1st Sunday of Lent

We’ve seen Jesus at the Baptism in the Jordan choosing to enter into solidarity with sinful humanity; it was a core moment of His public life: You are my beloved on whom my favor rests.

Now, the temptations in the desert are temptations to move him away from that spiritual identity.

He was tempted to believe he was someone else:

• You are the one who can turn stone into bread.
• You are the one who can jump from the temple.
• You are the one who can make others bow to your power.

Jesus said: “No, no, no. I am the Beloved from God.”

I think his whole life is continually claiming that identity in the midst of everything. There are times in which he is praised, times when he is despised or rejected, but he keeps saying, “Others will leave me alone, but my Father will not leave me alone. I am the beloved Son God. I am the hope found in that identity.”

Can you be like God? The serpent had asked the First Adam in Eden;

Can you be truly human? asked the tempter of the Second Adam in the desert. But the temptation unmasked Satan.

He asked Jesus:  If you are God then dazzle me. Act like God should act.

Jesus replied, Only God makes those decisions, therefore I do nothing at your command. Jesus forfeited the 3 great powers at His disposal –miracle, mystery and authority. By resisting Satan’s temptations to override human freedom, Jesus made Himself far too easy to reject.

Christianity and Communism have many of the same ideals: equality, sharing, justice and racial harmony. Yet the Marxist pursuit of that vision had produced the worst nightmares: “We don’t know how to motivate people to show compassion; how do you get people to be good?” (Editor of Pravda) Satan’s power is external and coercive; God made Himself weak for one purpose: to let human beings choose freely for themselves what to do with Him. And this is the nature of true love. Love has its own power, the only power ultimately capable of conquering the human heart.

To put it bluntly: Jesus put God’s own reputation at risk because human freedom IS worth the cost. He, unlike His cousin –John the Baptist with his insect diet and his stern message of judgment and wrath, Jesus brought a message of grace and a banquet spread for all. The clear principle in Jesus’ life was to bring to the surface repressed sin and forgive freely acknowledged sin. Yet a lot of people prefer John’s approach – after all, the Law is clear to follow; grace is slippery, hard to get one’s mind around. Sin is concrete, visible, an easy target to pounce on. Under Law, we always can know where we rank.

Yet in word and deed Jesus proclaimed a radically new Gospel of Grace: to get clean, a person did not have to journey to Jerusalem, offer sacrifices, and undergo purification rituals. All a person had to do was follow Jesus. It’s like -the contagion of holiness overcomes the contagion of uncleanness.

Jesus, with His intimate relationship with the Father, moved the emphasis from God’s holiness (exclusive) to God’s mercy (inclusive). Instead of the message “No undesirables allowed,” He proclaimed, “In God’s Kingdom there are no undesirables.”

And He Himself …He became an undesirable; became a “dis-grace”

(Is: ‘despised & rejected’).

Jesus brought the message of mother-love to balance the father-love of the OT. Of course mercy appears in the OT as well, but it easily gets lost amid the overwhelming emphasis on judgment and law.

Jesus went out of His way to embrace the unloved and unworthy, the folks who matter not at all to the rest of society –they embarrass us, we wish they’d go away –to prove that even “nobodies” matter infinitely to God.

Jesus proved in person that God loves people not as a race or species, but as individuals. MORNING PRAYER CREED prays out how much we matter to God.

MORNING PRAYER CREED

Father, I thank you for this day.

I know, in faith, that You are delighted that I exist

and I know that the most important reality of my life

is that You love me and that You look at me, this moment, 

with such tenderness and love as no one ever could.

I know I am Your only child.

Whatever was my past, you desire to forgive me

and heal me when I want healing… I know it is forgiven.

You give me a brand new beginning this day with a future full of hope.

With You now, I spend a moment to look over what I think might be facing me today.

There are things that will be unpleasant but I know You will be there with me as my best friend, consoling, helping, healing, strengthening and guiding me.

There is absolutely nothing I have to be afraid of.

All this I know Father, because Your Son has told us so.    Amen

A B C The temptations of Christ Cf. Catholic Catechism of the Church 538-40.

The existence of the devil, enemy of God & man CCC 394f, 1707.

Interior struggle; prayer & perseverance CCC 409, 2015, 2340, 2725.

Deliver us from evil 2850-54. & lead us not into temptation CCC 2846-49.