LENT SUNDAY I “B”
FEBRUARY 28/MARCH 1, 2009
A farmer who owned a large farm and had recently made a major purchase shared an interesting observation with me a few years ago. “Father, when I started in this business I negotiated purchases worth four or five figures with just a handshake. I put faith in the word the other person gave me and, in turn, gave my word. Our word committed us. We were as good as our word. The other day, you couldn’t believe all the papers I had to sign! Times sure have changed!” In response I commented that this experience was a keen insight into the nature and demands of covenant as spoken about in the Bible. For the Bible, covenant making and covenant living are founded on giving and keeping one’s word. For the Bible a person’s word is not just a collection of audible and culturally agreeable sounds as a means of communication. Coming from within the depths of the person, word was synonymous with the person who uttered it. A person was their word, much like the experience of my farmer friend.
In today’s first reading we hear God give his word of promise to Noah that he would never destroy creation again following the great flood. As further proof of the trustworthiness of his word, God gives the rainbow, as a type of “sacrament” his covenant. Over the course of the next four Sundays of Lent we will hear additional stories of God’s word and covenant invitation to us through Abraham; Moses and the Ten Commandments; Cyrus a pagan king who restores the Temple in Jerusalem; and the prophet Jeremiah who will proclaim that God’s word is to be found written in the hearts of his people. Ultimately, this gradual revelation of God’s word leads us to Jesus. Jesus is God’s Word made flesh, become one of us, reaching out his hand to us in invitation to relationship, covenant.
Jesus we just heard in the gospel story spent forty days in the desert immediately following his baptism. At his baptism God’s word proclaimed Jesus to be his beloved Son on whom the Spirit rested. Retreating into the desert Jesus had to decide not only what this word meant for his identity but what it would mean in terms of the values and lifestyle he would lead what it would commit him to, what it would cost. These were the temptations, the “wild beasts” Jesus encountered symbolized by the natural beasts that are predators in the desert. Both have the power to destroy life. Ultimately Jesus decides to rest the security of his life on the word of God spoken to him, spiritually as he would eventually stretching out his hand to God in total trust, committing himself and his life giving his word to the one who had addressed him. Emerging from the desert Jesus begins his public ministry with his own word, “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel.” This is his word of invitation to us. Jesus is inviting us into covenant relationship with him, reaching out his hand to us. On this First Sunday of Lent we are invited to reflect on what giving our word to Jesus demands as we prepare to renew our word of commitment to him first given at our baptism at Easter.
The Jesus of art, hymn, poetry and spiritual reflection can be beautiful and attractive. Jesus can be made into the nicest person we can imagine. Yet the Jesus of the Gospels and the word he speaks is not the nice comfortable image we all have, or want to have, to some small or large degree. If we listen to him carefully we see his words upset many. He could be blunt, as when he referred to a Gentile woman as a “dog” or called Peter “Satan”. Jesus had little time for the false piety and nice sounding prayers of the Pharisees. When the rich young man walked away from Jesus’ words of invitation and discipleship and its demands, even though he loved him, Jesus did not run after him and water down his message to make it more appealing. Jesus loved everyone he encountered, not in the way they thought they should be loved, but in the way he knew they must be loved in order to find the life of God he had come to bring. In the end, those who chose to take Jesus at his word and stay with him did so because they recognized that his words, though bothersome and irksome at times, spoke not only the truth about their lives, but also the truth about God and God’s life, a life greater and more lasting than anything they could create for themselves or the world could offer. In Jesus they saw someone who lived by the word he spoke and was worthy of their word. Are we willing to take Jesus at his word, or will we turn away because his demands are too many, settle for our comfortable images, follow him only in what is attractive but jettison his teachings we deem uncomfortable or disagreeable? Will we take him at his word? Will we give him our hand? Hopefully during these next six weeks as we wrestle in the desert of this world between its words and God’s word in Jesus on Easter Sunday we will say with all confidence: “Lord to whom shall we go? You have, and are, the word of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”