FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT

[cappie]

Today is the first Sunday of Lent, and appropriately, the lectionary passages bring us into the wilderness.  

Lent is a season that acknowledges those places and times of wilderness. There are times in all our lives when we find ourselves in the desert.  The wandering and the hunger that Jesus undergoes in our gospel passage are universal to the human experience. Even without personal suffering, it is easy to look out across the globe and feel like nothing is improving; death runs rampant through disease or environmental catastrophe; society seems to be crumbling at the seams. And reading the news or scrolling through social media certainly exacerbates that sense that the world is falling apart.

When we think Lent, we often think self-sacrifice or penitence. And yes, Lent is a penitential season, but these forty days are not so much about self-flagellation as they are about following in Jesus’ footsteps through the wilderness. Matthew tells us that Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness. There are times when the world feels like a desert or wasteland. And there are other times when we follow the Spirit’s lead and Jesus’ example and journey out into the wilds in a material act of solidarity with all who are already there. When we sit in the desert, it usually feels like the furthest from exercising dominion. But the scriptures tell us there is more to the wilderness and more to dominion.
 
Christian dominion is not an exhibition of physical prowess or power. Christ rejects the temptation to change the stones into bread. Likewise, he refuses to jump from the temple or bow down to Satan. Dominance is not transforming our surroundings to suit our wants or satisfy our immediate needs. Rather, dominance comes from feeding on the word of God and from worshipping God alone – rejecting the worship of money or power. Irenaeus saw the goal of redemption and of Christ’s work as the participation of humanity in the divine.  

The picture of dominion given to us is power in life even in the wilderness. In Christ, we are given new agency to imagine and dream a life that is not just getting by or trying to make it through the desert. We are given agency as individuals, and perhaps more importantly, as the body of Christ, the Church. Together, we lift each other up, dreaming and imagining and exercising dominion in life through Christ. We draw on the grace and love that God has poured out into us, sharing that with each other and the world. Filled with God’s abundant grace and love, we can dare to resist systems of racism, economic inequality, loneliness, and despair. We name the temptations and brokenness around us. We acknowledge the burdens we carry. We can dare to resist those systems of thought that say that nothing will ever change, and we should just look out for ourselves. We can dare to resist the consumerist and individualist lifestyle that says individual pleasure and immediate gratification is the highest good. Like Christ, we reject those temptations.

As we begin this journey into Lent, we enter into a period of self-examination and penance. We enter into the wilderness. We look to Scripture and to the saints for those models and images of those who have shone with the brilliant love of God even in the darkest of times. The goal of Lent is not to inflict punishment on ourselves but rather to allow the grace of God to transform us more and more into God’s image. This Lent let us exercise dominion in life together. Let us dare to resist the temptation to capitulate to the broken systems around us, and instead work to transform the world around us.