten journey from ashes to Easter has begun. Wednesday, we heard, “Remember, you are dust and to dust you will return.” Human beings are nothing in themselves. But the sign of the cross on our forehead symbolized that Jesus Christ has redeemed our “dust”; we have become like God.
Lent is a forty-day retreat to ask again: what are our priorities. Yes, a time to follow Jesus into the wilderness, to better know our ultimate purpose in life, to replenish the gifts of the Spirit within us: wisdom, intelligence, courage, compassion, good judgment, and wonder and awe to worship the great God of this universe.
Lent is a time to recall how the Hebrews of old saw the desert: not only as an abode of wild beasts but a place where a person encountered God and where God encountered the person.
So, what are we bringing into the wilderness.
Maybe we feel a dissatisfaction. Things are OK, but what does it all mean? Let this be the season to focus on doing the right things.
Maybe you’re facing new challenges, an especially difficult time. Maybe there’s a new development: a wedding, the birth of a child; a first year at a new place. Maybe we're confronting the “tempter.” We have to make some tough decisions.
Listen to Jesus’s response in the wilderness and choose a God-centered life, of service instead of power.
Lent is a time to look at our options, to ask who really am I, where am I going and what's my true purpose. It's a time to reflect on what we want and why God gave us life.
The Spirit leads us to walk with Jesus, our companion through our wilderness; and to let his Spirit of compassion and his light of wisdom subdue the “tempter” as we strive to be the best version of ourselves. Lent challenges us to have a change of heart, to live in a better relationship with God and one another.
The word of God today carries us back to a man, a woman and a snake. Hmmm, will someone try to rewrite those nouns?
Read carefully. The author explains through a story how evil entered the world.
In the beginning, the Book of Genesis says, God fashioned a magnificent universe and created man and woman to enjoy it. They walked with God; they had friendship with God and friendship with one another.
It's a symbolic story. There's the tree of life. But there's another tree, with knowledge of good and evil, a tree symbolizing divine status.
Enter the cunning snake. It set people against one another and against God. The man and woman wanted divine status, they ate the “forbidden fruit” and lost their friendship with God, they fell from grace.
Evil intruded. And ever since, though we are intrinsically good but we have a tendency to choose evil. How else explain appalling violence century after century. It is certainly not the magnificent universe God wants us to enjoy.
Since the fall from grace, human beings have cried out for God’s healing power. And then, God became one of us in Jesus so we could experience God's friendship anew.
The question is whether we see God as our friend, as our walking companion.
Paul in his letter to the Christian community at Rome says very simply that, just as we fell from God's grace or friendship through the first Adam, so now through the second Adam, the crucified and risen Christ, we have God's life or friendship again.
Paul may be asking us whether we are living a godlike life, a life of virtue as a friend of God should.
In the Gospel, Jesus is tempted.
Would Jesus simply satisfy his physical hunger at the expense of his purpose in life? No. His food is to do the will of his heavenly Father.
Would he work wonders so people would puff up his ego? No. Would he seek power so that people would kowtow to him? No. Jesus refuses to worship anyone except God. He will not make a god out of material goods, celebrity status or political power. He will only seek to do the will of his heavenly Father.
And then "angels came and ministered to him."
Lent reminds us to ask God for grace. It's a time for prayer; a time to do without unnecessary things so that the needy can have necessary things; a time to reach out through volunteer service or charitable giving.
Maybe we are pursuing some things at the expense of what truly matters: our relationships with God and one another. For centuries, Lent has focused on three disciplines: prayer, fasting, almsgiving. Re-discover and re-treat yourself to these age-old disciplines. Draw nearer to God, and let God draw nearer to us.
