40 Days and 40 Nights

Sermon

Lent 1

Year C

We are off to a flying start on this the first Sunday of Lent.

The readings today remind us that as Christians we are a nomadic people.  We wander around in the wilderness trying to see what God wants of us, and how we can better understand him and his plan for us.  For some of us that means physically moving, but for all of us, it means questioning and challenging, finding new ways of being.

After his baptism in the River Jordan, Jesus goes off to the wilderness to get his head straight and to prepare for the work that would need to be done –and I think this is the pattern for us all.

The inhabited part of Judea at the time stood on the central plateau which was the backbone of southern Palestine; between it and the Dead Sea stretched a terrible wilderness some thirty-five miles across by fifteen miles, it was called JESHIMMON which means the devastation.  The limestone desert swoops 1,200 feet down to the sea, very little grows there, it is covered in jagged rocks.  This is where Jesus was taken to be tempted, this was his wilderness.

I’ve thought a lot about this part of the Gospel, it must be one of the most important and sacred parts of the Bible.  In Luke’s version, we heard today, it says Jesus full of the Holy Spirit was led into the wilderness.  In Mark, as usual, the words bring a more dramatic effect, we are told Jesus was driven into the wilderness, to start 40 days of fasting, prayer, loneliness and temptation.

This account is important because, I assume, the account would have been given to the disciples directly from the Jesus himself, and if this weren’t enough, it speaks to us on a different level, it plays into our imagination and our deepest needs and desires.  We all need to find some peace sometimes, to be in a place that helps us be with God, indeed that’s what Lent is all about, our creating a little bit of quiet wilderness for ourselves, where we can fast, reflect on life, read scriptures and pray.

A Whitbread Prize shortlisted book from a decade or so ago was Quarantine, written by Jim Crace.  He retells the story in a very different way.  Along with the dialogue of Jesus, the narrative sees him as a bit of an outsider at the beginning of his ministry. 

A religious visionary, but a bit of a loner and a drifter, turning his back on the traditions and ways of the day and heading out into the Judean desert for a 40 day retreat.

As Jesus takes to his cliff top cave, in the book, Crace describes Jesus praying out loud across the valley;

"The prayers were in command of him. He shouted out across the valley, happy with the noise he made. The common words lost hold of sound. The consonants collapsed. He called on god to join him in the cave with all the noises that his lips could make. He called with all the voices in his throat."

Crace, goes on to describe the temptations, all visited upon him by humans, and all bravely resisted with what can only be described as superhuman will.

In the Gospels, the order of the Temptations differ;

The FIRST temptation in LUKE’s gospel was to turn the limestone rocks into bread.  The temptation was not just for food at the time, but the question was being asked, would you bribe people with worldly things to follow you?  This is rejected by Jesus who quotes Deuteronomy “one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord”. 

The SECOND temptation was on a mountain from which all the civilized world could be seen, “worship me and all this will be yours”.  This is the temptation to compromise. “Don’t set your standards so high! Bargain with me; compromise with evil and you can do more good!”

Jesus had an answer, also from the Book of Deuteronomy “Worship the Lord your God and Serve only him”.  It is a constant temptation to win by compromise. 

In the THIRD temptation Jesus found himself on the pinnacle of the temple where the Royal porch and Solomon’s porch meet, there was a drop of some 450 feet, down to the Kedron valley below.  This was the temptation to give the people sensations.  Jesus quotes Deuteronomy again “Do not put your Lord God to the test”.  Jesus saw quite clearly that by producing wonders and sensations, he would lose integrity for the message that he was to bring.

BRIBERY, COMPROMISE or SENSATION; Jesus rejected these ways of control, these ways of exercising power and we should too. 

This challenge to Christ is also the challenge to the church, and it always has been.

When we are looking back at these events, where Christ walked the earth, the other important thing we should remember is, however compelling the stories in the Gospels are, they are for us to inform our acts and prayer today.  Not just good stories.

I think it’s a pity that churches aren’t historical reenactment societies, like those people who dress up and relive Civil Wars. 

It would be so much easier to just turn up, dress up and say a few words and go home. 

However, the truth of the matter is that we are called to be the church in the here and now, building on the past, but looking to the future, we are the living Church of God, here in the centre of this community.

That means we need to listen to God, listen to the people around us, and to reflect the outrageous love of God that permeates all things, and cannot be stopped.

I’m looking forward to the future of the church, debates about women bishops, same sex marriages in church and the dozens of other things that need to be discussed.  It will be a sign that we are the church of the future.

God is challenging us to engage with the world and answer with love.  During Lent, think about your lives with God, think about how he speaks to you, and think about the person who will emerge from your own wilderness, ready to take Christ to the world.

May God be with you on your Lenten journey.

Let us pray.

As the days lengthen and the earth spends longer in the light of day, grant that we may spend longer in the light of your presence O Lord.

And may those seeds of your word, which have been long-buried within us, grow, like everything around us, into love for you, and love for people; to become a visible declaration of your lordship in our lives. 

Grant, father, that this Lent there may be a springtime for our life in Christ.  Through the very same, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  AMEN