Slow Down! Desert Up Ahead!
Deuteronomy 26: 4-10; Romans 10: 8-13; Luke 4: 1-13
Today is the first Sunday of the holy season of Lent. During the next six weeks we will devote special attention to the saving mysteries of our faith, especially to the supreme sacrifice that Christ Our Lord made to set us free. The next six weeks are like a musical composition. On a piece of sheet music, in the upper left-hand corner above the notes, the composer writes a word. This word tells the musician or singer what speed the music should be. If it says "presto," that means, "sing it fast." But if the composer writes the word "LENTO" it means to “slow down. Take this slowly." Our word "Lent" has the same root. It means, SLOW DOWN, and take life more slowly. Lent is like a musical composition that begins softly and slowly and builds to a crescendo. The music of Lent culminates with the great feasts of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and the joy of Easter Sunday. Lent is a special season. During these weeks, and especially on the last three days, we will join in prayers and songs that are only used once a year. We will wash feet, venerate the cross, and light a candle, using ancient rituals that are reserved exclusively for these special days.
In today’s gospel we read that after he was baptized Jesus was "led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days to be tempted by the devil.". Where else but the desert could you have such a meaningful encounter of the Holy Spirit as well as Satan, of the wild beasts as well as the holy angels? The desert was the birthplace of the People of God through the covenant between God and Abraham. The Hebrew people, who escaped from Egypt as scattered tribes, wandered through the desert, arriving in the Promised Land as one nation. It was in the desert that they received the Ten Commandments and entered into a new covenant with God. And, in the course of their history when their love and faithfulness to God grew cold, the prophets would suggest their return to the desert to rediscover their identity, their vocation and their mission as a way of reawakening their faith and strengthening their covenant relationship with God. The great prophets Elijah and John the Baptist were people of the desert: they lived in the desert, ate desert food and adopted a simple desert lifestyle. The desert is the university where God teaches His people. And so, it was the desert where Jesus came to distinguish between the voice of God, which he should follow, and the voice of Satan, which is temptation.
And just as Jesus went out into the desert, away from the busy-ness of the crowds and daily life, to be alone with his Father and to do battle with Satan, Jesus calls us to do the same. He invites us to take a few short weeks out of our daily routine and to slow down - to spend more "quality-time" with God in prayer and reflection; to reflect on the great things God has done for us as individuals, as a family, as a people, and as a community of faith; to do battle with the evil one by confronting the sin that is present in our lives. And so we need to slow down, and take a personal, honest and searching inventory of our lives. What patterns of good are there? What patterns in my life -- the obvious ones and those that are more subtle -- make me less than loving and faithful in my relationship with God and others?
This Lent, as with so many other times in our life, we enter into that desert with Jesus as our companion, example, and guide. We too face the wild-beasts which oppress us and keep us from becoming the instruments of God’s mercy. We hunger through fast and abstinence for the fulfillment of grace in our lives, which are often filled with the un-nutritious fluff of shallow happiness.
So, whether it be in the private disciplines of fasting and prayer or attendance at the quiet reflective rituals of Stations of the Cross on Friday afternoons or evenings, or our Forty Hours Devotion; whether it be in devoting time to some volunteer work in the community or here at church, or in making time to read some biblical, devotional, inspirational literature - Lent is the time for our own personal desert experience. We cannot all afford to buy a camel and head off for the desert. But we can all create a desert space in our overcrowded lives. We can set aside a place and time to be alone daily with God, a time to distance ourselves from the many noises and voices that bombard our lives every day, a time to hear God’s word, a time to rediscover who we are before God, a time to say yes to God and no to Satan as Jesus did.
The desert is God’s workshop. It’s where God gets our attention. The desert is where our true allegiance is revealed. The desert is where the sounds of silence take on distinguishing characteristics, so that the voices which compete with God for our allegiance can be distinguished for what they are – Satan’s seductive voice. The desert does that for us.
On occasion the Spirit drives us there, as it drove Jesus, so we can deal with the things that would seduce us away from God, or identify and do battle with the things that are destroying us – those things that cripple or limit our lives. God drives us into the desert for our own good because it is there, in the desert, that we come to know ourselves, our strengths and weaknesses, and our divine calling. And there, in the silence and recollection of the desert, we come to terms with ourselves as we really are. We are reconciled with the beasts and the angels in our lives and then we begin to experience peace in our lives once again.
As we begin our Lenten journey, our Gospel today reminds us that Christ entered the desert and emerged triumphant He faced everything that you and I can face, Satan and all of life’s beasts. Know that whatever the boundaries of your desert, whoever or whatever the beasts, the Spirit has driven you there as God’s beloved one, as Christ’s sister or brother, and will use the experience to draw you closer to himself while defeating the powers of Satan in your own life. You are not in the desert alone.
And so, let's slow down a little for the next several weeks. Jesus spent forty days in the desert. The same length of time is offered to us, between this day and Easter, to step back from the noise and clamoring and despair of civilization and life, and focus instead on God, to choose what is right and good and just and loving. If we take the time to look honestly at our lives, and to take note of our blessings and our shortcomings, with God's help we will be better for that effort. We will be able to remember and celebrate, with greater joy and intensity, the great things the Father has done for us through the death and resurrection of his Son.
And so . . . Welcome to Lent! Welcome to the desert!
