But please answer this one right now: do you have a favourite verse from the Bible?
I’ll stop for a second so you can think about it. Are there words from Scripture that straight to your mind when I ask if you have a favourite saying?
Now that you’ve thought about it, I will announce the results of the survey. More than half of us answered no. There’s no verse from Scripture that is printed clearly on our minds or hearts.
Okay, that wasn’t a very scientific survey! The only answer I can report is mine—I do have a favourite verse, as many of you know. But I sure didn’t have one for more than half of my life.
If I am right, the complex readings for this first Sunday have Lent contain a very simple lesson that’s well worth learning.
First of all, there’s great encouragement for those who answered no and who wish they did have a scriptural saying at the center of their heart or mind. In the second reading today, St. Paul—quoting Moses—says “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart.”
A treasured promise from the Bible is not found in research, but in your heart. It arises from your experience of God in your life. But it can’t stay deep in the heart if it’s to be effective. We need that Scripture verse on our lips, quoting it often, even if only to ourselves.
And that’s just the warmup. In today’s Gospel, Jesus gives us the perfect example of the power of God’s word when we face difficulties of every kind.
Life is full of challenges. Not everyone faces the same ones. Some deal with illness, others with emotional pain, a few with failure.
But everyone faces temptations. Maybe that’s why we read the story of the devil’s temptation of Christ every year on the first Sunday in Lent. No-one can say they can’t relate. Being tempted in one way or another is a universal experience.
To be offered practical help in dealing with temptation at the very beginning of Lent is a blessing for all of us.
We might miss the lesson of today’s story if we’re distracted by the drama. Few passages in the Gospels are more striking and powerful.
The lesson is not in the drama, not in the devil’s words.
The lesson isn’t even in Jesus’ words. He speaks no words of his own in this earthshaking conversation between good and evil. All our Lord does is quote three short texts from the Old Testament.
What quotes they are! All three are from the Book of Deuteronomy. Each of them perfect for demolishing each of Satan’s three big lies.
Jesus says in the Gospel of John “the truth will set you free.” Today we see how the truth—the truth of God’s word—will also bind Satan.
Notice that Satan himself quotes Psalm 91. (The Church reads that psalm at Mass today, perhaps to insult him.)
As Shakespeare wrote in the Merchant of Venice, “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.” We’re not talking about dueling verses here. When the Letter to the Hebrews tells us that “the word of God is living and active,” it’s not talking about words on a page, but the word wielded in faith as a sword of truth.
The Gospel writers tell almost every story in the briefest way possible; this is one of the amazing aspects of the Bible as literature. But I think the encounter between the devil and Jesus in the wilderness probably was brief. Jesus didn’t need to ask the devil for some time to think over his proposals.
Rather, the Scripture verses that neutralized these temptations likely came swiftly to the lips of Jesus. Not necessarily because he was God, having a perfect biblical database, but because he learned these words as a child.
Jesus drew on human memory of lessons learned as a Jewish boy. But not by recalling the memory work he was no doubt assigned—many times since he’d reflected on these key verses from the Torah, the core of Israel’s faith.
For Jesus, the word was near, on his lips and in his heart.
I started by asking if you had a favourite verse of Scripture. But one treasured line does not meet every situation. It’s just the start of learning to turn to the Bible when we’re confronted with temptations or tough decisions.
Look at the Gospel again. The first temptation is the one most of us can relate to easily. Who hasn’t been tempted to put the material ahead of the spiritual?
We don’t want any of our human hungers—for food, for rest, for comfort—to take second place to our religious duties. We find immediate relief from the stress of getting up for Mass by deciding we really need more sleep.
The second temptation rarely comes to us the way the devil presented it to Jesus. We’re rarely offered a stark choice of choosing the world and losing our soul. Yet many have temptations to compromise with the world by staying silent in the face of an injustice at work or school, or by refusing to stand up for our faith. We serve false Gods of influence, acceptance, even power or money.
It's safe to say the third temptation comes to us only indirectly. We think that God will protect us from the consequences of our wrong choices or imprudent living.
The three verses that Jesus uses to confront the three temptations might not be the three we would choose to memorize ourselves, but at least one of them should be in every Christian’s spiritual toolkit: “Man does not live on bread alone.”
As an example of another Scripture we can all use in various times of difficulty, Father Robert Spitzer tells us that “Thy will be done” is one of his favourite prayers.
I offer you a Lenten challenge. When you get home write three familiar lines of Scripture on a piece of paper and ask which one you should memorize for emergencies.
If nothing comes to mind, Google “favourite Bible verses” and see what stands out.
And if you find this too difficult, there’s a shortcut in today’s readings. St. Paul says, “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.
Even more simply, he writes “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” And in his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul tells us that “no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.”
“Jesus is Lord” is the shortest Christian creed. Those three words alone have the power to send the devil packing.
No comments:
Post a Comment