The long pause

Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent, Year A (February 26, 2023).

View the scripture readings and the Collect of the Day: First Sunday in Lent (Year A)

Preached at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Hyde Park, NY. A video of our whole 10 am service for the First Sunday in Lent (February 26, 2023) is available here.

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Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. Matthew 4:1

Edited Transcript

May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Please be seated.

We begin this season of Lent with a story that many of us have probably heard many times before. It's the story of Jesus in the wilderness, having a conversation with the tempter, the adversary. And it's important to put this conversation in the context of readings we've heard in the season leading up to Lent, i.e., the season after the Epiphany.

Remember that Jesus is here in the desert; he spends 40 days in the wilderness by himself without eating right after he is baptized by John the Baptist, in the river Jordan. And you remember when he is baptized that the heavens open and the Holy Spirit descends like a dove and tells Jesus and everybody else in earshot who Jesus is! "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." And then it seems that that very same Spirit then drives him from that place and into the wilderness where he spends forty days by himself.

And then after these forty days, and after he has this conversation with the devil, he returns, and he starts collecting those apostles. He starts seeing folks fishing and saying, "Come, follow me." And that's a story we also heard and studied in this season leading up to Lent.

So we haven't yet looked at this story with Jesus and the wilderness, although we did the baptism and we looked at the call stories of some of the apostles. But now we're going to that story of what happened in between.

So Jesus receives his identity at baptism and he begins his ministry by bringing people alongside him. But in between those two things, there's a long pause, right? And that's what we're talking about today.

It's really interesting to think about, why is there a long pause? We don't have a lot of this kind of "long pause" in our ordinary day-to-day lives. So often I get an idea and and I go and do it right away. I might not even pause to think about it.

Much less do we have time to really sit in silence, in waiting, to fast, to take nothing in and to take no action. That's what Jesus did! For forty days! His only thing that he took with him was that message from the Spirit: "You are my Beloved Son with whom I'm well pleased."

And if that were me, I would've been rushing off to save the world! But Jesus takes a long pause: to take that in and to think about what that means.

It's very tempting, when you're full of inspiration, to rush out, to take action, right? In fact, that's what the devil is tempting him to do.

St. Ignatius, who was the founder of the Jesuits, looked at these three temptations of Jesus and pointed out that they're all good things! They're not like temptations to do wicked things in the way we might think of temptation, like, "Ooh, don't eat that cake." Or like, "Oh, don't look at that person." They're all good things! Ignatius pointed out that they're all tempting in the sense that they are good. But also, they're also all tempting in the sense that Jesus did them at some point in his life.

Take the first one: You must be hungry. Why don't you turn these stones into bread? Well, first of all, there's nothing with eating. Second of all, Jesus could make bread. Third of all, Jesus did many times make abundant bread to feed the hungry out of nothing, out of very little. Jesus had that power, and that's a power he would exercise. But he said, this is not the time and the place. This is my pause to listen, not for what I want to do, but for what God wants.

Second, the devil says, "Let's go up on the top of the temple. Now you are the Son of God, right? Didn't God say that if you even got close to a stone, God would protect you from hurting your little toe? Why don't you throw yourself off the temple? Because God said that God would bear you up on angel's wings!" There was a time in Jesus' life when he gave up his life freely, when he sacrificed his life and gave everything over to the care of God, trusting God to do what God would do with his body, with his life. But this was not that time. It's possible that Jesus even had an inkling of where his life and his ministry would go. But he knew this is not the time. And so he said, no, we don't tempt God. But he would offer everything.

And then the third temptation is to go up on a high mountaintop where Jesus could see all the kingdoms of the world. Now, wouldn't it be good if instead of this president or that king or that emperor, we had the fully human and fully divine in charge of our government? That would be a fine thing. And wouldn't Jesus have known the good that he could have done if he had all that power? And after he died and was resurrected, we we know that he is now the King, and that in the fullness of time, God will put all things in subjection under his feet. But there in the desert was not the time. It was a time to pause, to make sure that Jesus was doing not what Jesus wanted, not the good that Jesus wanted, but only the good that God wants.

We aren't usually tempted by things we know are no good to do! What's most tempting for us is that good that we believe we can do. What's most tempting for us is to run out, without thinking, without pausing to know what it is that God really wants for us.

Ignatius' insight is so helpful for us now. When our lives are just so full, so busy, that we can run from one good thing to the next good thing, and say yes to this, and yes to this and yes to this. And we find that we're so busy, we can't breathe. We can't see God at work in our lives. And maybe for us in the United States, in Hyde Park, maybe that's our own special temptation, our own special way of being tempted.

We forget that between the inspiration and the inauguration of the act to take a pause and to say to God, let me sit here in this long waiting until it becomes uncomfortable, until I know what it is God would have me do. Not what my ego would have me do, but what God would have me do. To take our time to breathe and pray.

And that's the invitation I want to offer you as we begin this season of Lent. Make sure that whatever you've given up, whatever you've taken up, that you're also leaving space in there just to be with God in between inspiration and action.

To listen for God's call specifically for you, specifically in your life, specifically in God's time. Don't be afraid to follow that model of Jesus and to make that space in your life. And don't rush to fill it.

The story of Jesus in the wilderness reminds us that if we wait long enough, we're going to get really uncomfortable and we're going wrestle as Jesus did. And it's only after we've passed that point of wrestling that the angels come to minister to us, and then it is time to begin. Amen.