Just as Spring
training prepares the major league player for the challenges of the year, Lent,
the spring renewal of our Christianity, prepares us for the challenges of our
spiritual lives. It is with delightful simplicity that the Gospel of Mark presents
the testing of the Lord in just two verses. The Spirit sends Jesus to the
desert for forty days. Jesus is put to the test. He's with wild beasts. Angels minister to
him. We don't find the three temptations of changing a rock to bread, or
jumping off the parapet of the Temple safely, or receiving all the power of the
world, which we come upon in Matthew and Luke. The precise temptations were not
important to Mark. For Mark the only thing that matters is that the Lord was
strengthened by this test and then was ready to proclaim his Father's Kingdom.
Usually when we
think of temptations we take a negative focus and consider our failures or how
close we come to falling; however there
is another way to consider temptations, a positive way. That's Mark's focus. Temptations
can also be seen as a test that if successfully overcome, can strengthen
someone to put up a better fight for the Lord.
As we begin Lent
and relate the forty days the Lord spent in the desert to the forty days of
Lent, we also can relate tests that we have had or may still have in our lives.
Perhaps some of us can say that we were strengthened by a successful fight
against temptation. Now, we shouldn't go around looking for temptation, that
would be putting ourselves in the occasion of sin, but if we ever are tempted,
we are ready. We have beaten it off before and we can beat it off again. Spiritually,
we are ready for the high hard one. We need to have confidence in ourselves,
and more important, confidence in the Lord who is preparing us to do battle for
Him.
We're ready, but
we are not ready just because we say so. We are ready because we have been
given the power to withstand all assaults on our spiritual lives.
In the Gospel of
Mark Jesus is presented after the devil left as being with the wild beasts as the
angel's ministered to him[1]. Maybe
Mark is addressing his gospel to the Christians at Rome who had already
experienced the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul and the persecution of Nero, and
is saying to them, “even among these beasts of Romans, God is protecting you.”
What the Lord is
telling us is that in the face of forces wishing to destroy our spiritual
lives, there is an infinitely stronger force who will protect us. Leopards,
wild boars, bears roamed the desert where the Lord was praying but they
couldn't hurt him. The angels ministered
to him. Materialism, hedonism, and religious indifference roam the places
where we live and are tested, but no forces can destroy our spiritual lives. The
Power of Christ and his sacraments are with us. The Holy Spirit who was with
Jesus in the wilderness is with us. Nothing can take the spiritual from us. We
can only give it away by giving up and giving in.
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.
The main lesson of the flood was not a lesson of God's wrath, but a lesson of
his covenant, his care and his love. He
would never give up on his people. He
would never give up on any of us.
We can allow the
events of our lives to strengthen us in our faith life. We can –we must- do this because God is with
us, joining us in the fight against the forces that would otherwise destroy us.
Spring training
is going full force. Our spring training began last Wednesday, Ash Wednesday. Today
on this First Sunday of Lent we ask God to give us the determination to find
the ways that we can summon His presence in the face of the challenges to our
Christianity ■
[1] Perhaps there
is a reflection here of Psalm 91:11-13: For God commands the angels to guard
you in all your ways. With their hands they shall support you, lest you strike
your foot against a stone. You shall tread upon the asp and the viper; trample
the lion and the dragon.
