Thoughts on Today’s Lessons for Feb. 14, 2016
Temptation of Christ:, 12th-century Tympanum, Church of Errondo, Spain.
Now we enter Lent, a season that many consider a time for sacrificial contemplation of sin and repentance. Look closely at today’s readings, though, for they offer a different narrative, speaking not of punishment and penitence but of God’s love and protection and of our call to follow God’s way. Our first reading recalls an ancient harvest liturgy, when the people would tithe the land’s bounty in thanksgiving to God who led them out of slavery in Egypt and brought them to a rich and fruitful land.
Today’s Psalm, too, offers 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 – we remember 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.
Second Reading: Romans 10:8b-13
Paul’s verses here are often read as a call for sinful humans to gain individual salvation by accepting the resurrected Christ as personal savior. In the context of Paul’s letter to the Romans, though, this is not an individual altar call but 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. God through Jesus is Lord of all and gives generously to all who call on God’s name.
Gospel: Luke 4:1-13
We have spent five weeks of Epiphany walking with Jesus as the people of Galilee discover him through a series of epiphanies that gradually reveal him as son of God, Messiah. Now, as Lent begins, we go back to the beginning of his public life, as the Spirit leads him out to fast in the desert and to wrestle with the temptations of a Satan who, you’ll notice, quotes today’s Psalm! Jesus stands strong, good wins over evil, and our Gospel narrative in Lent will now move on to Jerusalem and toward the Cross.