First Sunday of Lent – Cycle C

Reflecting on Luke 4: 1-13

Standing in the reception line of a friend’s funeral recently, an acquaintance and I struck up a conversation, during which she reminded me that I sang at the funeral of her first husband, who died tragically in a river during a honeymoon rafting trip forty years ago.

“Wait,” I said, “that was YOU? I’ve told the story of singing ‘Be not Afraid’ at the funeral of a bridegroom who drowned on his honeymoon so many times. When I sang the words Though you pass through raging waters in the sea you shall not drown I knew that if someone didn’t explain what those words meant I simply couldn’t continue being believing in either the Old or New Testament.”

A year later I saw the notice about a Biblical School starting. I knew immediately that I had found the people who could explain the seeming discrepancies between the promises in the scriptures and what we experience in life.

Satan knew the struggle that the People of the Book were having, trying to reconcile the comfort of their scriptures with the terrors of their real lives. The very Jews whose scriptures promised the restoration of their land were living under the thumb of the violent Roman occupiers. Hunger was the daily crucible for those whose prophets promised long lives in the land, and streets filled with happy children.

Go ahead, said Satan, give those famous scriptures of yours a try. Throw yourself off those rocks. Let’s see what happens.

If, this Lent, when you watch the news, and then read the Lenten scriptures, you begin to despair that those scriptures aren’t really true, take heart. Jesus overcame Satan when he whispered the same questions.

And Jesus has overcome the world.

What actions will I take this Lent to learn how to read the scriptures more fully?

Kathy McGovern ©2019

Lent - Cycle C