A homily for the First Sunday of Lent, March 9, 2025
Deuteronomy 26:4-10, Romans 10:8-13, Luke 4:1-13
From the mid-1960s until the mid-1970s, my family and I were blessed to be members of the Stephen’s Point Fishing Club and the owners of a roughly 1930s-vintage cabin overlooking the Walpack Bend of the Delaware River in Flatbrookville, New Jersey.
The sign on westbound Interstate 80 pointing to Flatbrookville, by the way, is almost bigger than the historic hamlet itself.
And even though we lived (still live) at the Jersey Shore, and in those days headed to a beach club in Sea Bright almost every weekday in the summer, we spent many summer weekends up in the Kittatinny Mountains.
Only one of my brothers embraced angling seriously, despite the “fishing club” name; he took full advantage of the incomparable fishing at the mouth of the Big Flat Brook as it fed the Delaware. Frankly, few of the families who shared the breathtaking view from the camp hauled in catches regularly.
Flatbrookville was where we could wind down. Even the radio could barely pick up the Top 40s from WABC-AM. The mountains (yes, New Jersey has legit mountains) blocked most of the signal.
Dad preferred the solitude and especially the anonymity. Far from Monmouth County, he could have time away from his medical practice without accidentally bumping into patients desperate to update him on their rashes.
None of us ever fully recovered from the loss of this piece of heaven, which was taken by federal eminent domain as part of the Tocks Island Dam project. The dam was never built, nor will it ever be; the property is now part of the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. The seven cabins and The Big House were razed decades ago.
I’m telling this story not to brag about some of the luxuries my family had as I was growing up. I’ve always appreciated them and recognized that not everyone has the same advantages.
No, my lament is for the loss of this place of reflection, and my point is that I’ve looked for someplace equivalent ever since.
I think we all have. I think we all do.
Jesus certainly did.
His 40-day retreat in the desert gave him clarity of mind, focus and purpose for the ministry and mission that lay ahead of him. He tapped into the divine spark within him — well, for him, it was a conflagration — and came away resolved to make his world, and ours, the best it can be.
His literal desertion into the desert, far from anyone who could ask him to do anything he wasn’t ready to accomplish, became our model for the Lenten journey we’re now treading.
Luke’s Gospel today, with its focus on the temptations the angel of evil threw in Christ’s face, gives us a few interwoven points to ponder.
Luke makes clear that Jesus of Nazareth is fully human and fully divine.
The man is hungry, thirsty, probably flea-bitten and muscle-weary, as any of us would be on a spartan camping trip such as this. Jesus already had calluses from his years of work as a contractor alongside Joseph. He was a regular guy.
But this man also had staggering strength of will to tell the devil to buzz off like the horsefly he was and still is. Jesus tapped into his divine nature and revealed the way all of us can thumb our noses at the tempter. The way all of us can ask God for grace and use it for good.
Our Gospel today is a different kind of call to action. Most Scripture passages offer us a roadmap for bringing about God’s Kingdom on Earth, for serving our sisters and brothers — our fellow children of our shared Creator — and not expecting to be served.
Today, though, we’re called to act toward shaking the spiritual grit and grime out of our own lives, out of our own minds, out of our own hearts, out of our own souls.
As the prophet Ezekiel writes of God’s promise:
I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
This is why we have Lent.
Lent is our spiritual spring cleaning.
Just as the warming days invite us to open our homes’ doors and windows and let in the freshness and chase out the staleness that accumulated through the winter, so too the warmth of God’s love and grace invites us to open our hearts — open our selves — to what’s fresh and clean and energizing spiritually, emotionally and psychologically.
We can find our own desert, or cabin in the mountains, or man cave or she shed, or spreading chestnut tree. There’s a unique place for each of us to strategically retreat to and connect with God’s boundless love and grace. We merely need to make the time.
Lent is the time.
By the way, Luke closes our passage today with a subtle zinger:
When the devil had finished every temptation, he departed from [Jesus]
for a time.
Ol’ Beezelbub is still hanging around.
