1 Lent, Year A: Love is His Meaning

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark

1^st Sunday in Lent, Year A

The Very Reverend Tyler B. Doherty, Dean & Rector

It’s interesting that immediately after Jesus’ baptism in the River Jordan by John, where the entire assembly hears the earth-shattering proclamation of belovedeness—“This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased”—Jesus is led into the desert by the Spirit to face the three temptations by Satan. Only after Jesus has faced these temptations in those forty days, does he begin his earthly ministry by calling the disciples. This isn’t just a story about Jesus, however. It’s the story of us. It speaks the basic arc and trajectory of the spiritual journey we are each called to make in the season of Lent, and throughout the short spans of days we have allotted.

It all begins with belovedness. Let’s not forget that. Let’s not fall prey to the misconception that Lent is a time for indulging in that well ingrained habit of self-blame and self-hate, of telling ourselves that we’re no good in the name of loving God. Jesus’ baptism in the River Jordan speaks the reality of who Jesus is, certainly, but it also speaks of the fundamental, unequivocal belovedness of all God’s creatures without exception. For fifteen years after Dame Julian of Norwich received her sixteen showings she pondered what their deepest meaning was. And near the end of her meditations the Lord speaks to her with these words, “Would you know your Lord's meaning in this thing? Know it well, love was his meaning. Who showed it to you? Love. What did he show you? Love. Why did he show it? For love.”

Love is God’s meaning. Who shows us this Love? Love. Why does Love show us Love? For Love. Love is who God is and how God works. We are made for that Love. Our purpose on this earth is to root and ground ourselves in that Love that it might transfigure us into people who bear that love to others as restorers, repairers, and rebuilders, as food for the hungry, water for the thirsty, healing balm for the ailing, a listening ear to the lonely and the locked away.

Something interesting happens, though, when we come in contact with the reality of our Belovedness, with the startling fact of God’s unconditional love for us. Something in us rebels. God might love the Prodigal Son after his spending spree in the distant country among the pigs, we tell ourselves, God might run out to meet him while he is yet far off and enfold him in his cloak, but I’m the exception. Those old voices, those old stories of unworthiness, of being unlovable, get louder and louder when they’re faced with God’s grace. They double down and up the ante.

The season of Lent is not really about winding ourselves up into a frenzy of self-castigation as if hating ourselves in the name of loving God is a workable strategy. Rather, the season of Lent is about learning to see clearly all those voices and stories we live by that tell us that we’re not loved, that we’ll find lasting happiness someplace other than by resting in and as this love. That’s why Jesus is immediately led by the spirit (driven in Mark’s telling of it) into the desert. There he faces all those other ways of seeing and being in the world, those other stories of who and how he might be. He sees through their illusory nature and remains steadfastly turned toward the Father in utter transparency to his will.

Most simply, the temptations are really just common ways for pursuing the happiness and joy that comes from relationship with God and God alone. We might think of the temptation to turn the stones into bread as the impulse towards safety and security. Jesus is tempted to live by bread alone rather than to know himself as the word spoken in every instant by the breath of God. He is tempted by the illusory strategy of stockpiling and storing up as a way to insulate himself from the changes and chances of this world. With enough tins of soup in pantry, enough books, enough booze, enough sex, enough television or Netflix, we’ll fend of the fact that our life is going the way of moths and rust and dust.

The temptation to show off in front of the adoring crowds can be read as seeking lasting happiness through afftection and esteem, living in the eyes of others and cultivating their unceasing approval. We tell ourselves that if we get enough “likes” on our Facebook post, if we work hard to keep everyone happy, then we’ll know peace. But that’s impossible. And the house of cards comes tumbling down at the first disapproving glance.

And the temptation to have all the kingdoms of the world can be read as seeking lasting happiness in power and control. We labor under the illusion that if we just tell everyone to do our bidding then nothing with go wrong. If we plan for every contingency then the fact of constant change will be held at bay and we’ll finally know the peace for which we yearn. But then we’re faced with what we haven’t planned for—a mass shooting, a precipitous stock market tumble, the Corona Virus—and we realize how flimsy and brittle that strategy for securing the peace is as well.

Each of the temptations is really a misdirected seeking of the peace that passes understanding someplace other than in God. Each of the temptations is really a forgetting of the fact of our belovedness and the seeking for that love in the things of the world. When we forget this ground of belovedness, when we don’t waste time gracefully with the love that loves us into loving, we’re driven towards seeking that love in poor substitutes that might satisfy momentarily but ultimately disappoint. This doesn’t mean we’re bad people, it just means we’re human beings who have come to full self-conscious awareness without an experience of God’s love within and so run around looking for “out there.” All the time honored holy habits and spiritual practices of the tradition handed down through the centuries from warm hand to warm hand are meant to remind us of the basic fact of this forgetting and to point us back to the fountain of life that gushes forth from the center of our being if we can just stop, rest, receive and allow ourselves to be loved.  

This is one way to understand the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden as well. Before the serpent arrives on the scene, Adam and Eve enjoy a paradisiacal relationship with God characterized by intimacy and trust. Their nakedness is a sign of being undefended before God—there is no barrier between themselves and the Lord, and their gaze upon God is totally undistracted. But the serpent tempts them into forgetfulness. Their gaze upon God is interrupted. They get distracted, and they trade their intimacy with God for knowledge from the tree of Good and evil. They get hoodwinked into thinking that the paradise which they are unselfconsciously immersed in isn’t enough. They get tempted into thinking that this isn’t it.

When Paul speaks of Christ as the Second Adam, he’s pointing to the truly Good News of the Gospel. The breach, the fracture, the tear, between human beings and intimacy with God has been mended. Alienation and separation are no more. Paradise—characterized by life in Christ in whom the fullness of divinity is pleased to dwell—has been restored. Christ is the way back to the garden. Christ is the key.

So the call in this season of Lent is first to recognize that the love for which we are made, the paradise of untrammeled intimacy with God, has been freely gifted to us in the person of Jesus Christ. He is our true home. He is our peace. He is our happiness and our joy. We are called to be fashioned by love, in love, and for love. Love is his meaning and it is ours as well. Through daily prayer, acquainting ourselves with the life of Jesus as revealed to us particularly in the gospels, weekly worship in community, and serving the least of these in the spirit of sacrificial love, we learn to dwell and abide in this love and make that the place that feeds our compassionate action and our prophetic witness.

But the Temptation in the Desert and the story of the Garden of Eden also remind us that we’re often forgetful of this fact. We find ourselves looking out there for what has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. And so we practice, moment by moment, coming home, returning to dwell in and with Christ, seeing those stories of finding lasting peace through power and control, affection and esteem, and safety and security for the false advertising they are. We slowly start to recognize, name, and release all the ways we tricked into looking in what is passing away for what has always been at the center of our soul.

“Would you know your Lord's meaning in this thing? Know it well, love was his meaning. Who showed it to you? Love. What did he show you? Love. Why did he show it? For love.” Have a lovely Lent.