1st Sunday of Lent (C)

We are well aware that the season of Lent is about turning away from sin. This past Wednesday, we were told to “Repent and believe in the Gospel”, and we have hopefully all made a resolution to root out some kind of sin from our life over the next forty days. But for us to stop sinning, we have to understand why we sin in the first place. Otherwise, we’ll simply keep spinning our proverbial wheels in the mud. Why do we sin? That is a question that we each must ask for ourselves in the quiet of our heart, as we each have our own reasons for being drawn to one sin or another. We believe, however, that the light of Christ reveals to us our humanity, and that applies both to us in particular as individuals and in general as a species. Thus, we ought to seek to discover how that light, which reaches us today through the Scriptures we have heard, reveals us to ourselves and helps us understand in particular and in general why we sin. 

I propose to you the following thesis: We sin because we forget who we are. From our own experience, we know that there is a kind of darkness that clouds our minds which causes us to consider sin as the only possible response we could make to the complexity of who we are. We are therefore pulled toward sin because we become convinced that this sin will, in some way, complete us. As we are tempted to sin, we put on blinders and come to see that sin as the only possible way out. And the more that a particular sin persists in our life the more that we come to identify ourselves with it. Even our colloquial language reflects this. We say that she is an alcoholic, or he is a druggie, or I am a gossip. Who we are becomes reduced down to these adjectives that are derived from a particular sin that has grown into an all-consuming vice to the point that it swallows up even our very identity. We see ourselves as being co-extensive with sin itself. And while saying that someone is this or is that can be a useful shorthand way of saying that someone has a particular problem, a Christian cannot in any absolute sense take them as defining of their person. A person redeemed by Christ and made identical with his Body by grace could never be defined as a person by any other qualification, good or bad, than as being in Christ. As Paul says in today’s Second Reading and elsewhere, the Body of Christ bears no distinctions. All are one, in him. It is Christ alone who gives the Christian their identity – not anything or anyone else. 

Nevertheless, we sin because we forget that identity; and sin makes it more difficult to accept that identity. When I was in college, there was an elderly Dominican from Long Island who spent a lot of time in the confessional and, as it happened, heard most of my confessions. (Lord, have mercy on him!). He would start every confession, before I could even get a word out, in a thick New York accent that I won’t attempt to imitate here, with the words: “Be at peace. You’re in your Father’s house.” That expression – being in the Father’s house – is an allusion to the parable of the Prodigal Son, when the son who had squandered his inheritance returns to his father, and his father does not hold it against him but embraces him as his son with the fullness of fatherly love and affection. Those words meant a great deal to me then, and now they help me understand that what’s at the root of our sin. When I choose to sin, I allow that darkness which tempted me to sin to obscure my knowledge of who I truly am. Instead, I chose to believe the lie that this sin was necessary for me because of who I am, that it would satisfy some need in my heart that I could not otherwise have filled. What I forget, in choosing to sin, is that God has made me a member of the Body of his Son and has promised me every grace I need now to be fully alive and the flourish in the way he has created me as his adopted son. Sin is not necessary for me to flourish; in fact, sin entirely inhibits my ability to flourish, for it leads me away from the Father, to squander my inheritance, and to reject the good he promises me to be happy in this life and in the next. That Dominican’s words – “Be at peace. You’re in your Father’s house” – are a reminder that, in confession, the Father welcomes us back into his own home, rejoices that his lost son or daughter has been found, and clothes us with everything that, by the sheer gratuity of his love, is rightfully ours. 

To my mind, Deuteronomy, Paul, and Luke each reflect on our humanity a complementary hew of the light of Christ and shows us how God helps us turn away from sin by reminding us of our identity. 

Now, before we turn to the passage from Deuteronomy we heard today, let’s recall something fundamental about the people of Israel and their wandering in the desert. They were not walking around aimlessly for forty years; their extended trip was not them taking a more circuitous route to their final destination. No, they were being led, by God around and around the desert, in punishment for their sin––a sin which fundamentally consisted in their forgetting of their identity as God’s chosen people. After leading the people out of Egypt, God ordered a few spies to be sent into the promised land, and there they spent forty days. When they returned, they told Moses and convinced the people that they could never overtake and occupy the land, for great and powerful people already inhabited it. In punishment, God led his people through the desert for forty years, one year for each day the faithless spies spent reconnoitering the land. 

So, this passage from Deuteronomy, in which Moses tells the people that God “gave us this landflowing with milk and honey” seems to amount to Moses saying, “Hey, look, you used to be wandering around the desert, but now you’re in the promised land where everything is great, so stop your complaining and turn back to God!” But that’s not it at all. The passage we heard doesn’t give enough context. Moses never made it to the promised land. He spoke this to the people while they were still in the desert, the desert of their sin. It’s a law of what they are to do when they will arrive in the land. In other words, in the midst of their sin, God speaks through Moses to remind his people of who they are, of what he has already done for them, and what he promises to do for them in the future. 

That is an important lesson for us, as well, because we can sometimes think that God won’t speak to us until we’ve gotten past our sins. Once we no longer identify ourselves with this sin or that, then we can speak to God and hear his voice in our heart. But that is not true. That is not how we find God speaking to his people in the Bible. God speaks to them, and to us, even (and especially!) in our sin. According to Paul, “Christ died for us while we were still sinners.” God does not wait around for us to get our act together, but he “proves his love” for us by calling us while we are still sinners into life and freedom and flourishing. 

Paul and Luke, in the other two readings, then remind us of how God speaks to us now, as sinners: through his living and effective word. Paul: “What does Scripture say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart.” Jesus, in the words of Luke: “It is written, One does not live on bread alone” making reference to the book of Deuteronomy which adds “but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.” The Lord speaks to us, in our heart, by his word, through sacred Scripture and the living Tradition of the Church. When we open our Bibles and read them with the guidance of the Church, in her saints and in her Magisterium, we hear God speak to us, as God spoke to the people through Moses, as the Holy Spirit inspired Saint Paul, and as Jesus, the Word made flesh himself spoke two thousand years ago and speaks to us now all the same. 

Turning away from sin is not a matter of self-help or do-it-yourself psychology. Turning away from sin requires us, demands us, to turn to the Lord, who speaks to us while we are still sinners and draws us through his word to himself. As we begin this holy season, may we turn away from sin and may we do so by being faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Preached at Our Lady of the Fields, Millersville, MD