The First Sunday of Lent

St Peter’s Quarrendon – The First Sunday of Lent 2010

Deuteronomy 26.1-11

Psalm 91.1, 2, 9-end [91.1-11]

Romans 10.8b-13

Luke 4.1-13

There is a rather arty advert on the television, the product of which completely escapes me. Perhaps it is poor advertising, but the reason that I recall this advert now is that its first line has stuck in my mind. It stuck in my mind because of the volumes it speaks most especially as we enter our Lenten observance.

It goes something like:

‘It is not what life brings to us that makes us who we are, but what we bring to life’

At first it sounds a little corny, and not unlike so many slick advertising truisms that assault our senses almost every moment that the television is turned on in our homes. But listen to it again:

‘It is not what life brings to us that makes us who we are, but what we bring to life’

The fact is, it could be a strap line or a motto for the perfect Lent. The first half of the sentence is referring to opportunity and luck as may befall us, and which improves our lot in life. It is referring to the amassing of possessions and wealth, or of status and power. Those are things that life can give us.

The second half the sentence reverses it completely, and talks of what we can bring to life, in either sense. It refers, I think, to the quality of who we are, the attitude that we take in living our lives through good and bad. It refers to attitude, to state of mind. It demands that we take life and live it, not hide in a corner and weep when tough times come calling as they inevitably do. It is directing us to think about what we add to the world, what we breathe life into.

Our Gospel reading tells us that tough times don’t just come calling for us, but also for Jesus. Our Gospel reading also reminds us of something that is of profound importance, although it something that perhaps we take for granted: that Jesus was fully human.

Think about that for a moment.

This man, the central figure of our faith, was fully human. Let us not forget, that we are talking about God the Son, a person of the Godhead – so Jesus was also fully divine. It would take me the rest of my life to find ways of explaining that simple but overwhelming truth – but in the one man, we have God and human.

Today sees the humanity of Jesus brought to the fore. We have the account of the Temptations in the wilderness, this exchange between Jesus and the devil, of good and evil. And so we have a sign of how much Jesus was human, subject to the same anxieties and upsets as we all suffer. We see him tempted in this account; we read of his utter despair and fear in the garden of Gethsemane, his anger and indignation upon seeing the money-changers in the Temple, and also his distress and grief at the death of his friend Lazarus. These are all emotions that make us human. They are all emotions that betray a weakness or a shortage of faith. They are pure emotions and can’t be feigned. They are uniquely human.

Again, it is easy to take this for granted, more especially because we are all long-standing Christians for whom these stories are imprinted on the canvas of our faith. They are taken as read, as normal. Whilst our account today sees Jesus resist temptation, we must not forget the vulnerable position that he found himself in – a vulnerability that in the person of his Son, God exposed himself to. Let us not forget the risks associated with being out of the relative security of town and villages – I refer, of course, to the account of the Good Samaritan. In the examples I gave a moment ago, we have to accept that God allows himself to become angry, grieved, afraid, or tempted. There can be no greater gift of grace than the Incarnation, or God made Flesh – for God to expose himself to the frailties and potential failings that we all experience. The conclusion of this gift of the Incarnation is seen in a few short weeks, when God is nailed to that brutal tree unto death. Only in his true humanity can Jesus be murdered, feel the pain and anguish of every nail and every cut of the whip.

If we focus on the temptations for a moment, we can see that the ones in the Gospel reading today cover just about all of the ways that we too can be tempted. We have the temptation of the bread – a temptation of the appetites, of material wealth, or acquisition. We have the temptation of the Kingdom – a temptation of earthly power and authority, of being the big fish in the pond! We also have the temptation of the fall from the Temple – a temptation towards immortality, of un-touch-ability, or resisting pain and injury. There is no temptation that we as people in our generation can experience that would not fall under one of those headings. The devil is a wily one – he chose his plans well. The devil also recognised the humanity of Jesus, as only in seeing that did he think he could tempt him.

In order to make sense of all of this, in such a way that makes sense to us, we must look back to the message contained in the Ash Wednesday Gospel reading. It spoke of those who pray, fast or give money publically; who make their gestures in such a way as provides food for the eyes of others. The altruism is lost for those people, as they do what they do for acclaim and for prestige. Yes, there is always a selfish element to all of those things, as none of us are divine, but the message is more to do with conditioning the intention.

So we return to that advert from the TV – and the element of that statement that talk about what we bring to life, is one that tells of intention.

We have all heard that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and if I had a belief in a subterranean fiery pit, I might agree with you, but the intention to which we refer today is the one that goes together with an action – not in the absence of one as the saying suggests!

In order for us to move closer to the qualities of Jesus Christ, we must accept our humanity, and all that it entails. We can find courage that our humanity is shared with Jesus who was as subject to its weaknesses as we are. Today’s account from Luke demonstrates that with proper intention, human weakness needn’t become human failure. The Ash Wednesday gospel also reminds that intention converts human piety into human holiness. In essence, we must do what we do as Christians for the right reasons to the best of our abilities – by the help of God. Yes, we will succumb to temptation; yes, we might be lulled into the trap of vanity in our religious outpourings; yes, we might plain and simple get it wrong. To do all these things with wrong intent renders them from mistakes to offenses. To do these things with right intent converts them from the inevitable mistakes that they are to more the status of stumbling block along the way.