The Gift of God - 3rd Sunday of Lent Year A

The Gift of God – 3^rd Sunday of Lent Year A

The first rule of being a new husband is never to ask this question:  “Dear, what do you want for Christmas/birthday/anniversary/Valentine’s Day?”  Invariably, the answer to the question will be, “Oh, you don’t have to get me anything.”  It takes years of experience to realize that wives really are usually sincere in their answer – they really don’t want anything.  What they really want is someone.  They want to be with their beloved, for that time in the presence of the one they love is truly greater than any material object a husband can buy for his wife.  The readings for today lead us to discover the gift of God that satisfies all our desires.

In the Hebrew Scriptures the gift of God refers to the Law God gave to Moses and the people of Israel at Sinai.  The Law represented for them the greatest love God could express – His will and plan for them in being His chosen people, His choice bride.  All the other gifts God gives to His people in the desert – manna, water (as in the first reading today) – are all intrinsically connected to the fundamental gift of God that is the Law.  The Law, as well as manna and water, represent God’s presence among His people.  These objects are for the people of Israel signs of God’s love for them, and the great liturgical feasts of Judaism celebrate the gift of God and its corresponding symbols – Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles being the most prominent.

However, the people longed for more, a longing that grew into a hope for the presence of God to be manifest not in an object but in a person, the Messiah of God.  Paul expresses this hope in the second reading, a hope that comes to be fulfilled in the person of Jesus the Lord.  Torah as the gift of God obliged the people to love their neighbor, and yet Jesus shows us by example the love to which we are called by God through the giving of one’s life for the sake of others.  Though chosen by God, we made ourselves enemies of God through sin.  While human love expresses itself quite naturally to those who like us and are likable in our eyes, it is rare to be found in us for those who are our enemies.  And yet God shows His loving kindness to His enemies in the person of Jesus in dying for us. 

Coming to understand the identity of Jesus as the presence of God on earth is the challenge presented to the Samaritan woman in the Gospel text for today.  Her immediate response to Jesus request for water is visceral and natural – How can a Jew ask a Samaritan for water, for these two groups are longstanding enemies.  And yet Jesus continues the conversation and makes a startling revelation – “If you knew the gift of God and who is asking you for a drink you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”  The gift of God is not a something, but a someone – Jesus himself.  And Jesus indeed gives the woman living water, for as the story progresses she comes to deeper realizations of Jesus’ identity, first calling him ‘sir’, then moving to the title ‘prophet’, and proceeding on to ‘Messiah’.  At that point the woman leaves behind her water jar, i.e. leaving behind the material object as God’s presence and moving to the true reality of the gift of God as the person of Jesus.  She then becomes the first evangelist, leading the entire village to know Jesus as ‘savior of the world.’

Lent is a time to challenge our love and our understandings.  We have a tendency to relapse into ideas of material objects as our point of focus for God’s presence on earth.  We struggle to love as God calls us to love others in the person and example of Jesus.  Lent is our time to rediscover the gift of God and to receive the life giving water of Jesus the Lord.  Only then can we overcome our natural hatreds and to love our enemies.  Love is the only solution to human conflicts, both personal and collective.  Only the love of Jesus incarnate in our actions can transform the world from cultures of death, violence, and hatred into a civilization of love.

As we progress along our Lenten journey together, we continue to discern the ways in which we can know better the gift of God and how we might love more authentically as followers of Jesus.  We pray together:  “Let us pray to the Father and ask him to form a new heart within us.  God of all compassion, Father of all goodness, to heal the wounds our sins and selfishness bring upon us you bid us turn to fasting, prayer, and sharing with our brothers and sisters.  We acknowledge our sinfulness, our guilt is ever before us.  When our weakness causes discouragement, let your compassion full us with hope and lead us through a Lent of repentance to the beauty of Easter joy.  Grant this through Christ our Lord.  Amen.”  

The Geography of Temptation

The Geography of Temptation – 1^st Sunday of Lent Year A

Everyone has their favorite place, whether imaginative or real.  It makes no difference whether we have actually been to this place or not.  The place in question may for us be the most beautiful place on earth.  A significant event in our lives may have occurred there and hence it becomes our favorite place.  It may be a place where God is more present to us than in any other place.  Wherever it may be for each of us, this place evokes images of happiness, security, peace, and joy.  We cannot imagine a negative thought or experience associated with this place, and we often delude ourselves into thinking that we could not possibly fall from grace in such a place.  The readings today invite us to reorient our lives in relation to these places, and challenge us to begin the Lenten journey from an unexpected place.

The Garden of Eden is often referred to as Paradise, a primeval place of the fullness of God’s presence and love.  Here, our first parents lacked nothing and enjoyed a beauty of a pristine place that defies any just description.  Given such a place of peace, security, and beauty, we might think that nothing at all could come between them and God.  And yet Paradise becomes the very place where sin enters the world.  Even in a place of such tranquility, temptation exists and the possibility of a great fall enters our world.  Still, with all the beauty and goodness God had given them, our first parents had every advantage in the struggle with the serpent from both a human and divine point of view.  And they failed. 

St. Augustine reminds us that we would have fared no better in their place, and if we return to our favorite place above we would find ourselves confronted with the same temptation as Adam and Eve.  We can construct whatever ideal place and situation for ourselves in order to do battle with the devil, and we will lose if we trust that ideal place to help us in the moment.  For the point of the story is that if we fail to remember God’s presence in our lives, we will fail no matter how great the surroundings around us.

By contrast, the Gospel text takes us to a very different place of battle in the realm of temptation.  Jesus is taken to the desert by the Spirit after his baptism, and there he fasts for forty days while encountering the devil and his temptations.  The desert is the furthest place geographically from a lush garden we can imagine.  The harsh terrain and weather of the desert would beat anyone into failure and despair.  And yet, the devil, who had been successful in his wiles with just one attempt in Paradise, fails in three attempts with Jesus.  The appeal to the appetites was enough for Adam and Eve to fail, and yet Jesus overcomes this trial as well as that of fame, riches, and power.  Why was Jesus successful in such harsh conditions while Adam and Eve failed in seemingly better ground?

In the desert we can rely on no material advantage for long.  The desert brings us to rely on God alone, for in the desert we dispossess ourselves of all worldly attachments and illusions.  It is always the place of trial, but it is also the place of refuge – the place God prepared for Israel in Exodus and for the Church in the Book of Revelation that becomes the pathway to the Promised Land and eternal life.  The desert is the ideal place for a showdown with Satan, for there we must abandon material goods and cling to God alone.  It is in God alone that we can succeed in overcoming temptation.

Lent, then, is the time for us to abandon our favorite place and to go into the desert.  Lent is the place for us to abandon our material goods in acts of fasting, mortification, and charity in order to cling to God alone.  Lent must be for us the time to engage in the struggle against temptation and to overcome not through our own efforts or reliance on any worldly thing, but solely through reliance on God alone. 

As we shed the false gods of our illusory favorite places in beginning the discipline of Lent, we come together to be nourished by the Word of God and the Bread from Heaven.  We pray together:  “Let us pray at the beginning of Lent for the spirit of repentance.  Lord our God, you formed man from the clay of the earth and breathed into him the spirit of life, but he turned from your face and sinned.  In this time of repentance we call out for your mercy.  Bring us back to you and to the life your Son won for us by his death on the cross, for he lives and reigns forever and ever.  Amen.”