First Sunday of Lent
That first reading relates how Moses instructed the the ritual the should use in offering the yearly first fruits of the harvest to The Lord. He tells them what to say as the present the offerings: "My father (Jacob) was a wandering Aramean who went down to Egypt. . . And lived there as an alien. But there he became a nation great, strong and numerous." So far, so good. As people of faith, this community, whose leader is Moses, is obliged to remember what The Lord did for its ancestors. But then, almost out of nowhere, Moses changes pronouns. Instead of talking about "he and they" he states. "When the Egyptians maltreated and oppressed us, imposing hard labor upon us, we cried out to The Lord, the God of our ancestors..."
Jews who offer these sacrifices step into the history they're narrating. They become one with their oppressed and liberated ancestors. These ancient events are now part of their own experiences. They're not just watching a drama unfold on a stage; they've left their seats and have come up on the stage themselves. What happened to them, happens to us.
The writings which make up our Hebrew and Christian Scriptures were collected, saved, and read over and over again not because our ancestors in the faith were history buffs, but because they identified with those who first experienced these saving events. The same holds true for ourselves today, for the Christian community. This is the whole notion behind the celebration of lent. We too enter into that same struggle that our ancestors in the faith experienced as they wandered in the desert; we experience that same struggle as Jesus did when he entered the desert in imitation of our common ancestors, to struggled with his own personal demons in the desert.
The people of Israel, we are told, spent forty years wandering in the desert. They blamed their predicament on lack of leadership. They rebelled against Moses: "Why did you lead us out here to die in the wilderness," they objected. "At least we had bread to eat in Egypt." Jesus spends forty days in the desert and he too is confronted with temptations and soft options. He was offered all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.
The image of the desert represents different realities for different peoples. Ghosts, banshees and devils have all but vanished from our culture. They do not hold the same terrorising power over us as they did in our grandparent's generation. Rural electrification exorcised them. Most writers today would say that the devils and ghosts have been internalised, that we now find the desert within us. There is common agreement that this present generation is as harried and haunted as any of their ancestors.
Writers have often identified similarities between the history of the People of Israel and the biography of each individual human being. Adam and Eve were blissfully happy in the Garden of Eden, just as every infant is happy when its primal needs are satisfied. No labour is demanded, no decisions have to be made, and no responsibility has to be taken. All of that is done for us. But the time came when Adam and Eve had to be thrown out of the Garden.
The bible tells us that they were thrown out because 'they had eaten of the tree of knowledge'. Both we are told became conscious of their own nakedness. In other words they had passed out of infancy and were approaching an adult state of self-awareness. Adam and Eve had grown up. They had shed the innocence of infancy. But they had also shed its irresponsibility. They have eaten of the tree of knowledge. As alert, self-conscious adults, they must now make their own decisions and take responsibility for themselves and their own lives. Now as every parent knows, and as psychologists and educationalists tell us, when we come under pressure in adult life, we tend to revert to our state of infancy, to throw the tantrums we threw in childhood. But the bible tells us that God put an angel with a flaming sword at the gate of Eden. (You can't unwind the clock, you can't unring the bell). In other words, there will be no returning to infancy, there will be no going back to blissful, irresponsible paradise. We struggle towards maturity. Lent and the desert represent that struggle.
The desert is part of human experience, it is that part of growing up which will remain with us throughout our lives. Every human being who seeks out God and maturity must walk through the desert. Indeed human experience itself tells us there is no gain without some pain. But, as today's gospel reveals, God does not leave us to struggle alone in our desert. In fact he struggles with us. The Eucharist is of course the great symbol of this truth: God himself sustains us as we struggle towards him.