Over the last few weeks I have been doing a bit of study in the preaching field as part of a D. Min program at the Aquinas Institute of Theology, St Louis, Missouri, USA. They offer the only catholic doctoral course in preaching in the world (as far as I know) We are a cohort of about 18 students from all kinds of back grounds, and from all over the USA, Canada and myself from Ireland. So apologies for not being up to speed.
A request for prayers:
Can you please pray for a priest of my own diocese who is ill. He is an eminent homiletician and teacher. He has been unwell in recent days.
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I don’t know why it has upset me this much. I have no personal connection with Japan. It is on the far side of the world, culturally and socially it is even further away. I have never been there, yet still the very thought of the tsunami and earthquake that occurred last Friday, upsets me to the depths of my being. Why? I suppose there are the obvious reasons. The carnage has been immense. A country that we associate with Toyota and Sony, with economic power, with strength, has been brought to its knees by the power of nature. The devastation is unspeakable. Even at this stage, there is no way of knowing how many people lost their lives; no doubt the human cost will be high.
They were not the reasons for my disquiet, howerver. I will tell you what it was. It was the wave. Not the blue wave out in the sea, but the terrible wave that broke on the shore and pushed its way so savagely far into the county side. The pictures on the television were horrendous. House, cars, boats, roads; taken away without as much as an exertion of force. Field after field engulfed; and it never stopped, on and on. There was one clip on a news report that showed some horses being swept away. You can only begin to imagine how many people were mangled in that wave of death.
It seemed almost unnatural. Waves should not be like that. They should be nice and blue and gentle. They should be by the coast on holidays, in the sunshine. If they are going to be rough, at least they should remember their place; out at sea, not among us. The land is for people and animals and trees; not the ocean. The Japanese tsunami last Friday was a like a monster, a demon, a devil; something from hell not heaven or earth. It was terrifying. We came face to face with evil; natural evil, but still evil. It is as if nature conspired against us. The beauty of God’s creation gone all wrong, so many people are now suffering the loss of homes, livelihood, loved ones, life itself. You cannot but be terrified in the face of it all.
The Gospel, on this the first Sunday of Lent, brings us face to face with evil. We are told that Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. He spent forty out there, fasting and praying, all by himself. Living here in a lush and green country it is hard to picture the desert, but we all can imagine it in our minds eye. It is dry, arid and lonely, cold at night, burning hot by night. He goes there alone. Normally you expect Jesus to be crowded by disciples and sick people, in the desert he is with no one, but God….and the devil.
We see that three times the devil tempts Jesus. “Who are you?” he seems to say. “You are not like the rest of them, who are you?” He asks the Lord to change stones into bread, he dares him to jump from the very highest point of the Temple in Jerusalem and offers to him the kingdoms of earth. Again and again he offers to Jesus what is expected to bring happiness and again and again He answers the devil back until he is either bored or sore, and walks away. Christ is then alone with the angels, who care for him. What were these temptations? It is almost bizarre to imagine Jesus being tempted to do something that was wrong. On the face of it, what the devil was asking Jesus to do does not seem that unreasonable. If he could feed five thousand men, to say nothing of women and children, I think it would be very easy for him to change a few stones into bread. If Jesus could change water into wine, he could change rocks into loves. Again, if he could go skipping across the Sea of Galilee, a fall from the Temple would be no issue. But there is clearly something deep going on here. The stones and kingdoms are incidental to story. The stakes are much higher.
So what was the devil doing? Jesus was about to being his ministry of proclaiming the Kingdom of God. He had just been baptized by John in the Jordon. He was on the verge of reveling himself to the whole world. He had heard the voice of the Father confirming what he had known for a long time – he was the Christ, the anointed one. Then the devil comes to him and puts him to the test. “If you are the Son of God….use your power. If you are the Son of God take control. Put yourself first.” He could have had, but he did not.
We are good by nature. We were made good. I am sure that even including the most vicious of people, no one is born bad. We are like the ocean that is full of energy and life. Sometimes we can be a bit choppy on the surface, but we all have incredible depths that only God can possibly understand. The storms of life can stir us up and we can hurl ourselves against the beach and cliffs, most of the time we stay within our limits. There are times, however, just like the tsunami, when we can be sources of great harm. When we give into the temptations of gospel, when we put ourselves first at the expense of others, we can be as bad and destructive as anything nature can throw at us.
I believe that there is only one sin. We call this sin by all kinds of names; theft, apostasy, murder, dishonesty, adultery; but at the very core of things there is only one sin. When we put ourselves first at the cost and expense of others – then we truly sin. Jesus could have listened to the tempter and with a click of his fingers he could have reveled himself once and for all. There would have been no cross, no pain, no rejection; all could have been dispensed with. In a few weeks we see him in the garden; “Father, let this cup pass me by.” He didn’t, and why? WHAT GOOD WOULD THAT HAVE BEEN TO US? Jesus did not put himself first, because he came for us, not himself. He carried the Cross and suffered temptation because we do. Don’t forget he is truly God and truly Human. Jesus did not come among us to take the cross away; he came to help us carry it. He did not come to remove our freedom, we can still sin, he came to forgive sin and give us all the strength to do everything we can to resist it. Sin brings pain. When I refuse to love, when I put myself first, when I do not listen to the Spirit, the beautiful ocean of my love gets stirred up. It becomes violent. It pushes in land and leaves in its wake a path of hurt, broken hearts, bitterness and disappointment. My personal tsunami can be as destructive as the waves that battered North East Japan.
So where do we go from here? Have I painted an awful picture? Well, you know, this season of Lent can be a great opportunity for each of us as we try to become what God wants us to be. Even the name Lent offers us great hope. In other languages like Latin and Italian, this season is named after the forty days: quadragesima or quaresima. In English Lent comes from an old English word for spring. The buds and flowers come to life when the light and heat of the sun increases. They don’t need to do anything, except to respond. In Lent we can do the same, we can put ourselves into the light God’s love, and we will grow. Fasting, self denial, prayer, almsgiving are the tools we use. The next few weeks give us a change to bloom and grow, to mend harm we may have done, to forgive and be forgiven.
God knows what the final result of the earthquake in Japan will be. Many will die, many more will have lost everything (Please God the nuclear power stations will be controlled.) In the aftermath we will also see great heroism and self-sacrifice as a nation and world will rally to assist. As we move through Lent we will see the story unfold. As we move through Lent we too will witness the drama of faith play out in our lives. Out of the darkness the light will shine. May this Lent give us a chance to come into the light, for our own good and the good of others, as we journey to Easter through the desert, Jerusalem and Calvary.
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