Ken Howcroft. “Entering the Wilderness: a place of Tempting, Training, Testing and Attempting”. A sermon for the first Sunday in Lent. To reduce Lent to a matter of merely giving up some luxury or personal indulgence like chocolate is to trivialise it. Lent is more important than that! Lent is about recognising that everything we posses or have use of in this world is not ours but God’s, and we have it by grace and on trust. The way we do that is through thanksgiving. So Lent is about cleaning out the clutter of our lives, sweeping up the rubbish in our souls and making room for God. In a sense, that is precisely what Jesus does in today’s reading from Mark’s gospel. In the temptation Jesus wrestles with what it means for him to be God’s Messiah and God’s Son. He is tempted to be God’s son in the wrong way. And what is true for Jesus as God’s Messiah and Son is going to be true in some sense for those who follow him. But even at the worst points of wrestling with God’s will and how to live out God’s love in our daily lives and in a world that sometimes seems to be going to wrack and ruin around us, we have the grace of God. When Jesus wrestled with his temptations in the wilderness, he was nurtured and supported by angels. God will support us as well. So perhaps the best greeting we can give is: Have a Holy Lent! The readings were Genesis 9.8-17; 1 Peter 3.18-22; and Mark 1.9-15.
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