Lent 1C
In the name of God.
Amen.
On the night before I was ordained a priest, my family had
gathered from all around the country.
People had come from Louisiana, and Mississippi, and Texas, and
Michigan, and lots of other far-flung places.
We were gathered in the hotel where they were all staying, near where
the ordination would be. We had
basically taken over this hotel, and turned the lobby, with its fireplace and
ample seating, into a sort of temporary living room. People were laughing and reconnecting and
telling stories.
Among the crowd of people that were gathered there were my
twin nephews. At the time they were just
16 months old. They were born very
prematurely, so they were even smaller and slower to develop than your typical
16-month old might be, but they were just beginning to gain some independence
and learn about what boundaries would be set for them – and how they might try to push those boundaries.
Over on the side of the hotel lobby, there was a set of
stairs that led to more guest rooms. And
these stairs were an impossible-to-ignore temptation for those early walkers. As soon as the family sat down, the twins
were drawn, as if by design to begin climbing them. They didn’t make it up more than one or two
steps before the adults in the room intervened.
But even though that boundary had been set, the temptation remained.
Gaines, the smaller of the twins, has always been a little
more willing than his brother to try to push through boundaries. He’s was always a little more adventurous. And even at that young age, that proclivity
was already on full view. After the
boundary had been set – “don’t climb the stairs” – Gaines still tried to see
what he might be able to get away with.
He’d sneak over to the stairs. A
couple of people were sitting on them – about two steps up before a landing
where the staircase turned. Because
people were right there, he could get away with getting up to the landing. But when he thought no one was looking, he’d
step up onto the first step beyond the landing, and slyly look back over his
shoulder, grinning, to see if anyone had noticed. His parents were busy socializing with
everyone, but my father (his grandfather) never missed a beat. From up on that forbidden third step he’d
hear my dad cautiously chime in, “Don’t climb the stairs…” And he’d hop right back to the landing
giggling at almost having beaten the rules.
Of course, for a toddler, this was a fantastic game: what
could he get away with? How far could he
go? It went on and on for probably a half-hour. Before long, the whole family was in on the
game, letting him make it an extra step or two, before calling him back to
safety and exploding in laughter.
As young children under direct supervision by a room full of
loving family members, the stakes of that temptation were pretty low. But it was a glimpse into what we all face,
from time to time throughout our lives.
There’s a line in the Eucharistic Prayer in Rite I that
speaks of Jesus as one “who was in every way tempted as we are, yet did not sin.”
And that’s part of what we commemorate each Lent – the temptations of
Christ. This season of 40 days during
which Jesus prepared himself for ministry.
It is a window into our own preparations for reengaging with God in new
and renewed ways in our own ministries, come Easter. And in that preparation Jesus faced many
temptations. In approaching the work of
God, we are spiritually vulnerable and temptations can come easily.
For Jesus, the temptation was to abuse power. In his weakness, to seize power. To feed his own personal hunger in his
fast. To challenge God, even in the
midst of his own challenges.
But for most of us, the temptations we face in Lent are
different. We think of them in terms of
keeping our Lenten disciplines – having just one glass of wine or one piece of
chocolate when we said we wouldn’t, or skipping our special, set-aside time of
prayer or study just once, and sleeping in instead. For most of us, the greatest temptation – not
just in Lent, but in our lives as Christians – is thinking we’re alone. Our greatest temptation is thinking that –
when we face challenges and tests and temptations without the benefit of some
obvious safety net – that greatest temptation is to think that there’s no one
to help. No one who understands. No community around us. No “great cloud of witnesses” gone before who
stand with us, whispering their wisdom and pointing the way.
Part of the gift of the temptation of Jesus is the reminder
that we’re not alone. We worship a
Christ who has been there, and who has made it out on the other side.
The gospel lesson today ends with a rather ominous line. It says, “when the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.” Until an opportune time. Even after passing the tests – even after surviving the temptations, the tempter wasn’t done with him yet. Getting past the trials of life doesn’t mean they’re entirely in the past. Challenges come and go, and come and go, and come and go… In no particular order.
But even in the midst of all that, we’re not alone. We are supported and loved and guided by
communities of faith, communities of friends, communities of ancestors still
leading us down the right path. We are
supported by a Creator who loves us, even when we fall. We’re supported by a Christ who has been
there, “in every way as we are”.
So we may fall. We
probably will at one point or another.
It may even hurt. (It probably
will at one point or another…) But we are
never entirely alone. No matter how far we fall, we will never fall beyond the reach of
love. Amen.
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