Celebrate the Risen Christ Student 2010

Abingdon Press

Chapter One

Scriptures for Lent: The First Sunday Deuteronomy 26:1-11 Romans 10:8b-13 Luke 4:1-13

Lent has begun. The word lent comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for "spring," a season that features the shortening of nights and a lengthening of days. In our garden, we have planted beautiful wildflowers called Lenten roses. These hardy white flowers bloom early every spring as a hint of resurrection possibility amidst other still hibernating plants.

The forty days of Lent recall forty years of wandering in the wilderness in the story of Moses and the people of Israel; the forty days Elijah fasted in the wilderness; and, particularly, the forty days of Jesus' wilderness retreat, which followed his baptism by John. These forty days can also be a time of disciplined reflection, study, and preparation of our hearts and souls.

Do you remember the movie Batman Begins? Batman is the comic book hero who has no super powers but practices serious athletic discipline, dresses in black, drives a cool car, and works out of a cave under a mansion. In the movie, the young boy Bruce Wayne comes face to face with the terrors of the world. First, Wayne falls into a dark cave of bats. Then the boy witnesses the robbery and murder of his parents. Finally, Wayne watches as evil people wreak havoc on his beloved Gotham City.

Fear, anger, and despair threaten to destroy Bruce Wayne. He travels the world to escape the darkness, eventually being tempted to become violent and vengeful himself. Wayne chooses to use all of his strength, intellect, wealth, and a wide array of high-tech weapons to fight injustice. His turn-around began when his teacher passionately asked Wayne, "Are you ready to begin?" Wayne donned the black mask of Batman and took on the sinister forces that threaten good people.

"Are you ready to begin?" is God's ongoing question to us. In the midst of a dark season, when chaos seems to rule the world and sin remains pervasive, we are invited to travel from darkness to light. We may choose to conform to this world and its values or to heed God's call to be transformed. We will recognize our inability to save ourselves and recognize our need for God. We may commit to keeping the Lenten disciplines, but almost all of us will fail. We suspect, as in years before, that Sally will not be able to withdraw from chocolate and that Andy will fail to keep up with his exercise program. The goal of Lent, however, is not to keep the disciplines perfectly but to put ourselves in the position to receive God's grace. Even when we are faithless, God remains faithful.

In our Scripture passage for today, we find Jesus in the wilderness, where he was tempted by the devil after forty days of prayer. Profound trust in God sustained Jesus during the days of prayer and at the time of temptation.

Trusting in God permeates all the Scripture passages for this week. Moses reminded the Israelites as they prepared to enter the Holy Land that they could trust God, the One who liberated them from slavery in Egypt. Paul wrote to the Roman Christians, who lived in the greatest and most corrupt city in the world, that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

May you hear this week that ours is a God who can be trusted to liberate us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

WANDERING ARAMEANS DEUTERONOMY 26:1-11

The Book of Deuteronomy records the witness of Moses as he led the people through the Sinai wilderness toward the Promised Land. Long associated with King Josiah's religious reforms in the seventh century before Christ, the whole book rehearses the history of God with the people of the covenant. This Scripture also challenges us to be faithful to God's covenant.

Picture the setting for Moses' challenge to the Israelites. The people of Israel had made one last stop after forty years of wandering in the wilderness. Following their exodus from Egypt and four decades of traveling through the desert, the people were ready to cross over the river Jordan into Canaan, the Promised Land. However, before the people traveled any further, Moses paused to give them final instructions: "After you have entered Canaan, and when you are settled and living off the land, do not forget that God has given you that land. Each year, as an act of remembrance, offer your first harvested fruits in thanksgiving to God. In the holy sanctuary, remember again the story of God's care."

Moses told the people to remember that just as God had been with them in the past, so too was God with them in the present and would be with them in the future.

In this desolate location, overlooking the Jericho oasis, Moses instructed the people as they saw in the near distance the land promised to them through Abraham. A thousand years later, in these same rugged mountains, Jesus would pray and struggle against the devil at the beginning of his ministry. It was no wonder that Jesus quoted Deuteronomy three times during his conversation with Satan (Luke 4:4, 8, 12).

After listening to Moses, the Israelites crossed the river Jordan into the land of Canaan. In the years to come, the people offered to God the first fruits of the ground. Their offerings of the first fruits from the late summer harvest were gifts of gratitude for God's providential care. The people offered those fruits to God, not out of a sense of obligation or through constraint but out of a deep sense of gratitude and joy.

"A wandering Aramean" refers to Jacob, the son of Isaac, who God renamed Israel. However, the description could just as well fit all Israelites who had been rescued from slavery in Egypt and given the amazing gift of a new covenant with God and a new beginning in the Promised Land.

Past and present generations of Israelites become one in this passage from Deuteronomy. The worshiper was called to confess, "Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us" (Deuteronomy 26:3). The Israelites who lived years after the people of Israel first entered the Promised Land were just as dependent upon God's saving grace as were those people who had escaped from slavery in Egypt and traveled through the wilderness with Moses.

An interesting part of this tradition was that the worshiping community that offered its first fruits to God was never a closed community. The instructions from Moses further specified that aliens living among them should be invited to share in the harvest bounty. God's grace was so bountiful that there was always enough to share with others. Whenever God's people began to believe that God's bounty was only for them, this story served as a correction. Everyone may be part of God's community.

During these weeks of Lent we, like the ancient Israelites, can also remember anew our dependence upon God. In days past, we may have acted as though our hard work, our money, our possessions, or our military might could save us. However, we owe our lives, our very being, to God's love and grace. Lent gives us the opportunity to recall and celebrate God's blessings. We can rehearse the many different ways that God has blessed us in years past; and with a heart full of gratitude, we can offer our allegiance and praise to God.

Our first clergy...