Year A: Homily for 1st Sunday in Lent

Today on this first Sunday of Lent we begin a time when the Church presents the basic truths of our faith so that we can hear them again, at the same time as those catechumens, people studying to become baptized Catholics, in larger parishes, are learning these basic truths for the first time. At Easter we will be asked to renew our baptismal vows at the same time as the catechumens who receive their baptisms for the first time. So all of the Lenten readings really are preparing us for this major event – this renewal.

The early Christians didn’t have a new Testament. it wasn’t written yet.  So what they had was the Hebrew Bible. Their readings were from the Hebrew Bible and their homilies were about how Jesus fulfilled the promises, the covenant of what we now call the Old Testament or Old Covenant.

It is no accident that the first reading begins with one of the Genesis accounts of Adam and Eve. In the story of Adam and Eve we hear again about the perfect world God created for humans and how through a temptation, Adam established a pattern that led to sin and death. The Eden story was, remember, a drama woven of pretense and cover-up. Adam and Eve were the first to bite on a big lie: the denial that we as creatures of God are dependent on God.

We do seem to master the art of denial at an early age. Imagine the clever words of the “innocent” toddler accusing someone on the other side of the room as the milk is spilled, “See what you made me do?”

Soon after infancy, we invent playmates to blame for our own blunders. “Jimmy did it.” As teenagers we imagine some pretense, and play roles to make up for the terrible inadequacy we feel. A few put on the pose of the outsider, some play it hot, others stay cool.

We so much want to look good, to seem more intelligent or composed or virtuous than we are. We don roles: “Father Joe Relevant,”  “the perfect couple,” “the success story,” “the saint,” “the picture of health.”

“Looking good is everything,” we hear all around us.  Pretense marks the “real world” of school corridors, unfriendly streets, and political platforms. Cover-ups not only bring down presidencies and religious leaders, they haunt everyday life. As Freud said, the major barrier to healing is the wounded person who asks for help but is secretly unwilling to face the truth that healing requires.

Is deception something we have to learn? Is it bred in the bones? Is it the fatal flaw of every human? Adam and Eve, we are told, had almost everything. The only drawback was the fact that they were creatures of limit. They were good, but they were not God. They could have the fruit of every tree except the tree of knowledge which seemed to them a limitation. It was their having limits that made them susceptible to the Lie.

Enter the serpent, that cunning beast, that lord of lies, who taunted their obedience and reliance on God. Ah,  the attraction of having no limits. To be God. To be self-sufficient, self-made. The pretense was attractive, desirable. The trick looked so wise.

Thus sin entered the world, St. Paul writes, through one act: the lie of self-sufficiency. That was the offense. Man and woman are jointly responsible for their fallen condition, even if here, as in everything else, each has a distinctive part to play.

The ancient story in Genesis shows profound theological insight. Its basic message is that human beings cannot blame God or an evil fate for their plight— they are directly responsible for it themselves. Man and woman made and continue to make wrong choices, which conflict with their destiny as God created them.

Now in our second reading today St. Paul uses what theologians call ‘typology’ to help us understand exactly what Jesus has done for us and how he established for us a new life, overcoming what Adam and Eve wrought for us. Typology is a common teaching tradition in the Scriptures. Typology is a kind of interpretation in which earlier persons, things, or events (usually from the Old Testament) are taken to foreshadow later persons, things, or events (usually from the New Testament).

For example, Noah’s flood washed away wickedness and saved Noah and his family. St. Peter says this foreshadows baptism, which washes away sin and saves those who are baptized.

Similarly, manna was the mysterious “bread from heaven” with which God fed the Israelites in the desert. John’s Gospel sees this as a “type” of the heavenly bread that is Jesus .

In the second reading today St. Paul sees Adam as a ‘type’ or foreshadowing of Christ. Paul begins by establishing a basic equivalence between Adam and Christ: both are the “first” or the “beginning” of different eras. Adam stands at the beginning of the first creation; Christ is the beginning of a new creation. While typology usually stresses common elements, Paul stresses differences. Reading this passage from Romans carefully, we notice these contrasts between what Adam and Christ bring:

ADAM:                 CHRIST (New Adam)

transgression         gift

disobedience           obedience

sin                             righteousness

judgment                 grace

condemnation        acquittal

death                            life

And our Gospel reading today begins to show how Jesus did this. Sin entered the world through the disobedience of Adam.  But whereas Adam succumbed to temptation, Jesus successfully resisted the tempting of the devil.

Christ, the New Adam in the Gospel today, is confronting the age-old enemy and defeating his wiles. A new age is dawning and the kingdom is drawing near.

The temptations the devil fed to Jesus were nothing other than delusions we all dream of in our longing for radical independence.

“Become your own food.” Be self-sufficient. Display your power. But Jesus refuses. God alone will be his food.

“Show your stuff; muster your magic.” Leap from the temple in full self-assurance. But Jesus will live by the word and power of God alone.

“Look out from the highest mountain and all will be given you, if you only give yourself to the Lie.” But Jesus declines the self-adoration, reserving glory for the Lord our God alone.

The sin of the first humans was to reject the original condition of humanness: we are splendid creatures, but nonetheless dependent on God.

The gift of the new Adam was a total acceptance of humanness, our dependence on God;

So what’s left for us, we who are neither God nor savior? If we just acknowledge the simple truth of our limits and our sins before God and Christ’s people, and acknowledge our dependence on God, we reverse the offense of Eden and enter the gift of Calvary.

In acknowledging the lies of our own egotism, of the great injustices of the world, of the excesses in appetite, of the woundings in relationship, of all the mean divisions in the church, we drop once again the heavy mask of deception. It falls from our faces, revealing our need.

We are sinners, dear friends. If we do not know that, we suffer a poverty of self-knowledge. But if we yield to the truth, not only that we are creatures, but that we are dependent and in sore need of redemption and forgiveness, we are newly free, open to love. We can make this Lenten journey a time to see ourselves as we truly are, ask for God’s forgiveness and grace, take responsibility for our actions, go outside of ourselves to help others and be ready to join in the great Renewal at Easter where we celebrate the great reversal, the great gift of our redemption, where Christ, the new Adam has restored what we had lost and made us once again heirs to the kingdom. I pray that all our journeys this lent may be fruitful ones and that this Good News today is a first step in the journey that leads to that renewal.

The African lion and the wild cat look so much alike, yet they are different. An ancient African theory explains it this way. The same lioness gives birth to numerous cubs some of which are truly lions at heart and some of which are not. How does the mother lion know which is which? Months after the birth of the cubs, just before they are weaned, the mother lion leaves the den and then, in an unsuspecting moment, she jumps into the den with a thundering roar as if she was an enemy attacking the cubs. Some of the cubs stand up and fight back the presumed enemy while others flee the den with their tails between their legs. The cubs that hold their ground to face the danger prove themselves to be real lions. Those that run away prove to be mere wild cats, false lions. As testing distinguish true lions from the false so also does it prove true Christians from false ones.

Under the old covenant God subjected His people Israel to testing in the desert. They failed that test, which made a new covenant necessary. In today’s gospel reading we see Jesus the bearer of the new covenant being subjected to testing again in the desert. He stands his ground and gives the enemy a good fight, thus showing that he is truly the Son of God. Immediately before the Temptations of Jesus, Matthew has the story of the baptism of Jesus in which a heavenly voice declared of him: “This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). As he leaves the baptismal waters of Jordan to embark on his public ministry as the Anointed Son of God he had to go through the test. No child of God can go without trials, because this is the means to distinguish between a true and a false child of God. As Ben Sirach advises, “My child, when you come to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for testing” (Sirach 2:1).

Somehow we can understand, and are more comfortable with, the idea of testing or trial than with the idea of temptation. The fact, however, is that testing or trial or temptation are one and the same thing. In fact they all translate the same Greek word peirasmos. When we see the situation as coming from God, who would like us to pass the test, we call it a test or trial. And when we see it as coming from the evil one, who would like us to fail, we call it temptation. But both trials and temptations are experienced by us in exactly the same way: as a situation where the principle of evil (the devil) and the principle of good (the Holy Spirit) in us are vying for our allegiance and whichever one we vote for wins and becomes the master of our lives until we can reverse the decision.

Jesus is given three tests. The first one, to turn stones into bread, has to do with how we use our God-given gifts, talents and abilities. The temptation is for us to use our gifts to make a living for ourselves. But Paul tells us that spiritual gift are given to the individual “for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:7). Jesus would later on in his ministry multiply bread to feed others. But he would not do it to feed himself. Do we see our talents and abilities, our jobs and professions, as a means to serve others or simply as a means to make a living for ourselves?

In the second test Jesus is tempted to prove that he is God’s son by jumping from the pinnacle of the Temple and letting the angels catch him as was promised in the Scripture: “For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone” (Psalm 91/90:11). Though Jesus fully believes the word of God, he would not put God to the test. This contrasts sharply with the case of a college student in Nigeria who claimed that he was born again and to prove it he jumped into the lion’s cage in the zoo because the Bible promises that nothing can ever harm God’s children. Maybe his soul is in heaven today but his body provided a special lunch for the hungry lions that day.

In the third temptation the devil promises Jesus all the kingdoms of the earth if only Jesus would worship him. Jesus wants the whole world to acknowledge him, of course, but would he achieve that by worshipping a false god? Can we pursue our goals by any means whatsoever? Does the end justify the means? Jesus says no. He remains steadfast and faithful to God, rejecting the short-cuts offered by the devil. In the end he attains an end more glorious than that offered by the devil: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18).

Today, let us realise that as God’s children we too are under constant testing. If you do not know it, then try to answer these questions: Will you keep believing in God whether or not you get that one thing that you have always been praying for? Would you still believe that God loves you if you or your loved one contracted a shameful disease that has no cure, and God does not give you healing in spite of all your prayers? Do you sometimes put God to the test and say: “If you do this for me, then I will serve you, but if not, I will have nothing more to do with you.” Jesus shows us today that to serve God is to surrender ourselves to Him unconditionally and in all situations.

A story has it that Cyrus, the founder of the Persian Empire, once captured a prince and his family. When they were brought before him, Cyrus asked the captured prince, “What will you give me if I release you?”
“The half of my wealth,” was his reply.
“And if I release your children?”
“Everything I possess.”
“And if I release your wife?”
“Your Majesty, I will give myself.”
Cyrus was so moved by his devotion that he freed them all. As they returned home, the prince said to his wife, “Wasn’t Cyrus a handsome man!” With a look of deep love for her husband, she said to him, “I didn’t notice. I could only keep my eyes on you—the one who was willing to give himself for me.” Lent is the time for us to remember Jesus, the one who was willing to give his life for us and the manner in which he did, in fact, give his life for us.

In today’s second reading from the Letter to the Romans, Paul talks about the two men who, more than anyone else, influenced the history of our salvation. The first is Adam, through whom sin and death came into the world and humankind fell from God’s favour. The other is Jesus, through whom humankind is once more reconciled to God and grace and eternal life restored to us.

Therefore just as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man's act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. For just as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:18-19).

If you find Paul’s reasoning in this passage difficult to follow it is because Paul is speaking as a Jewish rabbi. As such he assumes popular Jewish beliefs and uses Jewish forms of reasoning.

One of such Jewish beliefs that Paul uses here is the belief that one person can act in the name of a whole group of people in such a way that the fate and destiny of that group hangs on the success or failure of that one person. This belief was at play in the famous story of David and Goliath. In it we see how the war between two nations, the Israelites and the Philistines, was settled by a one-on-one combat between David and Goliath. David won, and so the Israelites were victorious; Goliath lost, and so the entire nation of the Philistines was defeated. Paul presumes a similar viewpoint when he argues that all humankind stood condemned on account of Adam’s disobedience or that all humankind stands justified before God on account of Christ’s obedience.

Even so, there is a big difference between our sharing in Adam’s loss and our sharing in Christ’s merits. Since Adam is the father of all humankind, it can be said that all humankind was literally in Adam’s loins. Adam’s DNA is stamped in the DNA of all humanity. Original sin, therefore, is our genetic inheritance from Adam. But we cannot make the same argument for Jesus Christ. The DNA of Jesus has not been passed down to all humanity. Our belonging to Adam is by nature. We have no choice in the matter. But our belonging to Christ is by choice. That is why all humankind inherits Adam’s fallen human nature, whether we like it or not. But it is only those who choose to belong to Christ that will inherit the blessings that Christ has won for humanity.

Lent is the opportune time of the year when the church reminds us of what Christ has done for us and invites us all to make a conscious decision to belong to Christ.

So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. … Now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation! (2 Corinthians 5:20; 6:2).

By Rt.Rev.Prof. Kasomo Daniel

Bishop Kasomo is the Bishop of The Society of St. Peter and Paul (SSPP)