It is all too easy to see
the forty days of Lent, the season of preparation for our celebration of Our
Lord’s Passion, Death and Resurrection as a time of sadness and misery. Too
often it is seen in entirely negative terms: we focus on what we are giving up.
Now the practice of abstaining from bodily pleasures is a good and ancient one,
not in and of itself, it is not some sort of holy diet, but rather we turn away
from something we enjoy so that we may focus upon something else. The other
practices of Lent: prayer and almsgiving are there to focus our minds upon God
and other people, so that we may enter the desert of repentance with joy,
thinking of the needs of others and growing closer to the God who loves us and
longs for our healing, our repentance.
In this morning’s first reading we see a covenant between God
and humanity, a sign of God’s love for us, and a promise of reconciliation
between God and the world which underlies what Jesus does for us, it allows us
to have hope, to see things in an entirely positive way, and to see behind what
we do, that it is a means, a means to an end, namely our sanctification, rather
than an end in itself. In our second reading from the first letter of Peter, he
draws the link between Noah’s ark, which saves people through water, and
baptism, which is prefigured in it. Lent is a season of preparation for
baptism, so that we can die with Christ and be raised like him and with him to
new life in him. For those of us who have been baptised it is good to have a
chance to spend the time in Lent praying, drawing closer to the God who loves
us, and living out our faith in our lives – we can all do better, especially
when we try, and try together, supporting each other, so that we might grow in
holiness as the people of God.
When St Antony was praying in his cell, a voice
spoke to him, saying ‘Antony, you have not yet come to the measure of the
tanner who is in Alexandria.’ When he heard this, the old man arose and took
his stick and hurried to the city. When he had found the tanner .... he said to
him, ‘Tell me about your work, for today I have left the desert and come here
to see you.’
He replied, ‘I am not aware
that I have done anything good. When I get up in the morning, before I sit down
to work, I say that the whole of the city, small and great, will go into the
Kingdom of God because of their good deeds while I will go into eternal
punishment because of my evil deeds. Every evening I repeat the same words and
believe them in my heart.’
When St Antony heard this he
said, ‘My son, you sit in your own house and work well, and you have the peace
of the Kingdom of God; but I spend all my time in solitude with no distractions,
and I have not come near to the measure of such words.’
It is a very human failure,
for far too often we make things far too complicated when all we need to do is
to keep things simple. In the story from the Desert Fathers, which we have just
heard, St Antony, the founder of monasticism, a great and a holy man, is put to
shame by a man who spends his days treating animal skins. The key to it all is
the tanner’s humility, his complete absence of pride, and his complete and
utter trust in God – his reliance upon him alone.
In this morning’s Gospel we
see the beginning of Our Lord’s public ministry – he is baptised by John in the
River Jordan before immediately going
into the desert for forty days. He goes to be alone with God, to pray and to
fast, to prepare himself for the public ministry of the Proclamation of the Good
News, the Gospel.
During this he is tempted by
the devil: he faces temptation just like every human being, but unlike us, he
resists. The devil tempts him to turn stones into bread. It is understandable –
he is hungry, but it is a temptation to be relevant,
which the church seems to have given into completely: unless we what we are and
what we do and say is relevant to people, they will ignore us.
There is the temptation to
have power, symbolised by worshipping the devil. It leads to the misuse of
power. The church stands condemned for the mistakes of the past, but in
recognising this there is the possibility of a more humble church in the future
– a church reliant upon God and not on the exercise of power.
There is the temptation to put
God to the test – to be spectacular and self-seeking. Whenever we
say ‘look at me’ we’re not saying ‘look at God’.
Jesus resists these
temptations because he is humble, because he has faith, and because he trusts
in God. It certainly isn’t easy, but it is possible. It’s far easier when we do
this together, as a community, which is why Lent matters for all of us. It’s a
chance to become more obedient, and through that obedience to discover true
freedom in God. It’s an obedience which is made manifest on the Cross – in laying
down his life Jesus can give new life to the whole world. He isn’t spectacular
– he dies like a common criminal. He has no power, he does not try to be
relevant, he is loving and obedient and that is good enough.
It was enough for him, and it
should be for us. As Christians we have Scripture and the teaching of the
Church, filled with his Spirit, to guide us. We can use this time of prayer and
fasting to deepen our faith, our trust, our understanding, and our obedience,
to become more like Jesus, fed by his word and sacraments – to become more
humble, more loving, living lives of service of God and each other. It leads to Jesus’ proclamation of the
kingdom: ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent,
and believe in the good news.’ Words as true now as then, which the world still
longs to hear, and which we need to live out in our lives, so that the world
may believe and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty,
glory dominion and power, now and forever
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