First Sunday in Lent

February 17                            NOTES FOR REFLECTION             First Sunday in Lent

Texts: Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Romans 10:8b-13; Luke 4:13

Theme: Plenty of safe options to choose from on this First Sunday in Lent: "The Temptations in the Desert"; "Resisting Temptation": or some variation on those.  But for something a little more adventurous I'm going for "Alone Together", which seems to me to sum up the heart of the human condition.  The tension between our individual needs, desires, and personalities and our relationship with others and with God.  Love is about resolving that tension in a life-enhancing way; sin, the opposite of love, is about giving in to it.

Introduction.  Our two Lessons show what happens when we give in to it, but in opposite ways.  The first Lesson is about our propensity to forget God when things are going well for us.  When we are in a wilderness – when we finally recognise that we cannot solve our own problems – we are much more likely to recognise our need for God and call out to him.  But when our struggles are over (for the time being) – when we have at least a taste of life in the Promised Land – we are more inclined to congratulate ourselves on how well we are doing, or have done: "I've worked hard for everything I've got, and now I'm going to enjoy the fruits of my labour."  We forget who created the land, sent the rain, caused the crop to grow, and gave us the health and strength to play our part.   In the second Lesson we see the opposite side of the coin: the people St Paul is talking about (of whom he was formerly a prime example) are those who work very hard that their relationship with God, so hard, in fact, that they believe it all depends on them.  They leave no room for grace: theirs is a contractual view of relationship, believing that they must fulfil their side of the contract if they expect God to fulfil his.  In our gospel reading the essential issue is highlighted with great clarity: the choice is not between that which is inherently good and that which is inherently evil.  The choice is God's way or ours.

Background.  As I wrote that last sentence one of St Augustine's more provocative aphorisms suddenly came to mind: "Love God and please yourself."  At first blush, what the great saint seems to be advocating is a bizarre mixture of personal piety and hedonism!  So long as I love God, I can do whatever I want to do.  Well, in a sense he was saying that.  He was saying that if we truly love God, what we will want to do is please him, and we will not want to do anything that would displease him.  Which is a gentler way of saying that our journey of faith (of spiritual growth) is a journey of love, a journey of seeking more and more to bring our will into unity with the Divine Will.

We're talking attitude not actions here.  Classically we focus on "sins" rather than a sinful nature or attitude.  We concentrate, in other words, on the symptoms rather than the illness.  If I am confessing my sins (or examining my conscience) I might recall the occasion on which I snapped at one of my colleagues; I might recall the words I used, and the circumstances in which I used them.  I might sincerely regret using them, and even succeed in not seeking to justify them by reminding myself of what my colleague did or said.  I might sincerely ask God to forgive me for that incident.  All that is well and good.  But will I then reflect on what this one incident shows about my general attitude to others?  Will I acknowledge that this was yet another example of my propensity to push my own views, my own opinions, my own need to win the argument, my own need to puff myself up by deflating the other person?  In short, will I acknowledge my fundamental lack of love for others?

A useful exercise here might be to have a look at the penitential provisions in our three liturgies.  In the first (page 407) our focus is very much on our acts and omissions: "we call to mind our sins", and we confess that "we have sinned in the wrong we have done and in the good we have not done".

Our second liturgy offers three forms, and it's interesting to compare them (page 458-9).  The first is very much in line with the approach in the first liturgy: "I will confess my sins to the Lord, I will not conceal my wrongdoings."  However, the second and third forms are tending away from the particular to the general, although still, perhaps, focussing on the effect of our acts and omissions rather than on our attitude that leads us to commit them.  Perhaps the most interesting line here is in form 2: "Giver of life, we too often choose death."  That perhaps takes us closer to the idea of choice between God's way and ours, of which the battle of wits between Jesus and the devil in the wilderness is the perfect illustration.

The third liturgy is at least an attempt to go deeper (page 478): "We come seeking forgiveness for all we have failed to be and do as members of Christ's body."  The reference to being as well as doing is helpful, as is setting this in the context of our membership of Christ's body.  It reminds us that "sin" is a spiritual concept, and is only to be understood in the context of our relationship with God.  It is not simply another name for ethical propriety, much less for illegality.

I am always intrigued by the language used in the media when a public figure is accused of something.  The denial usually takes the form of "I have done nothing wrong".  It seems to be generally accepted on all sides that what this means is "I have not broken the law".  When did you last hear the interviewer ask as a follow-up question: "Accepting that you may not have broken the law, have you acted unethically?"  [Incidentally, why does "unethically" sound more polite than "Immorally"?]  And then there is a follow-up question that is NEVER EVER asked: "Have you acted sinfully?"

And here's a classic illustration of all this that is once again in the news: the supposed distinction between tax evasion and tax avoidance.  Lawyers, accountants, business people. Journalists and just about everyone else who enter public debate on this issue seem to agree that the two things are quite different.  Tax evasion is illegal: in essence, it is a failure to pay tax by the person liable under law to pay it.  Tax avoidance is legal: in essence, it is conducting one's business in a way that will incur the least possible liability for tax within the law.  But looked at from a spiritual point of view, is there any difference?  In each case, the individual taxpayer is putting his or her own personal interest ahead of the interests of others.  The taxpayer is seeking to reduce his or her contribution to the shared costs of our health services, our educational services, and all the other services that we provide together through our taxes.  Either those services have to be reduced, or others have to pay more because we are paying less.  Is that God's way or our way?

Deuteronomy.  This passage, like most of the Book of Deuteronomy, is concerned with the temptation the people will face in the Promised Land to forget the Lord their God.  They are entering upon a new way of life.  They will not know how to grow their own stuff or manage their own land.  One temptation will be to follow local custom, including praying to (or seeking to appease) the local fertility gods.  So this passage seeks to hammer home the message: the land is a gift to you from the Lord God.  God is the one who gives life and causes your crops to grow.  Not only that: you are in this land only because the Lord God rescued you from slavery in Egypt and brought you through the desert.  Everything you will have and enjoy is from the Lord your God, and don't you forget it!  And so rituals are prescribed, primarily as aids to their memories of the goodness of the Lord their God.

Taking It Personally.

·        If you have a Prayer Book handy, have a look at the Prayers of Great Thanksgiving in our three liturgies.  Notice how much is in the form of historical recital.  To recall God's past goodness is to build our faith (trust) in God.  What are you most thankful to God for at this time?

·        Give thanks for this land in which we live.  In what sense do you feel it has been given to us as an inheritance by the Lord our God?

·        Give thanks for the home in which you live.  In what sense do you experience that as a gift from God?

·        If you are a gardener, give thanks for the "first-fruits" of each crop you grow (and the first blooms from your flowers!).

·        Reflect on the offerings you make to your local church.  Do you consider making them an act of worship, one way in which you express your thanks to the Lord your God, or simply a practical matter of meeting your share of common expenses?  Does this reading have anything to say to you on this issue?

Romans.  This is an extract from a long passage (chapters 9-11) in which St Paul turns his attention to the particular "status" of his own people.  Although his calling is to be an apostle to the Gentiles, he cannot be indifferent to the "fate" of the Jews.  Behind all this are two incontrovertible facts of St Paul's own experience.  First, he has found that Gentiles are far more open to the Gospel than Jews; but how can this be given that they are God's own people and should therefore be open to God's own plan for salvation?  And secondly, of course, is St Paul's own life story.  If someone as dedicated to the Jewish religious practice as he was can nevertheless accept the Gospel, why cannot his compatriots see it?  Apathy and forgetfulness are not the problem here: these people are "zealous for God".  So what is the problem?  "Their zeal is not based on knowledge".  They assume that righteousness comes from their own efforts to obey the Law; they have not grasped that in Christ God offers us his own righteousness.  They struggle and strive as if God is far away – in Christian terms as if we have to reach up to heaven or down to the realm of the dead – to find God.  They do not yet know that through Christ God has come to us; indeed, he is not just with us but within us.  We have only to accept that God has raised Jesus from the dead, and give voice to that conviction, and salvation is ours.  The first is an issue of belief: do we believe in the fact of the Resurrection.  The second is one of submission to Christ's authority over our lives (do we accept him as "Lord")?

Taking It Personally.

·        Are you more comfortable in speaking of Christ as "Jesus" or as "Lord"?  Why?

·        In what sense has Jesus authority over your life?

·        Do you truly believe in the Resurrection?

·        Can you freely confess (tell others) that Jesus is Lord?

·        Do you consciously try to "please God"?  Why?

Luke.  All three synoptic gospels record that Jesus was tempted by the devil in the wilderness immediately after his baptism  Mark's account is typically brief; Matthew's is similar to Luke's, although he has a different order of temptations.  John has no such record in his gospel.  The temptations are carefully chosen to strike at our very basic needs as human beings.  Most basic is our need for physical sustenance.  When we are hungry we can think of nothing else but food.  Allied to this is our need for physical safety and security, and that is part of the power of the second temptation (Matthew's order) or the third temptation (Luke's order).  But it is also pitched at another need, for approval, admiration or affirmation.  Surely the idea is not to do a base jump in absolute privacy, just so that Jesus can prove to himself that God will save him from the consequences of breaking the law of gravity?  The idea is to wow the crowds of onlookers who would marvel at such a leap off the highest point of the temple.  And our third need is for some sort of power or control in our lives.  We may not want the world domination on offer here, but every now and again we do like to feel that we are being listened to, that we have a contribution to make: we are not a nobody.  We like to feel we can make a difference.

Taking It Personally.

·        Which of these temptations do you find the most tempting?

·        Are any of them an invitation to do something that is inherently evil?

·        Do you agree that the real "contest" is between God's way and another way?

·        Which basic human need is the most likely to lead you astray?

·        Is your will more aligned with God's now than it was, say, ten years ago?