First Sunday in Lent - 2025c

Old Testament - Deuteronomy 26:1-11

New Testament - Luke 4:1-13

 

Bears

 

INTRODUCTION: The number forty, as many of you know, plays a pretty important role in the Bible.

 

Like the number seven, which stands for wholeness and completeness, the number forty has its own significance. Whether it be forty days, or forty years, the figure is usually associated with times of testing, probation, and perhaps most importantly, transition. 

 

Usually, in other words, at the end of some forty day stretch in the Bible, something old or familiar has been brought to an end so that something new might be started. God, for example, covers the earth with water for forty days and nights in Genesis as a way to sort of start creation all over again. 

 

Fed up with what God considers a “corrupt” and “violent” earth, Noah, his family, and all those animals are ordered into that ark as God hits the reset button. The skies above open with a downpour of water while the earth, likewise, simultaneously oozes water from below. And so by the time Noah and the others all emerge from that ark, everything is different. An old life, even an old world, has been left behind and a new one begun.

   

While in that ark, of course, Noah and the others are in what could be called a liminal state. Based on a Latin word that means “threshold,” those in a liminal state basically stand between two worlds. Behind them is the old world and way of being, while in front of them awaits a new one. 

 

But such transitions from the old to the new never happen quickly, do they? For to go from the old to the new always takes some time. So to be in a liminal state is to be in a period of transition that is ambiguous and even disorientating. It’s to be kind of caught between two different worlds. For while an old world, or life, is being left behind, the new one hasn’t been fully entered into just yet. 

 

So no wonder the number forty is so important in the Bible. For whether it be forty days and nights, or forty years as in the case of those Israelites and their wanderings with Moses, a period of time is being provided for people to transition from an old way of being in the world into a new way.

 

ONE: That famous account of Jesus’ encounter with the devil is, obviously, yet one more example of such a transitional period, isn’t it?

 

Fresh off the heels of his baptism by John, Jesus is driven into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit where he spends the next forty days arguing and debating with the devil. At the core of each of the temptations for Jesus is the question of obedience. Namely, will he be obedient to God and God’s wishes for his life, or will he seek to follow another path.

 

Of course, at the end of the forty days, Jesus emerges from the period of testing and he begins what amounts to a new life, or at least a radically new direction. That old life as a carpenter is brought to close so his ministry can officially begin.

 

Before his forty days in the wilderness, Jesus had yet to give a single sermon. But after his forty days are over, he heads straight to the Galilee to begin his preaching and teaching tour throughout Palestine. Before he was tested in the wilderness for forty days and nights, Jesus was one thing. When he came out the other side, he was something else. 

 

In many Native American cultures there comes a point when adolescent boys are sent off on what is commonly referred to as a vision quest. Placed in a remote, sacred location by himself, the young boy fasts and prays for a vision to understand what his purpose in life is to be. 

 

So at the end of the vision quest, which can last anywhere from a few days to much longer, the young boy has officially transitioned into adulthood. With his purpose now set before him, the boy, now a man, begins to assume his new responsibility within the community.

 

And so it went for Jesus after his forty days and nights in the wilderness. He comes out the other end of that period of testing and transition to enter a whole new world. A world where he is now a preacher, teacher, healer, and even redeemer.               

 

TWO: During the season of Lent, of course, we find ourselves doing the same thing, don’t we?

 

Granted, when we come out the other side of Lent, we haven’t been fasting in the wilderness for forty days and we usually don’t head off to Manchester to start our lives as itinerant preachers. But for us as well, Lent is a period of transition and change. For forty days (not counting Sundays!), we’re given the chance to ponder what our lives have been like and how they might be different. For forty days, we’re afforded the chance to reflect upon God’s call for us and what that might mean for the future.

 

Edith Stein, a Carmelite nun who ended up dying in Auschwitz during World War II, once had this to say about understanding God’s call for our lives, “‘Thy will be done,’ in its full extent, must be the guideline for the Christian life. It must regulate the day from morning to evening, the course of the year, and the entire life...Whoever belongs to Christ must go the whole way with him. [One] must mature to adulthood.”     

 

So during Lent, just like Jesus in the wilderness, we too engage in our own period of testing, transition, and yes, even transformation. During Lent we get to hover, in a sense, between two worlds. We get to hover between the way we have been, and also the way we can be.

We get to prepare ourselves for the death of an old life and the birth of a new one.  

 

Is it any wonder, then, why people for centuries have engaged in all kinds of penitential acts during Lent. For whenever we intentionally engage in acts of self-denial and renunciation, no matter how small they might be, we’re dying to the old ways of being in the world so we can live in new ways.

 

THREE: Of course, as I enter the grumpy-old man phase of my life, it’s easy for me to lament how change seems to be one of the great lost ideas of our faith. 

 

Oh, I’ll be the first to admit that change can be hard, there’s no denying that. How’s that Big Book for Alcoholics Anonymous put it? We claim spiritual progress, it says more or less, not spiritual perfection. So we can be honest. Change isn’t easy for any of us.

 

But we no longer even seem to give the idea of people needing to change a passing thought. “You do you!”, meaning, just be yourself and do what you want, is the mantra of our age. 

 

Which has always seemed like odd counsel to me. After all, as someone with, I think, pretty good self-awareness, “me doing me” is the last thing I would ever want to inflict on the world! Yep, if I am honest, I will have to confess I’m pretty sure “me doing me” would cause more problems for the world than good. 

 

The Yates bank account would be empty because of all the useless man toys I felt the need to buy, there’d be $200 bottles of 20 year old Scotch crammed in the liquor cabinet, $3,000 Martin Guitars hanging all over the walls, the driveway would have a couple Ferraris in it, and I would be out in the yard in my bathrobe screaming at neighbors for not curbing their dogs while walking them. 

 

Yep, as strange as it might sound, I’m pretty sure the last thing I need to be is me!                

 

FOUR: And I guess change no longer being a core value for many who adhere to the Chrsitian tradition wouldn’t be such a big deal, except for the fact that the New Testament seems to be obsessed with the idea - obsessed with the idea that being a disciple of Jesus Christ means actually dying to ourselves so we can be, well, new people. 

And the new people we’re supposed to be? Well, Paul actually gives us a description of how such people behave. Or as he puts it in Galatians: “...the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”

 

There is a story about a bear that was once kept in confinement. And so for ten years it habitually paced up down the length of its cage, which was about 30 feet. Eventually, though, the enclosure was expanded and the gate removed giving the bear a new found freedom to roam in a much wider space. 

 

But oddly, the bear continued to roam up and down the same 30 foot swath it had worn into the ground from its previous years of pacing. Even though free to no longer trod the same old familiar path, the bear kept at it.  

 

CONCLUSION: Well, maybe not a bad metaphor to keep in mind during this season of Lent. 

 

For if Scripture be true, we too are now free, right? Free to be new people. Oh, it will take some time and it won’t happen overnight, but the cage has been lifted.  

“So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation,” says Paul, “everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”

 

So what ya say? Who’s ready to be something new? The world, after all, could use a few less bears. 

      

To the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.