Sermon for the first Sunday in Lent – 26th February 2023 -Genesis 2, 15-17; 3, 1-7. Romans 5, 12-19; Matthew 4, 1-11

Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

 

This is the first Sunday in the holy season of Lent; a season of penitence, of inner examination of the soul, of reading the scriptures more assiduously, and of fasting. The holy season began 4 days ago with the day we call Ash Wednesday. The palm crosses that were blessed on Palm Sunday 2022 were returned to church, burned and turned into ash. Mixed with a little olive oil the priest then marks out a cross on the foreheads of the faithful. Then there is a slight dilemma.

What is the dilemma? With an ashen cross on the forehead should we then witness to the community that we are at the start of our keeping of Lent? There is much to commend this, especially in a country where the Western date for Lent passes almost un-noticed as the Greek people wait for Clean Monday, and their own Orthodox Lenten observances.

However, in the Ash Wednesday gospel, Christ condemns those who make a public show of their penitence and fasting with the words, “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them” and later in the same passage of St. Matthew, “when you fast put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but your Father who is in secret.’  (Matt. 6, 1; Matt. 6, 16-17).

So this is the dilemma at the start of this holy season. Is there some direction that I can give on this? Not really. There is no right or wrong. Or is there?

It is wrong to parade the cross on our foreheads if it is being shown with pride. It is wrong if it is a matter of outward tokenism. It is wrong if the cross on the forehead is not transferred to being a cross burned into our hearts.

It is right if showing this cross in such a public way is accompanied by acts of mercy and charity that are offered genuinely and authentically. It is right if the outward sign of the cross has made a change in our hearts and lives. It is right if the cross reminds us to be more like Christ. So there is a right and a wrong solution to the dilemma.

Not everyone is able to attend the Liturgy on Ash Wednesday – some are at work, others find it difficult to get across the city to be in the city centre.

So for many the dilemma of wearing the cross publicly on their foreheads doesn’t apply. This does not mean that we don’t all have to face the challenges of Lent. You may not recall it, but at the time of your baptism the church also signed your forehead with a cross, not with ash, but most likely with oil. You may have had this done twice at your baptism; first with the oil of the catechumens, and perhaps a second time, immediately after the baptism with the oil of Chrism.

One way or another each one of us here today/ or listening has had that mark placed on the front of our heads – the mark of the mystery of the cross; not a sacrament, but what we call a ‘sacramental’ – the outward visible sign of an inward hidden reality. The heart must be converted to the way of the cross.

Our holy season begins with the mystery of the cross, and it will end with the mystery of the cross – a complete and whole cycle.

The first Sunday of this season offers us a sort of background to the practice of keeping the seasonal 40 days. It is of course, the narrative of our Lord’s experience of the desert.

All three of the synoptic evangelists, Matthew, Mark and Luke, tell us of the τεσσαράκοντα (NT), the forty days, and of the νηστέια, the fasting of our Lord. Both of these concepts recorded in the New Testament are real enough, as both these Greek terms are common usage for us here in Greece – Lent is called Sarakosti, and even McDonalds sells a nisteia burger, which doesn’t violate any of the Lenten fasting rules.

In this morning’s gospel St. Matthew expands on the episode by offering us a dialogue between Our Lord and Satan. There are reminiscences of the Book of Job in the way St. Matthew presents his material. In this book, God and Satan discuss the good man Job and strike something of a deal – Satan is allowed to tempt Job to see how resilient he is in adversity. The outcome is that no matter how Job is tempted to renounce his faith, he comes through terrible sufferings with integrity intact.

Our Lord certainly gets about in St. Matthew’s version of the Temptations in the Wilderness. One minute he is in the desert, the next he is on a pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem, and the next he is on a high mountain. I suppose this shows us that temptation is universal, and can be experienced by us anywhere – in a deserted place, on the top floor of a (polykatoikia) tower block, or looking out over the port of Piraeus and from the tip of Lykabettos hill in Athens.

Wherever humans are we take with us the temptations that the devil offers to Our Lord. Our desire to be powerful – stones into bread; our desire to be self sufficient and in control – throw yourself down, the angels will hold you up; and the dependency on possessions, and our capacity for corruption – the kingdoms of the world and their splendour. In brief it is the constant clash within us between the kingdom of Satan and the Kingdom of God, or as I prefer it, a kingdom made in our image, or a kingdom made in the image of God.

The context for this eternal clash is seen in the 2^nd chapter of the Book of Genesis; ‘The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord commanded the man “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat , for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”’ (Gen 2, 15-17)

We know the result, and we can blame the woman, or we can blame the serpent, or if we are desperate we can blame the apple, but we can’t get away from the stark reality – it is our choice that matters.

My mind wanders to the first Walt Disney production of Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book and the snake that tries to hypnotize young Mowgli in the tree – ‘Trust in me, just in me, close your eyes and trust in me’ – he hisses.

In our Lord’s forty day sojourn in the Judaean Wilderness, the ‘man-centred image’ is in conflict with the ‘God-centred’ image. Do we choose the kingdom made in man’s image, or the Kingdom that is God’s.

Each of knows what temptation feels like – I don’t have to tell you. What I do have to tell you is that based on today’s gospel the things that Satan offers Our Lord are rejected, and the Kingdom of God is supreme.

This was true for the starving Jesus in the desert, and it is true for all of us starving for spiritual wellness in a world bombarded by temptations. We may be at the beginning of Lent, thinking about temptation and penitence, temptation and serpents, temptation and human pride in, but our goal, our end, our destination, our conclusion is that through the cross we are placed once more in the Garden of God’s delight, in Paradise. The tree of death is truly the tree of life. Lent’s purpose of penitence is to serve Easter’s joy of forgiveness and reconciliation. We stray from the Father, but once again in Christ, we find our way home, to the place of our most natural habitat.