3rd Sunday of Lent B - Homily 3

Homily 3 - 2012

Our Gospel of the first Sunday of Lent had Jesus in the wilderness, where, as Mark put it, he was tempted by Satan and looked after by angels, and from where he emerged, after forty days, as a man with a mission, fired by his experience that the Kingdom of God is close at hand. Perhaps there is more to wilderness than the uncultivated, the unproductive, the empty. Things, important things, can happen there. Insights, essential insights, can take shape there. Energies, vital energies, can be accessed there. 

The first Reading today gives rise to a number of interesting questions. Have you ever thought much about the Third Commandment? Let's listen to it again, as the Book of Exodus puts it: Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. … The seventh day is a Sabbath for the Lord your God. You shall do no work that day. For in six days the Lord made  the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that these hold, but on the seventh day he rested; that is why the Lord has blessed the Sabbath day and made it sacred. You shall do no work that day …  

What is so important about that that it becomes one of the Ten Commandments? The author of Exodus connected it to the example of the creating God. The day when God made nothing specific seemed, nevertheless, to be part of the creative cycle. Doing nothing is  when things can happen, when activity can achieve its purpose, when the creative process can truly blossom. Indeed, it may even be that doing nothing is an essential part of coming alive, perhaps, paradoxically, of being truly productive. It may safeguard, perhaps even, make possible, our observing of the First Commandment: You shall have no gods except me. 

Other gods, false gods, are not relics of the dim, distant past. They are as alive and well as ever; and their power to enslave and to deceive has not diminished with the centuries. They run our lives. Perhaps, it is only as we go into the wilderness, as we step back from the engrossing seduction of busyness, that we have any chance of recognising them. As the Gospel said of Jesus: There he was tempted by Satan. The unrecognised, but ever active, gods were seen for what they were; and the engagement with them became specific. Jesus heard their promises; he felt their attractiveness; but he also saw their deceptiveness and their thrust to enslave. There in the wilderness, angels looked after him. His encounter with temptation drew him close to the source  of true beauty, of true satisfaction, and of truly liberating authority. As he expressed it himself: that source was every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. 

To become fully alive we need our Sabbaths, our wilderness – our time and space for stillness and for emptiness. And perhaps we may need to be aware that what our modern world calls leisure or the day-off or the long weekend can be as frenetic, as compulsive and as addictive as any other days – anything but the occasion for stillness, for reflection, for recreation, for re-energising and for getting life into perspective. 

We need our Sabbaths, our creative pauses, our power-naps. Traditionally we have called them our times for prayer, for reflection, for contemplation; [for some of us, our times for retreat]. Call them what we like, they are God's gift to us, part of the never-ending process of creation, of coming alive, of breaking free. To see them them as impossible is to confess our enslavement to our false gods, and our unconscious, but disastrous, falling victim to their deception.  

Can we make this Eucharist today a Sabbath for the Lord, our God?