Thoughts on Sunday’s Lessons for March 6, 2022 (Lent 1C)

First Reading: Deuteronomy 26:1-11

Lent has begun. We enter the 40-day season that our liturgy encourages us to observe through self-examination and repentance; prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.

Christ Tempted by the Devil (1818), oil painting on panel by John Ritto Penniman (1782-1841). Smithsonian American Art Museum. (Click image to enlarge.)

Sunday’s readings, though, don’t hammer us with thoughts of punishment and penitence. They invite us, rather, to be conscious of God’s love and protection, listening for our call to follow God’s way. We begin with an ancient harvest prayer from Deuteronomy. We hear Moses, addressing the people who will cross into the Promised Land after he dies, offering a tithe of the first fruits of harvest in gratitude for God’s abundance. He outlines God’s covenant with the people, a covenant that comes down to us in the Gospel: We are called to love God and our neighbor and to care for the stranger, the poor, the weak and the oppressed.

Psalm: Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16

In the Psalm, too, we offer grateful thanksgiving to God as our protector and provider. In a striking catalogue of many bad things that can happen to good people – evil events, plague, injury, even attacks by lions and venomous serpents – the Psalmist reminds us that we live in God’s shadow. We recognize God as our refuge and our stronghold. God will help us because we are bound to God in love. When we call on God, God will answer. Two verses within the Psalm, slightly altered in translation, are the source for Luke’s words in the Gospel: “He will command his angels concerning you … On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.”

Second Reading: Romans 10:8b-13

Paul’s thoughts in this passage have often been interpreted in modern times as a call for sinful humans to gain individual salvation by accepting the resurrected Christ as their personal savior. Seen in the fuller context of Paul’s letter to the Romans, though, we recognize that this is not an individual altar call. It is a message calling on an entire community – the mixed Jewish and pagan Christian congregation in Rome – to come together in Jesus’ name. God makes no distinction between Jew and Greek, Paul writes. God, through Jesus, is Lord of all, and gives generously to all who call on God’s name.

Gospel: Luke 4:1-13

Jesus fasted in the desert for 40 days. This Gospel message has echoes in the 40 years that Moses and the Israelites spent wandering in the desert, and is echoed in turn in the 40 days of Lent. Immediately after Jesus is baptized by John in the Jordan, the Spirit leads Jesus into the desert, where he meets temptation while fasting in the wilderness. The devil tempts Jesus, first with food, then – quoting from Psalm 91 – with visions of power and glory, if only he will turn from God. But Jesus stands firm and the devil leaves him “until an opportune time.” In the verses that follow this passage, Jesus goes directly to his hometown synagogue where he will proclaim good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind and freedom to the oppressed.