Homily for the 1st Sunday of Lent, A

"The problem with us human beings is never that we do not get what we want. The problem of sin is that we do literally get what we go after, and it looks completely different. Almost as soon as we open our eyes, we notice what we ourselves are without God: mere dust, shamefully naked, helpless, exposed." (Eugen Drewermann)

I have Mass on Sunday, February 22 at St. Isidore @ 9:30/11:30 am.

frjoedailey@gmail.com

Transcript

a reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew. 

At that time, Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was hungry. 

The tempter approached him and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread." He said in reply, "It is written, 'One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.'"

Then the devil took him to the holy city, and made him stand on the parapet of the temple, and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you, and with their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone.'" Jesus answered him, "Again it is written, 'You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.'"

Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence. And he said to him, "All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me." At this Jesus said to him, "Get away, Satan. It is written, 'The Lord your God shall you worship, and him alone shall you serve.'" Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and ministered to him. 

The Gospel of the Lord. 

We begin where we left off on Ash Wednesday. "You are dust, and to dust you shall return." Did you not know what the Holy One can do with dust? "The Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living being." God is as close to us as our very breath. We are created in the image and likeness of God. 

The German theologian Eugen Drewermann suggests that the problem for Adam and Eve is that, unlike God, they are not the source of their own existence. They have literally nothing they have not received. They're not so much the recipients of divine gifts. They are gift totally and exclusively. Under the serpent's cunning lies, they begin to realize that God has one thing they do not have, something God wants to keep them from acquiring, lest they should become like God. 

The serpent said to the woman, "You certainly will not die, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God." "The problem with us human beings is never that we do not get what we want. The problem of sin is that we do literally get what we go after, and it looks completely different. Almost as soon as we open our eyes, we notice what we ourselves are without God, mere dust, shamefully naked, helpless, exposed." 

Might it be that part of being human is being aware that we are not complete in and of ourselves? To be human, in other words, is to be aware that we carry inside ourselves a hole, an emptiness, that we will always be restless to fill. Adam and Eve behold the fruit and conclude in a heartbeat that their hole is shaped just like that fruit. Yet after they eat, the emptiness remains. 

The devil seeks to unsettle Jesus by provoking such an emptiness in his life. If you are the Son of God, you can fill this lack for yourself. You need not wait for God, who may or may not be there. You can be safe on your own terms. To be love, something must be received as gift. Adam and Eve tried to take what was intended as gift. 

But God is not done with us. sin is not the last word. As James Alison defines it, "sin is that which is being forgiven." The gift of God is not like the transgression. where Adam grasped, Christ trusted. Where Adam's act opened the door to death Christ's obedience opened the floodgates of grace. And Paul keeps repeating the phrase, "much more." Not barely enough grace, not just canceling out the damage, much more. Grace is not fragile. It overflows. It creates a new solidarity, a new belonging, a new future. 

God conquers death not by avoiding it, as Adam and Eve hoped to do by seizing divinity, but by embracing it. 

In the third temptation, the devil took Jesus to a very high mountain. Matthew's Gospel ends in chapter 28 on the mountain. "After the resurrection, the eleven disciples went to Galilee to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And Jesus said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." In other words, the devil is inviting Jesus to shortcut the road to all authority in heaven and on earth. 

You do not have to die. But Jesus is going to suffer and to die, and he calls us to follow him. At root, the temptations are about avoiding death. 

In Matthew's Gospel, all three of the responses to the temptations come from the speech that Moses gave in the book of Deuteronomy. He begins in chapter 6, "Shema, Israel, hear, O Israel... "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might." 

Loving God with one's heart meant the refusal to make bread in self-interest. The word from the mouth of God was that Jesus was the beloved Son. Jesus will be empty, but he will still be the beloved Son. 

Loving God with your whole being, your very life, is to not put God to the test. Jesus will not be safe, but he will still be the beloved Son. 

Loving God with your whole strength, with all your might, is to serve God alone. Jesus will be politically powerless, but he will still be the beloved Son. 

The irony of this passage is that by desiring what God desires, Jesus is in fact enabled himself to become the bread by which people can live. Jesus is the meeting place between the human and divine. He becomes the temple from which he refused to cast himself down. and he becomes, in his death and resurrection, the king of all the kingdoms of the world. 

The beloved Son of God is obedient to the will of the Father, whose way is forgiveness and reconciliation. Now is the favorable time to follow in the footsteps of Jesus on our journey from ashes to Easter.