Forty Days, Forty Nights – First Sunday in Lent

Forty days and forty nights
Thou wast fasting in the wild;
Forty days and forty nights
Tempted, and yet undefiled.

Forty is a number of significance. As I write, I enter the year in which I will turn forty, Lord willing. Culturally, we consider it the notable age in which one is half way in life. However, that is quite optimistic and the reality is I may be well past the half-way mark of that unknown age when I will see Christ face to face. Regardless when that hour is set for myself and irrespective of what age you are, dear reader, Lent is a time in which we should rightly and boldly remind ourselves that the wages of our sin is death. However, living in this reality can color us in one of two ways: further sin or complete surrender.

The Lord Jesus has conquered sin. Christ has harrowed hell. God the Son is risen. Yes, we are working towards celebrating each of these once we reach the Easter Triduum, but living in Lent does not mean we forget the reality that Christ has already bound up the strong man and pillaged his false kingdom. Christ is risen and shall never die again. Christ has powerfully set the fire he longed to set aflame in His earthly ministry by sending forth the Holy Ghost into His disciples. Therefore, how we use and live in Lent is much different than how the wandering Israelites, persecuted prophets, and patriarchs of old lived. They all looked to Christ’s day and marveled to see it. We live in the Kingdom without end and are empowered as servant-creatures of the Divine King to be made into the new Adam, the true man, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, let us scoff at death and may we live this Lent as an opportunity to further “purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us” (1 Corinthians 5:7, KJV).

Shall not we Thy sorrow share
And from worldly joys abstain,
Fasting with unceasing prayer,
Strong with Thee to suffer pain?

Purging the old Adam is tiring life-long work, but it is work worth doing. Truly, it is a gift worth receiving, for the work is finished and the gift is the Holy Ghost living in us. The barrier to this gift is our own ignorant love of the temporary, our indulgence in what we desire, which ultimately proves to be deadly poison: sin. We want a cure for our sickness yet we keep reaching for the bottle of addiction, drinking from the well of our own destruction.

Enter in Christ Jesus. The same Lord and God who shut Noah’s ark, who purged the earth forty days and forty nights is the same Lord God who saved Moses in the ark of reeds upon the Nile and purged His people after forty years so the Israelites would follow Joshua into the Promised Land. This First Sunday in Lent, we celebrate and rejoice to the Father that Jesus would take on our fast – the fast we could never partake in – fasting not only from bread and water but from sin. Willingly “was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.” (Gospel lesson, Matthew 4:1, KJV). Submissive to the Father’s will, Jesus “fasted forty days and forty nights, [and] he was afterward an hungred.” (Matthew 4:2, KJV).

In the wearied body of our Savior, thirsting and hungering far more than any of us ever has, we find Christ purging sinful humanity and teaching us that we need to desire the true bread from heaven and the life-giving waters of Scripture. “And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Gospel lesson, Matthew 4:3–4, KJV).

Then if Satan on us press,
Flesh or spirit to assail,
Victor in the wilderness,
Grant we may not faint nor fall!

The Son of God battles our enslaver not with a sword of steel but with the Word of truth. It is fitting that our Lord defeats Satan in a weakened state in the desert, just as He defeats Satan while weakened upon the cross. But the time draws nearer, when Christ will return to earth with a double-edged sword from His mouth to defeat His enemies. “And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.” (Revelation 19:15, KJV). Therefore, may we be strengthened through our Lord’s forbearance against temptation. Likewise, may we find in our own weakness that Christ is working through us. Let us not seek accolades for our mild fasting in Lent, instead let us seek Christ and hunger no more for food that rots away but for the fruit from the Tree of Life we feast upon every Sunday – the preaching of Christ crucified and receiving the bread of life in the Lord’s Supper.

So shall we have peace divine:
Holier gladness ours shall be;
Round us, too, shall angels shine,
Such as ministered to Thee.

The harshness of this life can weigh a Christian down into despair and despondency. Let it not be so. Remember that your afflictions are used by the tempter to accuse, accost, and attack us. Yet Christians should join with St. Paul and recognize our embattled lives and the obstacles against us, whether they be “in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings,” not giving “offense in any thing” for “the ministry be not blamed: but in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God.” (Epistle lesson, 2 Corinthians 6:3–5, KJV). In other words, the trials and tribulations that make this life difficult are not to be blamed upon God, but are evidence we are called God’s children. For Christ did not enlist you into the reserves but has redeemed you for the frontlines.

Hence, “We then, as workers together with him,” are equipped with the sword of Truth that by our living, suffering, giving, and forgiving are called to live wholly unto the Lord so that He may make us holy as He is holy. When we were called by Christ, we were equipped by Him as well. Yet the troubles this world, our sins, and Satan bring can easily overwhelm us. Cease in fighting alone and fight alongside your King who bled for you. St. Paul cries out the will of God, beseeching that we “receive not the grace of God in vain” (2 Corinthians 6:1, KJV). When you fall in battle, be raised up again from the dead by the grace of God that pours out from His on upon the Cross. “For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee” (2 Corinthians 6:2, KJV). Recall that today, even after you fail the Master and fall into sin, He is ever gracious to pull you back up and place you back into the fight against sin, death, and the devil. There are dragons to be fought within the flesh and serpents to be cast out from the gardens of our neighbors’ hearts. “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2, KJV).

Keep, O keep us, Savior dear,
Ever constant by Thy side;
That with Thee we may appear
At the eternal Eastertide.

Be ye not downcast, dearly beloved in Christ Jesus. For our Savior suffered so that in our sufferings we might be used to glorify God while casting seeds of new life into the hearts of sinners. Boldly feast each Sunday in Lent so we may boldly fast from Satan’s lies, the world’s deceits, and sin’s whims. We are nourished each Sunday to keep a Holy Lent – not a Lent limited to naval gazing, but a Lent full of charity. Lent is for re-orienting, not merely self-examining. This great re-orienting is meant for us to face east towards Christ and to re-orient our neighbors away from Satan and towards the light of the east. Therefore, proclaim with an open mouth and hungered belly the Words of life, just as our Lord Jesus responded to Satan’s temptations each time from Holy Scripture. May we learn to feast no more on our heart’s desires, but to feast on Christ Himself, and implanted with the new heart of the Holy Ghost, let us demonstrate charity by sharing the love of the Father with the souls starving for salvation.

Shake off Satan with the shield of faith and pierce the dragon with the sword of Truth. Cast the evil one away with the words of Christ, “Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” (Matthew 4:10, KJV). Shake off the chains of slavery and enter the household of the King and His service. There is no greater glory in heaven, on earth, or under the earth.

O Lord, who for our sake didst fast forty days and forty nights: Give us grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdued to the Spirit, we may ever obey thy godly motions in righteousness and true holiness, to thy honour and glory, who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

– Collect of the Day, First Sunday in Lent