1st Sunday of Lent Mar 5, 2022

I’m coming to realize I have a lot to learn and unlearn about this season of Lent.  Similar to what Marty shared on Ash Wednesday, when I was growing up Lent was a very austere time - with statues covered, no holy water, somber music. And more than anything, an increased opportunity for me to mess up and sin. 

During Lent, you had to remember not to dare say alleluia, not to eat meat, not to eat sugar and whatever other restrictions you, your family or your church imposed on you.

I remember one Lent as a teenager, I was skiing with my family, I was starving and while on the ski lift, I pulled a Snickers bar out of my jacket and took a big satisfying bite. Immediately, I gasped, “Wait, what did I do!?  I can’t have candy bars during Lent!!!”

I remember feeling badly about it, feeling some mild level of shame stacked upon my already growing tower of shame and sin. 

As an adult, I’ve had very little interest in Lent and tend to find Christianity’s focus on it annoying at best and sometimes I find myself downright angry.

This year I feel sad, sad that years of these traditions and practices have mostly just increased feelings of shame or anger.  Because I’m finally starting to realize how good this season really could be for us. 

In our familiar Gospel story today, we follow Jesus as he is tempted by the Devil three times.  This is the iconic story that we are asked to place ourselves in for this season.  As Jesus steps into the desert, so do we.  When I read this story, there’s a few pieces that strike me as the frequently highlighted that have informed my perspective of Lent throughout the years:

First of course, that Jesus was fasting. And second that the Devil was around every corner to tempt Jesus.  And third that Jesus successfully resisted each temptation and refuted the Devil. 
For me, when I focus on those three points for myself, then Lent is about my strength - my strength in fasting and resisting the Devil and it is about the Devil’s presence…sidling up beside me and whispering temptations into my ear, “Don’t worry he says to me, eat that Snickers bar. You're hungry. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying it.”

And if that’s the case, then Lent will largely be a cycle of shame and fear as it has been most of my life because spoiler alert, I’m going to eat that Snickers bar eventually in these next 40 days.

So, what’s missing from the story? Because I don’t believe our faith wants us to live in shame and fear, I’m certain our God doesn’t and I know from my own experiences, shame and fear doesn’t lead to anywhere good.

What’s missing, of course, from my focus on my strength and the Devil’s temptation, is God’s presence and our relationship with God.

Jesus didn’t go into the desert to prove his strength. Jesus didn’t even go there on his own volition.  The first line in the story states that God’s Spirit sent him there.

God who we know as our loving Parent, who had just told Jesus that Jesus was God’s beloved child with whom God is well pleased.  It was that God who sent Jesus into the desert.

And then we are told that Jesus was famished.  This line is so critical not as a starting point to focus on temptation but as a place for us to relate to Jesus.  This is the human Jesus we are meeting here.  This is Jesus in his very physical body feeling the pain, weakness and disorientation that comes from severe hunger.

This is the stuff of being human.  And being human often has very little to do with being strong in the face of temptation.
Being human is about wandering…. seeking…. loneliness…. questions.  Jesus walked this same path too.

We see in this story that Jesus was not only physically hungry but hungry for all the things humanity hungers for...love, acceptance, power, control. 

He was hungry just as we are - for life, for fulfillment, for peace, for answers.
for knowledge, for security, for completeness.

In our lives and especially during these 40 days we often believe and sometimes even taught that the hunger within us is bad.  That during Lent we are trying to tame that hunger, conquer it, and rise above it.  But this isn’t the case. The hunger in us is holy. We hunger to know that we are the beloved. We hunger for the safety that the presence of Life itself within us.

Jesus was famished and we too are famished with a holy hunger.  A number of years ago, I read a quote from one of my husband’s Zen Buddhist books that I come back to time and time again and I feel really connects to our Lenten season:

The book is Opening the Hand of Thought by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi. He writes
“Since desires and cravings are actually a manifestation of the life force, there is no reason to hate them and try to extinguish them.  And yet, if we become dragged around by them and chase after them, then our life becomes fogged over.  The important point here is not to cause life to be fogged over by thought based on desires or cravings, but to see all thoughts and desires as resting on the foundation  of life, to let them be as they are yet not be dragged around by them.  It is not a matter of making great effort not to be dragged around by desires.  It is just waking up and returning to the reality of life that is essential.”

The devil is not in our hunger.  God, Life itself is our hunger.  The devil is in the foggy space, when we are pushed and dragged by desires and cravings.
In Jesus we see how to be fully human, how to fully live within our hunger.  We live in our hunger when time and time again we turn to God, to our beloved Creator.  To realize that the craving, the temptation within us is the most powerful part of us because there in the depths of our stomach God speaks and life dwells.

Our turning to God in the face of temptation, is not primarily because we have failed.  Our turning to God is about remembering who we are...as beloved, beautiful humans filled with hunger, filled with the holy spark of life.

What’s your metaphorical Snickers bar this Lent?  What’s the craving in you that at times you feel pushed or dragged by?  I invite us to pay attention to that hunger a little more in these next 40 days.  But in looking at it, I pray that we can look at it with a little less shame and guilt and with a little more curiosity and love, because that’s how God is looking at us. 

And maybe we can even relax a little bit about it too (I’m preaching to myself right now).  That’s one of the things I’ve really come to appreciate about Buddhism, the last line of the quote invites us to not put great effort into it but to just keep waking up and returning to Life.

So, when you start craving that Snickers bar, it can simply be an opportunity to wake up. To wake up to yourself, to wake up to our loving God, to wake up to some of the beauty around us that our cravings distract us from.  Maybe without that Snickers bar, or our phone, or that glass of wine we’ll notice something that really satiates our hunger like a beautiful sunrise, a joyful connection with our spouse, the fresh air. 

And someday along the way, you might still eat that Snickers bar.  And you know what, that’s fine, just say, “Oh well, another opportunity for me to wake up.”

Let’s wake up to our hungers because I’m pretty sure we'll find God’s love there.