First Sunday in Lent

There is a phrase which is oddly worded, almost a circumlocution, which is frequently used to eulogize those who have given their lives in service of others: they put themselves in harm’s way.  It obviously means that they endangered their lives and exposed themselves to great risk.  Although they didn’t have to, they were prepared to give their lives for something more important, something which transcended and ultimately gave meaning to their lives.  Better to die for this value than go on living in a way which compromised or betrayed it.  This poses the uncomfortable question to us:  are we living for something worth dying for?  Thomas Merton once said that if you want to know who someone is, ask them what they are living for.  Then ask them what is keeping them from living for that.  And then, thirdly, what are they doing about those obstacles or hindrances.  This will usually mean putting themselves in harm’s way.

We might hope that in a moment of truth we would willingly sacrifice ourselves:  run into a burning building; leap in front of a train to save someone;  speak the truth to power.  But we won’t know until we are put to the test.  It is the challenge of the test that reveals who we really are.  How do we answer the questions and tests that life keeps putting to us?  There is no temptation without there being a choice. Hopefully, we know moments when we die to ourselves, when we come alive in self-forgetfulness, in relinquishing our need to manage and control, our need to be sure before we act.  Those moments in which we put ourselves in harm’s way.

Jesus’ whole life was one of putting himself in harm’s way.  It began with his being led by the Spirit into the desert.  The desert is an inhospitable and unforgiving place.  All the education and formation of society is not only useless, but may also be an obstacle for living there.  New skills of listening and response are needed.  There is no time for distraction, for the trivial or nonessential.  It demands an inner simplicity and self-awareness, a clarity void of pretense.  St. Benedict in his Rule calls the community during these days of Lent to keep its manner of life most pure.  He is not concerned with greater sexual restraint or compulsive needs for rigid order.  He is concerned with that clarity, that transparency, that simplicity with which the clean and pure of heart can see God.  The desert environment can be merciless in its clarity.

Being led into the desert is a tool for clearing away the debris of our lives.  The late Jesuit liturgist, Robert Taft, has said: This Lenten ascetism is nothing more than the necessary objectivity and distance from whatever is impermanent and secondary in the human endeavor; the self-discipline necessary to maintain true freedom and make the right choices; the destruction of egoism by the honest person who has the courage to stand naked before self and God. The point is an openness to new life, and through it, openness to others.

 Christ allowed himself to be tempted in this desert and opened for us the invitation to be led by the Spirit in harm’s way.  The temptations, tests, and questions that life puts to us are challenges to choose a life created in simplicity, humility, and community.  This is a life that chooses to live and work within the slow and patient processes of human life; that refuses the idolatry of placing worship of human force and power in place of God’s active covenant of care, peace, and justice; that chooses to rely in trust in God’s provident love and rejects all forms of exceptionalism, entitlement, and presumption.  It is to wait on God. To live this way is to live in harm’s way, but it is the way Christ chose to bring salvation and healing to humanity. It is what we are called to do and choose since we are God’s children.