Lent is our desert experience.
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God said to Noah and to his sons with him:
“See, I am now establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you: all the birds, and the various tame and wild animals that were with you and came out of the ark.
I will establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all bodily creatures be destroyed by the waters of a flood; there shall not be another flood to devastate the earth.”
God added: “This is the sign that I am giving for all ages to come, of the covenant between me and you and every living creature with you: I set my bow in the clouds to serve as a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
When I bring clouds over the earth, and the bow appears in the clouds, I will recall the covenant I have made between me and you and all living beings, so that the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all mortal beings.”
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℟. (cf 10) Your ways, O Lord, are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.
Your ways, O LORD, make known to me; teach me your paths,
Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my savior.
℟. Your ways, O Lord, are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.
Remember that your compassion, O LORD, and your love are from of old.
In your kindness remember me because of your goodness, O LORD.
℟. Your ways, O Lord, are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.
Good and upright is the LORD, thus he shows sinners the way. He guides the humble to justice, and he teaches the humble his way.
℟. Your ways, O Lord, are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.
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Beloved: Christ suffered for sins once, the righteous for the sake of the unrighteous, that he might lead you to God.
Put to death in the flesh, he was brought to life in the Spirit.
In it he also went to preach to the spirits in prison, who had once been disobedient while God patiently waited in the days of Noah during the building of the ark, in which a few persons, eight in all, were saved through water.
This prefigured baptism, which saves you now. It is not a removal of dirt from the body but an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him.
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The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert, and he remained in the desert for forty days, tempted by Satan.
He was among wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him.
After John had been arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God: “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”
Homily for the First Sunday of Lent, Year B - 21 February 2021
Have you ever experienced a real desert? The closest we get in South Africa is the Karoo, and while it is not exactly desert, it has some of the characteristics of a real desert. In the desert we experience a quietness which is quite unnerving. You feel an extreme aloneness and perhaps even loneliness. It’s a place of extremes: heat, sun, dryness. There is a harshness about it, an absence of comfort. One of the things about a desert experience is that we feel vulnerable; we haven’t got distractions and luxuries to protect and shield us.
The Judean desert in the Holy Land is like this. By imagining what it is like to be in a desert, we will be able identify with the desert experience of Jesus. Not far from Jericho, in the middle of the Judean desert is the Mount of Temptation, the place where Jesus spent forty days and forty nights being tested and tempted. It is just sand and rock, a brutal, harsh environment.
Of course, we all will have had symbolic or figurative desert experiences - times when we were severely tempted and tested. Perhaps we doubted faith; perhaps our faith and prayer seemed empty and hollow. Perhaps we were burnt-out or we or someone close to us had experienced some human tragedy. If so, we will be able to identify with Jesus in his desert experience, and how in his human nature he would have felt the full brunt of temptation and testing.
Throughout the Bible, the wilderness is a place of preparation; a place of overcoming temptation; a place that God leads many people to, including Jesus, before he began his public ministry. In the Gospel passage from Mark, we hear how the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness, where he remained for forty days, tempted by Satan.
The desert, literal or figurative, is a place of testing, a place where we experience our weakness and our dependence on God. In the desert, water and food are hard to come by and the temperatures and emptiness are harsh on the body and the mind. There are equivalent lacks in the other kinds of deserts that come our way. The desert is a place where our illusions of self-sufficiency and comfort fade away. When we are in the desert, literally or figuratively, we realise our need for God.
Lent is our desert experience. As we begin this Lent, we are invited to enter our own wilderness during these coming forty days. Unlike some of the painful desert experiences we may have experienced in life, we choose this Lenten desert.
During this Lenten desert experience, we realise our inadequacy and how dependent on God we are. We realise our need for the mercy and compassion of God. We go back to the basics, to the fundamentals of who we are, why we are, what we are, and who God is for us. Lent is a time for us to think about what we really want from God. We can think about what we really need and want. Think about what special grace you are asking God for during this Lent. Be intentional and bold in asking.
This season is an opportunity for us to step away from the busyness of our ordinary lives. So often the things we do, all the routines we have in place, distract us from facing what is really important in life.
In the busyness of our lives, we are often unaware of the deeper temptations we face. We might easily fall into patterns and habits of sin that damage us and damage those around us. We also end up being unaware of the deeper hunger we have for the life Christ offers to us, and which can really make us free.
And experiencing this knowledge of our weakness and sin and of our deep hunger for spiritual life, in a new and profound way we are called to turn back to God, the source of our joy and hope. The opening line of Jesus’ preaching is, “Repent and believe in the Gospel.” God wants nothing less from us than a heart and a spirit which with a deep and full awareness of our sin, wishes to turn back to him.
Our encouragement and inspiration for facing ourselves, for entering into the desert of our hearts, is that Jesus has experienced the same testing and temptations that we face. The Letter to the Hebrews says that we do not have “a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sinning.” In his great love for us, Jesus has entered into our brokenness. He doesn't save us from a distance. He enters into our life experience and rescues us.
What a stark contrast we have in the readings for today! On the one hand we have an experience of the desert; and on the other hand, we have the image of a flood - virtual opposites. In the ancient Catacombs in Rome the early Christians painted many scenes from the Bible and one of the most frequently represented is that of Noah and the Ark. Perhaps this is because the Catacombs were not only places of burial, but also places of sanctuary for the early Christians in the dark days of persecution before Christianity was made legal under Emperor Constantine.
The story of Noah and Ark expressed very well the ambiguity of the situation of those early Christians. On the one hand, the destructive and terrifying waters of the flood expressed the dangers they encountered, as they faced persecution, torture and death. Similarly for us, the waters of the flood express the dangers we face in the fragility and instability of our lives.
But, on the other hand, as for those early Christians, so for us, the flood waters also symbolise the waters of baptism and our entry into the new life we have in Christ, as St Peter tells us in the second reading for this Sunday.
Through the waters of Baptism, we enter into the solemn covenant with God. Baptism is an entering into and participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus, through which we are made children of God and given the Holy Spirit. In Baptism we receive new spiritual life into the desert of our sin-damaged hearts.
The rainbow in the reading today from Genesis is a symbol of the covenant of God, a sign of God’s promise that salvation would conquer sin. That covenant is fulfilled most perfectly in the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus, in which sin and evil are conquered. For us, the crucifix is the most perfect symbol of the covenant which God has entered into with human beings. The crucifix is our rainbow.
A covenant is solemn agreement between God and human beings, with undertakings and promises on both sides. Through the covenants and most especially through the covenant made through Jesus, we are bound in a bond of love to God, who draws us to himself and heals our wounds and forgives our sins. We are a covenant people. We are in a solemn agreement with God through baptism. We belong to God, and God is our god. We find our deepest fulfilment in being faithful to the covenant which we have entered into with God and which God has entered into with us.
This Lenten desert experience is about realizing our part in the covenant we have made with God, and preparing to renew the covenant from our side as we renew our baptismal vows at Easter. Our Lenten desert experience is about being purified and washed clean, trained and disciplined in testing and in recognising the great temptations in our lives, so that we can give ourselves completely to God.