Guilsborough & Hollowell: 17 February 2013  -  First Sunday in Lent.
 A homily rather than a sermon.  
 "Sermon, especially for spiritual edification"   2[nd]    "A tedious moralising discourse. "
Conscious of my own shortcomings. 
With Ash Wednesday behind us we are now into the 40 days of Lent, reflecting  the events described in our Gospel Reading.    Ash Wednesday reminded us also of our own mortality and that we are all moving along the same road towards the end of this life on this earth and towards eternal life in heaven.  .  Lent is the time, then, for us  to reconsider before God our lives, its purpose, our shortcomings and  It's a  time of repentance, self denial and renewal.   
Since we are often told, not least by senior clergymen, that we live in a society where instant gratification is the norm, it must be good from time to time to exercise some self-restraint.  

THINKING about the 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness, I confess that I am in two minds, however, about the biblical accounts on which Lent it is based.  The synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke all affirm that Jesus spent those 40 days  in preparation for his ministry and it seems clear that Our Lord did indeed pass a prolonged period alone in prayer and contemplation before he began to teach.  

But there are allegorical sounding touches to the story that we can't ignore. 

First those 40 days.  It may be a co-incidence but the number forty  -  associated with sensational events - seems to crop up fairly regularly in the Bible. We start with Noah and the flood when it rained, of course, for 40 days   Then Moses spent 40 days on Mount Sinai, coming back with the tablets of stone; the Hebrews wandered for 40 years before reaching the Promised land.  Elijah, I discover, spent 40 days on a mountain, this time Mount Horeb and Jonah told the inhabitants of Nineveh to mend their ways in 40 days or else.  So there seems  then a certain poetic licence about two score as a number that I can't help feeling, when it comes to  Our Lord's 40 days in the wilderness. 

 The three temptations to which he was subjected by the Devil in themselves seem to me  -  and I hope this is not too controversial  -  also to be allegorical.  Nonetheless, they illustrate three of the most common moral challenges for mankind that Jesus had to face as he prepared for his ministry. 

But why should Jesus be tempted? one might ask?   Wasn't he above all that?  The incarnation meant, however, that he had given up his divine prerogatives so as to live among us men and women and so he subjected himself to temptation and sin.  

So the overall message of this episode in the Bible is, it seems to me that we must not allow our lives to be controlled from outside [i.e. in the Gospels' story by the Devil] and there are plenty of events in life, temptations, that can threaten to do just that.  And he who pays the piper that persuades us to give way to temptation, then calls the tune in our lives.  

When the Devil says to Jesus " if you be the Son of God", he is subtly querying that fact of His divinity and, as I see it, trying to put Jesus in a position where he will feel obliged to do something sensational to prove it.  This, for you and me, is the temptation of pride  -  wanting to show off for his own advantage by for example turning stones into bread.   

The Bread itself is the representation of physical fulfilment: that instant gratification again. So this first temptation offered by the Devil to Jesus covers that as well.  

All things come to him who knows how to wait, is an old Chinese proverb.  We need to wait for God's word and try to find his way.  

Next we are on top of the mountain, the allegorical representation of the summit of worldly power and wealth.  How often have we seen, not least in recent weeks, the fulfilment of the first part of Lord Acton's famous dictum " Power tends to corrupt..."   Nurses assaulting vulnerable patients.  wholesalers adding horsemeat to the mince,  politicians inflating expenses, getting a wife to take the penalty  speeding points....

There but for the grace of God ......Well you know what I mean.  

In one way or another, I fear we are all exposed to this temptation at some time.  Jesus put it behind him knowing that he had a long hard road to travel to power, involving humiliation and death, but he found power and majesty at the end of that road. 

Finally, the third temptation, we see Jesus invited to jump off the temple to prove who he is and then be saved by angels- - a sort of celestial bungee jump.  This is, to you and me,  the temptation to court popularity, notoriety, public recognition .  

But Jesus was able to change the world without any of that   He made himself, as St Paul puts it,  " of no reputation and took on him the form of a servant .....and being found in fashion as a man became obedient unto death even death upon the cross. " 

So much for the spiritual side of that famous story of what went on in the wilderness.  I haven't touched on the difficult question, you may have noticed, of how the Gospel writers found out about it.  But then allegories are allegories. The truths behind them eternal. 

Deprivation in the desert and giving up something for Lent. 

In a recent sermon ,Mark Battison has challenged us  to think of Lent in a different way,  as a time doing something that we have not done before to carry out some aspects of Christ's teaching such as giving things of benefit to our neighbours, new ideas for helping others rather than depriving ourselves of something material, like alcohol or chocolate.  
And others can set us an example......
DT Obituaries book. 
Our duty to make the most of life  -  the greatest gift of God. 
Pass on to the young and others around us inspiration.

Lives of the great all remind us .....
		" Feel the wind behind me rather than in my face."


