The "Why" of Easter

A Protestant pastor says my homily this morning is probably going to flop.

I don’t take it personally. He thinks almost every Easter homily, Protestant and Catholic, is likely to fail.

Carey Nieuwhof says our sermons won’t connect with the people we want to reach the most —the folks who aren’t regularly in church. The seekers. The curious. The former members.

Where’s the problem and why isn’t there any easy fix?

Nieuwhof says that I and most other preachers, Catholic and Protestant alike, can't help talking today about what happened at Easter. We’re going to proclaim and exclaim the marvelous news that Jesus has risen from the dead.

The only problem is that you already know that. From the most devout soul in church to the most disillusioned, everyone knows that Easter is about the resurrection of the Lord. Even those who don’t believe that know what Easter is about.

So, the homily is “like knowing how a movie ends before you begin watching it; the suspense is gone.”

Year after year I preach about the “what” of Easter. Like countless others, I talk about what you already know. We don’t get from what to why.

Yet if we can’t figure out the “why” of Easter, we’ll never be changed by what we’re celebrating today.

In his blog post about Easter sermons, Carey Nieuwhof challenges his fellow pastors to preach the why; but he doesn’t tell us how to do it.

I came up with five answers to the question “why should Easter matter to me?”

One. Easter matters because it’s the foundation of faith. St. Peter says that there were people—trustworthy people, real people—who ate and drank with Jesus after he was crucified.

The Bible is full of appearances of the risen Lord, in different places, at different times, to different people. Once you believe that there really were eyewitnesses and that their testimony is reliable, you are getting pretty close to faith.

It’s not easy to deny the historic truth of Easter unless you think an awful lot of ancient history is also made up, because some of it rests on weaker documentation than the Resurrection.

And let’s not get too stuck on the “show me” argument—“I have to see him for myself.” St. John “saw and believed” when he went into the empty tomb, not when Jesus later appeared to him.

Two. Easter matters because it’s the start of something more. Much more. Jesus tells Mary Magdalene “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father.” Easter is the supreme moment, but it’s part of a continuous act of redemption that includes the Ascension and the sending of the Holy Spirit.

We’re not celebrating today a one-day wonder, but the high point in a drama with more acts to follow, and which continues to unfold—and to enfold us.

Three. Why Easter matters has much to do with us, with each of us. It may sound brash, but Easter is not only about Christ. It also about us. St. Paul says in our second reading “you have died, and your life is hidden in God.” When are we going to start to unpack that, if not today?

Each of us is a part of the Easter mystery, because when Christ is revealed, we “also will be revealed with him in glory.”

Is it any wonder that the second reading tells us to set our minds on things above? Do we think that truths as deep as these will sort themselves out without any effort on our part? Easter is an annual challenge to “seek the things that are above, where Christ is.”

You can sail sentimentally through Christmas, but you can’t really engage Easter without some work.

A fourth “why.” Easter arms and equips us against the greatest sorrows of life. If we’re suffering right now, this feast offers some relief. If we’re not, it gets us ready for when the time comes, as it does for everyone.

If, as I’ve said, Easter is not only about Christ but us as well, then his victory over suffering and death is our victory as well. It’s not a vague promise of redemption but a here-and-now triumph that we can claim as our own in times of trouble.

Finally, a fifth reason why Easter can make a difference in our lives: it puts everything else in perspective.

The opening prayer at Mass today says that the Son of God “unlocked for us the path to eternity.” Think about that. When Christ rose from the dead in a human body, he inserted humanity into eternity. Mortality, the most final thing about being human, is overcome at Easter.

I’ve been reading a book about what a rush we are all in. It talks about the stress of trying to get everything done or wanting to do everything. We suffer from what the author calls “existential overwhelm.”

But the book says “premodern people weren’t much troubled by such thoughts, partly because they believed in an afterlife: there was no particular pressure to ‘get the most out of’ their limited time, because as far as they were concerned, it wasn’t limited, and in any case, earthly life was but a relatively insignificant prelude to the most important part.”

Easter is not the end of a story but the beginning. We can make that story our own.

Preachers will never stop proclaiming the what of Easter. There’s a good reason we all know what we are celebrating. But today let’s remember why Christ rose from the dead: to make all the difference, for all of us.

Our Exodus: Freedom from Slavery to Sin and Fear

 

We’ve all seen romantic comedies—or even romantic tragedies—where a poor bride is left at the altar, standing in the middle of a beautifully decorated church full of people.

I was afraid that this year’s Easter Vigil would look something like that. We had no one to baptize, and although the Vigil has many other wonderful aspects, baptism is an important one.

But I saw one rom-com where there was a man ready to step into the groom’s shoes and marry the bride, whom he’d loved all along.

Tonight, Joseph Newfield is playing that role. After attending Alpha and just several weeks into our RCIA program, he asked to be baptized.

I had resigned myself to the disappointment of a Vigil without a baptism, so I didn’t get too excited until Joseph and I had a serious conversation about his faith journey and knowledge of Christ and his Church.

And then I got excited. It was clear that the Lord had been leading him well before Alpha and RCIA.

Joseph, we thank God that he has led you here. And not just because you're playing a role at our Easter Vigil! 

We also pray that God will continue to lead you in the days ahead. It has been many centuries since the Christian faith has been this difficult in what were formerly Christian societies.

Joseph, while preparing for tonight, you learned that the Easter Vigil has seven readings from the Old Testament. The Church only insists on three. But whatever a parish chooses to do, one of the seven is never omitted.

That reading is from the fourteenth chapter of Exodus, where the chosen people are led through the waters of the sea, escaping from Pharaoh and his army.

There’s a good reason why we always read this passage at the Vigil: the Israelites are saved by water, clearly prefiguring the sacrament of Baptism.

The Israelites are led through the darkness by a divine light, just as our church and our hearts were illuminated by the light of Christ as we began this liturgy tonight.

God saved his chosen people from slavery to Pharaoh by leading them to freedom.  Now Christ has saved his chosen ones from slavery to sin by leading them to freedom in baptism.

Joseph, you were in Victoria a few Sundays ago when I preached about the Jefferson Bible—the bible that President Thomas Jefferson produced by cutting out all the miracles, including the Resurrection.

Since that Sunday, I’ve come across another edited version of the scriptures called “the Slave Bible,” currently on display in Washington, D.C.

The miracles are there all right, and the Resurrection too.  What the Slave Bible omits is the story of the Passover and the Exodus that is so important tonight. As the name suggests, this was a bible produced for slaves. Its editors didn’t want slaves in the Caribbean being inspired by Moses. It didn’t want to encourage the hope for freedom from oppression.

We roll our eyes at the Jefferson Bible, and we lament the attitudes that gave rise to the Slave Bible. No one is likely to publish a bible nowadays that has no miracles or no Exodus.

But, Joseph, that doesn’t mean you won’t have to confront the errors that these books contained. The world will try very hard to convince you that the miracles of Jesus are, at best, theatre and that his Resurrection is mainly an excuse to eat too much chocolate.

Even more seriously, the world today tempts us to ignore the call to freedom that resounds in the scriptures. The world calls us daily to slavery—in small ways, by promoting selfishness and sin, and in big ways by addicting us to comfort, lust, and success.

Joseph, you will receive many blessings and graces on this night of your baptism. Among them is freedom. As St. Paul says, “you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.”

Paul adds in the next chapter “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” Accept with gratitude and hope the gift of freedom promised to his disciples.

Let me conclude with words of St. Peter. God has “called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”  

That’s as good a summary of this night as any. So now let us step into the light as we celebrate the sacraments of baptism and confirmation.

Holy Thursday: A Family Affair

If you don’t mind, I think I’ll pull up a chair. After all, tonight’s liturgy is a family affair.

At Easter we hope to have many visitors—folks who’ve never been to Mass before or who only come once or twice a year like to join us on Easter morning. We’re happy to have them.

But tonight, it’s “just us.” A few welcome visitors, but mostly the faithful flock—those who turn up regularly for our celebrations, big and small.

The crowd at Easter is like a big wedding reception. Holy Thursday’s more like Sunday dinner.

Which isn’t to say the Church doesn’t take you all seriously! After all, the priest is instructed to give a homily “in which light is shed on the principal mysteries that are commemorated at the Mass, namely the institution of the Holy Eucharist and of the priestly Order, and the commandment of the Lord concerning fraternal charity.”

The institution of the Eucharist and the priesthood, and the Lord’s command to love one another.

That’s a lot of light to shed!

But I am not lighting up these things for a bunch of people sitting in the dark. You, faithful members of the parish family, already know what Jesus did at the Last Supper. You’ve heard his words “This is my Body” hundreds if not thousands of times.

You’ve lived the moment when He broke the bread over and over again, celebrating Sunday after Sunday “as a festival to the Lord”  as the Lord commanded the Chosen People to do at Passover.

 Your support for me and the many other priests who have served at Christ the Redeemer has been founded on a great love for Christ’s priesthood. You express your trust in the priesthood every time you come to us in Confession, a trust that even decades of scandal have not been able to extinguish.

As for “the commandment of the Lord concerning fraternal charity” … well, you are the ones who have been helping to feed the poor, shelter the refugees, support prisoners, educate the young, and visit the elderly and ill. Do I need to connect these works of generosity and service to the Mass?

Our parish is centered on the Mass; it revolves around the Mass; all its charitable outreach flows from the altar, where we begin by thanking God for his gifts to us.

If there is one thing that I might say to you, the insiders of our parish, it is simply thank you. You know well that you carry much more than your fair share of the load when it comes to serving your brothers and sisters.

Pope Francis highlighted the service we give to one another in his homily for Holy Thursday this year.  He said that we wash each other’s feet, we serve one another. One serves the other, without self-interest.

Christ’s action on Holy Thursday has been interpreted over the centuries as washing the feet of the poor, and that’s important symbolism for sure. The Pope himself washes the feet of prisoners each year.

But we have to start by washing feet of our fellow parishioners. If we imitate the example of Jesus, then we will have the kind of strong community that reaches out beyond itself.

As I said, we’re deeply grateful to the twenty percent who do eighty percent of the serving, donating, reading, and volunteering that makes our parish able to fulfill the Lord’s commands “do as I have done to you” and “do this in remembrance of me.”

Most of the twenty percent are here tonight. But if you’re someone who hasn’t found your place in parish ministry and service, I invite you to think about that this evening, and pray in the words of our Psalm: “How can I repay the Lord for his goodness to me.”

It’s not a so-called rhetorical question. God asks a small return on the investment he has made in us, the sacrifice of his own Son. What can we do to serve?

I won’t list the many needs of the parish in these difficult days. They are many. Just ask God what you can do, and then let us know you are willing. We’ll help you find a way to repay his goodness without strain or stress.

To the twenty percenters: you know as well as I do where your strength and commitment comes from. It comes from your participation in the Eucharist and your membership in this Eucharistic community.

But precisely because you love the Eucharist and the family of faith, you are also the ones most sad when family members and friends stop attending Mass. You understand completely that the Sunday celebration is “a perpetual ordinance”—a command Jesus has given every generation in every age.

How can so many of the young—and the not-so-young—turn away from this “thanksgiving sacrifice”?

I’m not sure of all the reasons—there are many—but I know it’s time we did something about it.

As I thought about it, I realized that getting people back to Mass or getting people to Mass is not the first step on our journey. For those we want to invite to explore Christian faith, the Sunday Mass can be confusing.

Nothing makes you feel like an outsider so fast as attending an event where you feel you’re the only one who doesn’t know what’s going on.

And if you’re a Catholic who stopped attending Mass a while back, you might be worrying that people are thinking “where has he been?” or might even ask you the question!

This Lent I was convinced that although the Eucharist must be the centre of our efforts at inviting people into or back to the Church, inviting them to or back to Mass isn’t likely to be effective.

That might sound contradictory. So let me explain what happened to me Saturday nights this past Lent. I sat in the church during a one-hour adoration event we called “Water in the Desert.”

Unlike Mass, nothing was expected of me or anyone else. The Lord looked at us from the altar and we looked at Him. I didn’t have to sing, which was good because I didn’t know the songs anyway. The music was like prayerful oil poured out from the loft.

A highlight of each evening was a parishioner’s personal story of faith. Each was unique but they were all powerful and moving.

Two things happened for me at this oasis. My otherwise dry and dreary Lent was renewed, at least for a time. Second, and most important, I became convinced that we need times of quiet reflection before the Blessed Sacrament to restore our weariness and prepare us to share fully in the Sunday Mass.

And there was something more. I felt the Holy Spirit saying that we need something like those Saturday nights to which we can invite the unchurched, uncertain, or unhappy. We need peaceful places that can introduce people to the Eucharistic mystery without making them feel it’s mysterious.

Some of the generous leaders of “Water in the Desert” seemed to have felt the same way, because they volunteered on the final night to keep it going monthly.

We’ll be telling you, faithful friends more about this in the weeks ahead. But on this holy night as we celebrate Christ’s gift of Himself, let us pray that we have fresh opportunities to share that gift with others.

If you are one of those already living the Eucharistic life, pray now that the Lord will show you whom you should bring with you when we announce our next peaceful time of adoration, song, and witness.

Giving others a chance to share what we celebrate is a more perfect act of charity than washing their feet.

And if you yourself are longing to get more out of Sunday Mass, pray now to find the commitment to join the first night of adoration when the date is announced.

As we offer tonight “a thanksgiving sacrifice” and “call on the name of the Lord,” we can be confident the Lord will hear our prayers.

Palm Sunday: More than Words

I'm not much for recycling my homilies... but since my homily in 2010 recycled one from St. Gregory Nazianzen from the fourth century, I think it has stood the test of time, especially since I am only preaching once this Palm Sunday, at a sparsely attended Saturday afternoon Mass. Tomorrow I fly to Toronto to accompany my brother Stephen and his wife during his surgery on Monday.

There’s a famous scene in Shakespeare where Polonius asks Hamlet what he is reading. Hamlet replies “Words, words, words.”

What have we just heard? Certainly there were words and words in the long account of our Lord’s passion. But was there more than words? How is our reading of the passion—or of any Gospel—different from reading a history book, or a newspaper?

To answer this question, we need to start with the prologue of St. John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Obviously, for Christians, “word” has more than one meaning. But these meanings are not unrelated.

Jesus is the Word of God; the Word of God is God. The Bible is the Word of God. And the written Word of God is made up of, obviously, words.

To discuss any one of these uses of the word “word” would take us longer than today's Gospel. I only want to point out that the solemn reading of the Passion is not only about the words on the page; it is not only about the Word of God, the Scriptures. It is an encounter with the Word of God, God himself.

As we listened to the words of St. Luke, we were invited to enter into what we heard—not through the time travel of modern movies, but by the timeless travel of the heart and spirit.

Contemplating the Word himself as we hear the account of his passion, we can answer the question posed by the old spiritual “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”

In an ancient sermon, St. Gregory Nazianzen invites us to “take our part in the Passover...not in a literal way, but according to the teaching of the Gospel; not in an imperfect way, but perfectly; not only for a time, but eternally.”

He calls us to “sacrifice ourselves to God, each day and in everything we do, accepting all that happens to us for the sake of the Word, imitating his passion by our sufferings, and honouring his blood by shedding our own. We must be ready to be crucified.”

He says that each of us has a role in this timeless Passion Play. “If you are a Simon of Cyrene,” St. Gregory says, “take up your cross and follow Christ. If you are crucified beside him like one of the thieves, now, like the good thief, acknowledge your God.”

“If you are a Joseph of Arimathea, go to the one who ordered his crucifixion, and ask for Christ’s body. ... If you are a Nicodemus, like the man who worshipped God by night, bring spices and prepare Christ’s body for burial.”

“If you are one of the Marys, or Salome, or Joanna, weep in the early morning. Be the first to see the stone rolled back, and even the angels perhaps, and Jesus himself.”

So, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”

We answer yes. We were there, and we are there. The passion is not “then,” it is now.

We walk the way of the Cross with the Lord, and we share even now in his suffering and death. And we shall therefore share too in his Resurrection.

Don't Cut and Paste Your Bible (Lent.3.C)

There’s probably not a single person in the congregation—and certainly not a single person listening online—who doesn’t know what it means to cut and paste. You highlight the text you want to move, perform a few keystrokes, and you’ve edited your text.

As with many common expressions, we rarely if ever think of where this comes from. One of the ways of editing in the days before computers or even typewriters was cutting a text in strips and pasting it on a sheet with glue.

That’s exactly what Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States, did with the Bible. Using a razor and glue, Jefferson cut and pasted until he had a book without miracles, hard sayings, or the divinity of Christ.

The so-called Jefferson Bible ends as the stone is rolled over the entrance to the Lord’s tomb.

It’s not widely known that the full first name of our former assistant pastor, Father Jeff, is Jefferson. Certainly, he and Thomas Jefferson were kindred spirits in one respect since he did take the time to improve some of the grammar in the King James Version during his project!

The Jefferson Bible is more than a historical curiosity: it’s a monument to a way of thinking about Christianity that’s even more popular today than it was in 1804.

Almost all of us have a sort of Bible in our heads from which we’ve cut out some of the teachings of Christ. We discount some of the harder sayings because they don’t square with modern psychology or our own ideas.

The philosopher Peter Kreeft asks, “Do we judge God’s word, or do we let it judge us?” 

All too often we judge God’s Word. And that can take us dangerously close to what Kreeft calls “a new religion, a religion that comes from us, not from God.”(Food for the Soul, Reflections on the Mass Readings, Cycle C, Third Sunday of Lent.)

The second reading today would be a prime candidate for some cut-and-pasting. St. Paul reminds us of the harsh fate of the unfaithful in the Old Testament. Nowhere do we find the “bad news” of the Bible more than in the stories of the Old Testament; nowhere else do we encounter the wrath of God as much.

In fact, the contrast between God in the Old Testament and the New can lead some people to think they are two different Beings.

Yet not only does St. Paul remind us of these hard truths, but he also threatens us with the same fate as some ancient Israelites. “Do not complain,” he says, “as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer.”

The hard stories of the Old Testament were recorded for our instruction, firmly alongside the merciful teachings of Christ.

Perhaps we could just forget about Paul, who was known to be rather an irritable fellow. My own father would say of something he didn’t like in Paul, “he must have hit his head when he fell off the horse.”

But we can’t forget about Jesus, who adds his own warning to us in today’s Gospel.

How many of us have long ago edited out his words “unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did”?

And Jesus illustrates his point with a story about the owner of a vineyard who has grown impatient with a fruitless tree. In the context, even the one-year reprieve from the axe is not entirely comforting.

Is there anyone who isn’t convinced that many Catholics today have become quite selective in their reading of the Scriptures and their acceptance of Church teaching?

I could convince you instantly if I had the courage. Were I to lay out in uncompromising detail two or three of the toughest teachings of Jesus there would be pickets around the church in hours—and some of them might even be members of the congregation.

I’m not talking only about controversial points of morality. My friend Ralph Martin, a leader in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal from its earliest days, has faced sharp criticism for teaching without compromise a clear-as-a-bell Scriptural doctrine.

He bases his teaching squarely on Jesus, who said that “the gate is wide, and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” Mt 7:13-14

He says, “the words of Jesus could scarcely be clearer.”

And yet despite those words, and Church teaching and tradition, many of us think the opposite is true, even if we wouldn’t stand up and say so. Hell may exist, we’ll admit, but it’s probably empty. We’re all going to heaven, whatever we think, do, or say.

I’m a sinner myself, so I like that idea as much as anyone. It’s just that we can’t square it with what Jesus taught.

The idea that most if not all of us will be saved has specific consequences. For starters, if we don’t believe that the message of Jesus is a life-or-death matter, we have little reason to share it with those who don’t believe. And if we’re all going to heaven, there’s little reason to stand up or to grieve when our children or siblings embrace an immoral lifestyle.

And, of course, there’s much less reason to resist sin in our own lives.

This mid-point in Lent is meant as a wakeup call for us. One of the reasons for Lent and penance is to remind us that the road to life is not easy.

Ralph Martin writes that “All around us we see men and women shutting out the truth of the gospel and settling for a way that seems easier. You can have more of what you want now.  That’s what the world tells us. You can disobey the commands of God seemingly without consequence.

“You can add those things of God that attract you to the things of this world. You can compromise on the truth and get away with it. You do not need to deny yourself, to take up your cross and to follow Christ.

“You can take the easy way.”

We should be grateful for God’s patience, God who always seems willing to give us extra time to produce fruit that shows our repentance. But we should not try God’s patience. As St. Paul says, “now is the acceptable time… now is the day of salvation.”

If we’ve walked the wide and easy path thus far in Lent, it’s time to change course and to head in the direction that leads to life.

We can do that in several ways. First, by starting or renewing your Lenten penance. If you got off to a bad start, as I did, now’s the time for a fresh start.

Second, by reflecting on what our second reading says about those thirsty Israelites who drank water from the rock during their journey through the desert. St. Paul tells us that the rock was Christ, who calls himself the living water.

If you’ve been complaining, or dry, or in some way displeasing God, come to church this Saturday at 7 for an evening of peace and prayer, asking God to reorient your heart. It’s no accident that our Lenten adoration event is called “Water in the Desert.”

Finally, by looking at our schedule of regular and extra confessions with its many options and marking your calendars as a firm commitment to meet the Lord in this healing sacrament.

Whatever you do, don’t play the busy-ness card. God called Moses in the middle of his workday, while he was tending his father-in-law’s sheep. Moses took his eyes off the sheep long enough to look towards the burning bush and was rewarded by an intimate revelation of God.

Cut and paste that moment into your own life, and God will reveal himself if you’ll stand beside him on holy ground during the remaining days of Lent.

Transfiguration not only for the Apostles (Lent 2.C)

 

I’ve never forgotten the excellent homily one of my professors gave when I was in the seminary. Unfortunately, when I heard it a second time, I hadn’t forgotten the first time he’d preached it, four years earlier.

Msgr. McConnon was, shall we say, recycling his material. He didn’t think we’d remember. But we did.

Maybe he did it on purpose. Certainly it taught me that if I wanted to reuse a homily, it better be at least five years old.

This morning I am going to recycle thoughts that are only one year old—from a homily I have on the second Sunday of Lent, 2021> Not because I am lazy because I think it’s very interesting to reflect on where we find ourselves one year later.

On this day last year I talked about reading a chapter of a book titled “My Soul is Tired.” I confessed that those words captured exactly how I felt that Sunday. 

And today I say it again: My soul is tired.

I’m sure many of you feel the same way; in fact, I know many of you feel the same way, since you’ve told me so.

Not my heaviness or yours comes directly from the pandemic. Some are just coincidence. But there’s a lot happening to make our souls feel weary.

In his book Heartstorming: Creating a Place God Can Call Home, Robert Wicks writes about the “gray” times in our lives. He says that we can truly benefit from them if we don’t just ignore or play down our troubled feelings.

Our “low” points, he says, can bring spiritual blessings if we intentionally bring God into the times that are “difficult, disappointing, troubling, confusing… or sad.”

I don’t know about you, but my first thought is to ask God to get rid of these feelings, not to invite him in. But Wicks says by exploring them with God we can learn a great deal about ourselves and, more importantly, a great deal about God’s love.

But we can’t stop at exploring our own lows… today the Gospel invites us to explore one of the great highs in the lives of three apostles. And to learn from their experience.

First of all, the Transfiguration shows us how much Jesus cares about how we feel. Since the Transfiguration is only a preview of the Resurrection, what’s most important is not what happened but why it happened.

Jesus is strengthening three key disciples to face his suffering and death. He cares enough to want to prepare them in advance with a preview of the happy ending to the story of his Passion.

He wants us too to be strengthened by his Resurrection from the dead—to be strong enough to face any and every trial. As I said in a funeral homily yesterday,  once we believe that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, everything else is only relative.

The Transfiguration also says something to us as the restrictions on Mass attendance disappear. Jesus granted Peter and James and John more than knowledge; he gave them an experience—an experience not only of himself but of Elijah and Moses, who were so present on the mountain that Peter wanted to build them each a little mountain chalet.

Two thousand years later, Jesus wants to give us that experience—an experience of his glory, the Law and the Prophets, and each other. He wants to gather us around him, right here in this church.

The live stream Mass has been a godsend in the darkest days of the pandemic. But Christians are an experiential, incarnational, and existential community. We are meant to gather. It is good for use to be here, as Peter said to Jesus.

The beginning of the end of our isolation from one another has arrived. And unless we have medical reasons we should be eager o be back in church, every Sunday.

And let’s do some thinking about that book Heartstorming, with its lovely subtitle Creating a Place God Can Call Home.  As we move out of these “gray times,” let’s work and making our parish a place God can call home.

Obviously those of you who are at Mass today don’t need to be told how good it is to be here—to be back as a community of faith gathered around the altar, a Mount of Transfiguration for each of us.

But you all know someone who is hesitating—call them and tell them how good it is to be here; remind them of the joys of worshipping in person. And these gray times come slowly to an end, invite them to walk into the light that can transfigure us all.

There's an excellent way to invite the hesitant back to church: our "Water in the Desert" evening of quiet, music, and adoration every Saturday evening in Lent at 7 pm. Last night lifted me right out of my gray zone!

Having Scripture at the Ready in Times of Temptation or Trial (Lent 1.C)

I’m conducting a survey this morning. But don’t worry—I won’t be asking you to raise your hands or go online to answer questions.

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.