First Sunday of Lent

February 14 is just about the earliest possible day for the First Sunday of Lent.  We’ve just packed away our Christmas ornaments and unused presents when we’re invited to the church’s season of spring for renewal and reflection.  But it feels too early for Lent.  We’d rather celebrate St. Valentine’s Day than prepare our Rice Bowls.  Do we need Lent right now?

There was a time, of course, when all Christians thought they didn’t need Lent.  After all, they had been baptized in the Lord; they were filled with the Holy Spirit and lived life quite differently from the pagans.  The first real Lenten people were not Christians, but those preparing to become Christians.  But all that changed when the old-timers in the Christian community noticed something remarkable at the Easter baptism.  They were struck by the joy and the radiant faces of those just baptized.

And so, the next year, some Christians began to join the catechumens in their preparation for baptism at Easter.  They too took on sackcloth and ashes and lived the days before Easter as repentant sinners.  They did this so that they could feel once again the joy of rebirth at Easter.  And that’s how Lent gradually came to the church, out of a need.

The liturgy for this First Sunday of Lent focuses on a need that Jesus had before he began to save the world.  Even though he had just been baptized and was “full of the Holy Spirit,” he felt a need to go into the desert.  In the desert Jesus realized who he was and what he was called to do.  In the desert Jesus found his first temptations.

But in the desert, Jesus learned that God cannot be bought and that life is more than bread or fleeting moments of magic and glory.  Right after Jesus left the desert, he went back to his hometown of Nazareth.  There in the synagogue, he proclaimed a passage from Isaiah, but he spoke Isaiah’s words as his own:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because I am anointed to bring glad tidings to the poor.  The Spirit of the Lord has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”  After the desert, after his first temptation, after his first Lent, Jesus realized who he was and what he was called to do.

Many years ago in the Skagit I received a phone call from a parishioner.  Their son was crying out for help.  When I got to his apartment, I found a tortured soul, filled with self-doubt and alcohol.  Eventually, I got him to go to his first AA meeting.  But even though he was an alcoholic, he told me he couldn’t go back to another AA meeting because “I’m not like those people.”

 I’ve never forgotten that line, “I’m not like those people.”  It taught me that the first temptation to avoid choosing life is to convince yourself that somehow you are different, that you don’t share the pain of life, that you don’t need to go into the desert.

My young friend was wrong.  We are like those people who share a common struggle and a common pain.  We are all driven by the same doubts.  We sometimes make choices about the important events of our lives without reflection, without faith, without prayer, without God.

We cannot force Lent upon ourselves.  Each of us must find a need for it – a need to go into the desert to face both our gifts and our limits, a need to face ourselves, our demons, and our God.  Even though Lent is early and it all seems risky, let’s go into the desert together!

Paul A. Magnano

Pastor