FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT, YEAR C

March 6, 2022

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N. J.

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16

Romans 10:8b-13

Luke 4:1-13

Today’s Old Testament reading always takes me back to my first year in seminary. Our Old Testament Professor had an old-fashioned teaching method; he required us to commit to memory certain passages of scripture that he considered it necessary for us to know. 

Some shorter passages, like the Song of Miriam – “Sing to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously, the horse and his rider hath he cast into the sea” – he had us memorize and recite in Hebrew. Longer passages he was content to have us recite in English translation. And one passage he considered most important of all was that in today’s Old Testament reading, “A wandering Aramean was my father; and he went down to Egypt and sojourned there, few in number; and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous.”

Every year, faithful Israelites would recite these words when they came up to the Jerusalem Temple to offer to God the first fruits of the harvest. These words constituted a solemn remembrance of their sojourn in Egypt, their toil and affliction, and their deliverance from bondage by the Lord’s mighty hand and outstretched arm. Most of all, these words gratefully acknowledged that the present harvest was the gift of the same Lord who’d brought them into this place and given them this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

Imagine the cumulative effect of re-enacting this solemn ritual year after year, generation after generation. By reciting the story of God’s mighty deeds in the past, the Israelites reconfirmed their allegiance to God, and renewed their membership in God’s People Israel. So, over time, this annual confession of faith powerfully formed and shaped their identity as the People of God.

The memorization and repetition of passages of scripture is an invaluable exercise. While my seminary classmates and I initially chafed at our professor’s requirement, by the end of the semester we were immensely grateful to him. Learning these verses by heart deepened and enriched our process of priestly formation. But we don’t need to be in training for holy orders; all Christians stand to benefit spiritually from committing key biblical passages to memory. So, there’s a question and a challenge for each of us: Do we have an arsenal of scripture verses, passages, and stories that we can call to mind and recite at key moments in our lives—moments of decision and maybe even temptation?

The more we immerse ourselves in the scriptures, the closer we come to realizing the goal that St. Paul sets before us in today’s Epistle: “The Word is near you, on your lips and in your heart . . . because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved; for man believes with his heart and so is justified, and confesses with his lips and so is saved.”

At the offering of the first fruits, the Israelites confessed with their lips what they believed in their hearts. The temptation narrative in today’s Gospel exemplifies the same principle. Jesus overcomes each of the devil’s three temptations in the wilderness by means of a confession of faith.

And each time the devil tempts him, Jesus responds by quoting Scripture. To the temptation to misuse his divine power by turning stones into bread, Jesus responds: “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’” To the temptation to fall down and worship the devil in return for all the world’s kingdoms and their glory, Jesus responds, “It is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.’” And to the temptation to throw himself down from the Temple pinnacle to have the angels catch him and so demonstrate his divine Sonship, Jesus responds, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God.” (An equally good translation would be, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”) 

This third temptation shows us that the devil himself can misuse Scripture for his own ends, as he quotes today’s Psalm, “He will give his angels charge over you,” and “On their hands they will bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.” So, we need to be careful. Even so, in his three responses, Jesus demonstrates how the right use of Scripture can be a decisive shield against the assaults of the evil one.

This wilderness episode reveals a lot about Jesus. No doubt, as he grew up, he learned large portions of the Hebrew Bible by heart, both at home with Mary and Joseph, and every week in the synagogue in Nazareth. Luke’s Gospel tells us that when Jesus was twelve years old, his parents took him up to Jerusalem, where he amazed the teachers in the Temple by his understanding and his answers. Having grown up immersed in the scriptural heritage of his people, Jesus was equipped to stand firm in the time of his testing. The Word of God was truly in his heart and upon his lips.

So much of what we do in the Church’s liturgical life is designed to have precisely the same effect: to put the Word of God in our hearts and upon our lips. In our Sunday Masses, we follow a three-year lectionary that systematically takes us through large parts of the Bible, keying a wide variety of readings to the changing seasons, feasts, and fasts of the Church Year. 

Those who read the Prayer Book’s offices of Morning and / or Evening Prayer cycle through the entire Psalter once a month, and through most of the Bible every two years. This regular repetition of set prayers, psalm verses, and sentences of scripture, is a great gift of our Anglican spiritual tradition. The more we repeat them, the more they sink into the depths of our subconscious awareness, the more they become part of who we are, and the more likely they are to spring to mind when we truly need them: in moments of tragedy, crisis, decision, or temptation—or of rejoicing and celebration.

This Season of Lent is a time of year when by God’s grace we recommit ourselves resisting temptation and repenting of sin. It’s a time when we recommit ourselves to faithful participation in the worship that helps put the words of Scripture in our hearts and on our lips. And it’s a time when we recommit ourselves to the lifelong process of allowing God’s Word and God’s Spirit to form us ever more deeply into our baptismal identity as God’s People.