HOMILY FOR THE 1ST SUNDAY OF LENT YEAR A. (3)

HOMILY FOR THE 1ST SUNDAY OF LENT YEAR A.

THEME: TEMPTATION

BY: Rev Fr Stephen ‘Dayo Osinkoya

Genesis 2, 7-9. 3, 1-7
Psalm 50, 3.6-17
Romans 5, 12-19
Matthew 4, 1-11

The story is told of a pastor who was asked to conduct the funeral services of a fellow named Charlie who was known in the community as the lowest of the low in terms of his character and reputation. In fact the town was embarrassed that this fellow had called that place home.
Charlie’s brother was rather wealthy fellow and offered the pastor $1000 to conduct the funeral with one stipulation – he had to refer to Charlie as a saint.

The service began and the pastor stepped to the podium to begin the message. At the appropriate moment he said, “He was a low down, worthless, bum who cheated everyone he ever met and had the morals of an alley-cat; but compared to his brother, Charlie was a saint.”
The stunned brother handed over the honorarium to the pastor who promptly slipped away. Perhaps the pastor succumbed to temptation a bit.

Temptations do come to all of us also in our lives – in various disguise of course. They are part and parcel of our life. A temptation is a trick, a deception, a lie. It conceals the truth and presents falsehood to us as the truth. A temptation may even offer us something good but entices us to use it in a false and selfish way. No wonder that temptations come from the devil, which is called the father of lies

But temptations are also good for our spiritual journey. How? God allows us to be tempted because temptations help to expose our real selves. When we recognize our true selves, we grow in humility – and that leads to another purpose of temptation: To acknowledge our dependence on God. In response to the devil’s temptations, Jesus says that we do not live on bread alone, “but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.” Temptation – when we see its true danger – can bring us to our knees. A third purpose of temptation is that, when we resist temptation, we gain strength. Similarly, when we fall into a temptation, we lose strength.

Therefore, Lent becomes for us a time for more prayer. We live busy lives and there is much emphasis on enjoying life but a life without prayer is a life without the joy of the presence of God. If we do not pray we are not Christians at full potential; we are only walking when we could be flying.

This forty days must have been an important time in which Jesus was coming to terms with who he was. He left the world that he knew, the family that he knew and stripped himself of as much of his humanity as he could, in order to fully comprehend his divinity. Even though Jesus was God, he was also fully human, and our humanity often gets in the way of seeing and understanding the divine. Prayer and fasting for Jesus must have been the means to get closer to his Godhead, to communicate with the Father, to understand the dichotomy of being a God-human, and more to the purpose, he needed to know what he was supposed to do

What we do to divest ourselves of our totally human inclinations can be called “fasting”. The days of giving up candy for Lent I hope are gone. It has to be more serious than that. We need to try to find something in our lives that is pulling us away from God, and try to do without that. Maybe it is spending too much time on the social media and too much time surfing the internet, too much time shopping, too much time playing games on the phone – whatever is stopping us from getting in touch with our spiritual selves and making a connection with our God – that would be the true concept of fasting in the wilderness today.

We human beings often make excuses when we give in to temptation. “The devil made me do it” is not often far from our lips. But in reality, no one “makes” us sin, the devil doesn’t. He only tempts us. When we sin, it’s our choice- we choose it, just as we freely choose to do good.

Like Jesus, we too are often tempted with our situations. Many Christians have been tempted to pursue material wealth at all cost, perhaps because their mates and even their pastors have said to them like the devil said to Jesus “If you’re a true believer, a born again, a child of God, you cannot be poor! you shouldn’t be poor!

If you are in need of money the devil would tempt you to steal, loot public fund or to rob others. If you are desperately in need of a job, he would tempt you to sin against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue with the recruiter or to offer a bribe. If you are in need of a contract, he tempts you to succumb to ‘kick-back’, since you are not going to execute the project after all. If you are seeking admission or promotion, he would tempt you to cheat in your exams in order to pass. If you are looking for a child, he would tempt you to visit the next babalawo (witch doctor) because his/her deity will give you one since God is delaying. When we yield to one of his temptations, he continues with the next until we finally perish.

Beloved, we’re not called to be successful but to be faithful, says Mother Teresa. That’s why Jesus responded “Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from God.” Now, how faithful are we to the word, the precepts, ordinances, the commandments of God? We are busy turning stones to bread, which would eventually give us constipation and all sorts of gastronomical problems. Then we would be running helter-skelter looking for solutions to our problems.

We are into the Holy Season of Lent. It is a time that reminds us of the human journey of fall and redemption. Like Adam and Eve, and Jesus, we all face temptations. Original sin reminds us that we humans tend to give in to temptation. It is a family trait. The mother and father of the race did it and we do it too. So, when we are tempted, we should not trust in our own abilities or strength, because we are sinful from our origins. Instead we should trust in Jesus and his strength, because God is gracious from the beginning. Where humanity fails, Jesus prevails. So the point is that we should follow his lead when we face temptations. We should look at how Jesus faced temptations. We should learn from his example. Then when we face the same temptations, which we do, we can resist them as well and be victorious over them.

Deliver us from evil, O Lord. But most of all, deliver us from our selves… for we do not belong to this world, or to the Great Seducer, satan who roams through this world, or even to our selves. We are Christ’s, and Christ is yours, O Father in heaven. Amen

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