Lent 1: Entering into the Desert

Genesis 9:8-17
Psalm 25:1-9
1 Peter 3:18-22
Mark 1:9-15

Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan:

Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations;

and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save;

through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen.

This Sunday’s collect is one of the few that makes specific reference to the Gospel reading of its day. This is rarely the case as the collects run on a one year cycle, and the lectionary runs on a three year cycle. Therefore, matching directly the theme of the collect with that of the gospel is very difficult indeed. However, in this the first Sunday in Lent all three years of the lectionary feature as the Gospel reading Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, and the collect draws on the resonances of this story to create its imagery; and so because of this, from the very start of the Eucharist, we are already taken into the wilderness with Christ; into the wilderness of the desert, into the wilderness of our desires and into the wilderness of temptations. It is here that we are called to begin Lent, in the knowledge of our nothingness, in the knowledge of our weakness and dependency, in the knowledge that we are, after all, dust and that to dust we shall return – but for the love and mercy of God.

It was Archbishop Cranmer who originally linked the collect for the first Sunday in Lent to the narrative of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness: “O Lord, which for our sake didst fast forty days and forty nights; Give us grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdued to the spirit, we may ever obey thy godly motions in righteousness, and true holiness.” This collect came into the first American Prayer Book unchanged in content or placement, and continued so throughout various Prayer Book revisions right up to and including the Book of Common Prayer of 1928. So, it isn’t surprising that the present collect should take as its starting point the image of Jesus’ temptation as highlighted in Cranmer’s original. However, its bulk and greatest force is from an original composition by a 19th century English clergyman and Church historian, William Bright. His collect reads “Merciful and faithful High Priest; Who didst deign for us to be tempted of Satan; make speed to aid Thy servants who are assaulted by manifold temptations; and as Thou knowest their several infirmities, let each one find Thee mighty to save…” We can begin to discern how today’s collect takes its imagery from a combining of these two. Yet, whether we are meditating on Cranmer’s original collect, on that of William Bright, or more specifically on the revision written for our present Prayer Book, what they all highlight is our need for God and for God’s grace if we are to overcome the interior dangers and brokenness of our lives, the “many temptations” by which are “assaulted”. Together with the narrative of Jesus’ temptation, they point to our utter dependence on God, not only as our life-source – a term most modern Christians are very comfortable with, but also how very desperately we are in need of salvation, an idea modern, sensible – certainly Episcopalian – Christians are not as comfortable with.

As we enter into Lent, and enter with Jesus into the desert, we enter also into the place in which the regular devices and artifices we may use to construct and defend ourselves must be laid aside if any good is to some from the journey. We must bring ourselves to that place in which we know ourselves, as another of Cranmer’s collects says, “to be set in the midst of so many and great dangers, that for [our] frailty we cannot always stand upright”. For modern, competent people that is a difficult thing to admit, a difficult place to be, and certainly not a place into which we would enter willingly; and yet it is exactly what Jesus calls us to by the example of his going into the wilderness and by his exhortation: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.” (Mark 1:15) We may pretend we are in control, we may live as if the goods that come our way are merely are well-earned just deserts, or that the good that comes our way is simply the result of careful planning on our part, but Jesus in the desert calls us to remember who really is the source of all these things. His call to repent (repentance means literally to turn around 180 degrees) is the call to re-orientate lives, desires and ambitions rightly and according to the orientation of the good news. The Gospel call for repentance is a recognition that much of what passes for normal and even beneficial in our world is dis-ordered, and that we can lose our order, our direction and even ourselves as we navigate through it. It is the admission that we are indeed “assaulted by many temptations” in a world whose principles are sometimes rather off kilter, or in some cases completely off the mark. Repentance is really coming to terms with an order different than what we may have become accustomed to, one in which God and the kingdom are the only norms; at the end of the day repentance is to admit our weaknesses but to do so joyfully because we can trust in a God who re-orientates us rightly, a God who “is mighty to save”. William Temple, a 20th century successor of Thomas Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury lived during one of the most dis-orientating periods in Christian history, the second world war, but he understood this joyful aspect of repentance. He once wrote: “To repent is to adopt God’s viewpoint in place of your own. There need not be any sorrow about it. In itself, far from being sorrowful, it is the most joyful thing in the world, because when you have done it you have adopted the viewpoint of truth itself, and you are in fellowship with God.” (I have included this quote in today’s Red Door)

To acknowledge our dis-ordered lives, the “many temptations” by which we are assaulted; to accept our weakness in judging things aright and orientate our lives towards wholeness and towards the One who is “mighty to save”; all of this is at the heart of Lent and of Christ’s call to repentance. Jesus entered into the wilderness for forty days and nights in order that he could place himself completely dependent on his Father – for his food, his well being, his identity; he entered into the wilderness in order to accept fully the re-orientation his life was to take for the rest of his life, and because we have been joined to him in baptism he calls us to the same, and we have committed ourselves to the same. And so, journey into the desert is the continual work of the Christian life as we continually live within the re-orientating and saving love of God, and see through the dis-ordered temptations bywhich we are assaulted.

Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan:

Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations;

and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save;

through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen.