The church enters a new season, so the colour changes! Instead of green, the priest wears purple. We are in the season of Lent, a time of preparation for the great feast of Easter. At Easter, we will celebrate Jesus dying and rising to new life—never to die again! But before we celebrate, we prepare. There will be six purple Sundays to prepare for the feast.
This first Sunday of Lent, we hear about what happens right after Jesus gets baptized in the Jordan river. He heard God say how much God loves him, and the Holy Spirit came down upon him. Now what does the Holy Spirit do?
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness
The Holy Spirit takes Jesus to the wilderness where there are no other people, only the nature that God creates. Jesus spends forty days there. Forty is a very large number.
He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished.
Nothing at all to eat?! Of course, Jesus is famished! He is extremely hungry.
Then we hear,
The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.”
Who is this devil who speaks to Jesus when he is so hungry? We do not know him. He is a stranger. Does Jesus listen to him? Does he make the stone turn into a loaf of bread? He hungers so very, very much. He must want bread.
But Jesus says,
“It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”
Jesus does not make the stones into bread. Even though he hungers so very, very much and must want bread, Jesus does not listen to the stranger. Why? What does he know?
When Jesus says, "It is written," what does he mean? We know we find these words written in holy scripture, in the Holy Bible. Jesus speaks about the Word of God.
In the Word of God, Jesus hears that, "One does not live by bread alone." That means bread is not enough. We need more. What else do we need? We can think about the sheep of the Good Shepherd. In the Bible we hear,
"The Lord is my shepherd, I have everything I need." (Psalm 23:1)
What do sheep need? They do need food to eat and water to drink. But is that all? Just food and drink? What else do sheep need?
If the sheep have all the food and water they need, but they are all alone, do they have everything they need? No. They say, "The Lord is my shepherd." They need the shepherd. They need the Lord, too.
Jesus does not listen to the stranger. He listens to the Word of God. Jesus knows what the sheep need. Even though he hungers, he waits to make bread. Jesus waits until the day when he can give his whole life and become bread so that the sheep have bread and the Lord at the very same time.
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