First Sunday of Lent, cycle A

Matthew 4:1-11

As some of you know, Joan and I have a great grandchild, who as far as we can tell is the cutest little girl in the world.  She’s about seven months old now, and between her parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, she gets a lot of attention.  I think she must believe she is the most important person in the world.  But that made me think about myself.  I’ve always believed, deep in my heart, that I’m the most important person in the world, in fact, that I’m the center of the universe, and I don’t know how the world could get along without me.  Now my brain tells me I’m wrong.  But that feeling of being at the center of things is common to all of us -- it’s human nature.

In today’s gospel, Jesus has just come from his baptism when he heard the words of the Father:  “This is my beloved”.  And then he goes off to fast for forty days and forty nights, the same number of days Noah’s ark was afloat; the same number of years the chosen people roamed around before settling in the promised land.  And it’s not surprising that he was hungry. 

Someone said that he was hungry, not just for food, but because after all this time fasting, he began to wonder if he really was beloved.  Jesus must have felt very mortal when he ended his fast.  Forty days is enough to make you lose a fifth of your body weight; it’s enough to make you feel so weak that you have trouble getting up from a sitting position.  The Spirit leads Jesus into the desert -- maybe the fast wasn’t entirely voluntary.  Jesus is hungry for food, yes, but also for reassurance that he is beloved.

Satan tempts Jesus, first telling him in essence, “If you are God's beloved, why don’t you turn these stones into bread?  And Jess answers, “Man does not live by bread alone.”  Another way to put it is: My being God’s blessed one doesn’t depend on whether I am full or empty, rich or poor, well fed or starving.

Satan then shows Jesus the kingdoms of the world and offers them all to him if he worships him.  In other words, “If you are God’s blessed one, why are you a nobody?  Because at this point in his life Jesus was just another peasant, putting in long days of hard work,  but never getting ahead.  That’s the way most people lived.  But Jesus replies, “I may be a nobody, but I can still be God’s blessed one.  Being blessed has nothing to do with fame or power.”

The third temptation is put forward.  Jesus is taken up to a tower and dared by Satan to prove he is blessed by throwing himself off the tower.  Because surely if you are blessed, Satan seems to be saying, God won’t let anything happen to you.  Jesus replies, in essence,  “Being God’s blessed one doesn’t have anything to do with special privilege, or miraculous blessings.  I’ll take the stairs, like everyone else.”  

Jesus decides that after all, he is God’s blessed one.  And you are as well, and I am, and each of us here, no matter what our circumstances.

And fasting is a chance to be feasting.  We trade earthly satisfactions for heavenly ones.  Fasting is a discipline to remove distractions and sharpen our spiritual senses.  When I was in fourth grade, we were all asked what we were giving up for Lent.  Most of us were giving up candy, sometimes more specifically, certain kinds of candy like Hershey bars.  One of my classmates volunteered that not only was she giving up candy, but the dentist told her to.  It isn't that candy and the other things we fast from are bad -- at least they shouldn’t be-or we shouldn't be doing them at all.  God likes to see us delighted by what he has put in front of us.  But he made them so that we would seek him as the one who gave them to us in love.  But we tend to get hung up by what delights us instead of looking beyond.  Saint Paul talks about those whose “god is the belly”.  When we give something up for a little while, we are acknowledging its goodness and our weakness.  We are making the choice to feast our spirit on our Father rather than feast our bodies on what God has made.  

Jesus, having fasted, is strong enough to resist the temptation to doubt his specialness, that he is the beloved of God.  And your fasting should do the same.  When you have completed your Lenten journey may you be even more convinced that you are God’s beloved, God’s special child.