THE FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT, INVOCAVIT
The Liturgy for this first Sunday of intense preparation for the renewing at Easter presents an invitation and a program. The invitation may be compared with that of the First Sunday in Advent. The Liturgy regarded the entire Christ-mas Cycle as one day. The First Sunday in Advent was the early dawn, the Nativity was the rising of the sun, the Transfiguration was the brightness of noon-day. The Liturgy of the Easter Cycle presents a similar picture. The entire period is “the day of salvation.” That day dawns at the beginning of Lent, at Easter the sun rises, at Pentecost the sun is at the zenith. Today the Propers call to us that now is the day of salvation and remind us of our responsibility not to accept the grace of God in vain. We are to make full use of the means and facilities offered and truly prepare for walking in newness of life. A program for this preparation is presented. In the pre-Lenten season we heard the invitation to enter the vineyard and the stadium; we received instruction as to preparing the soil for the sowing of God’s seed; we learned that greater than faith and hope is love. Today we are given the program for Lent. More important than fasting, praying, and giving is a pious, godly life in which all difficulties are overcome. The Epistle declares: “At the acceptable time I have listened to you and helped you on the day of salvation.” In these days we are to commend ourselves as servants of God through great endurance, in affliction, hardships, calamities, labors, watching, hunger, by genuine love. This is the main Lenten task: to prepare for a truly Christian life, to have God sanctify our heart and cleanse it of sin and self-love. St. Paul’s life serves as an example of the Christian in his outward poverty and inward riches, burdened by sin yet pardoned. Lent is to serve in attaining both, having nothing and yet possessing everything.
In the Holy Gospel we follow Christ into the desert of self-denial. His Lent in the wilderness was part of His redemptive work, it was for us. The thought that our self-denial is for His sake, that we practice it with Him, that we as members are united with the Head and that our self-denial is in a sense participation in His, hallows our Lent and makes it sublime. In the wilderness we see Christ also as Victor in threefold combat. Two princes face one another, the prince of this world and the King of heaven. The prince of this world throws his entire army into action, the world with its glamor, the “I” with insatiable desires. Christ is Victor. During Lent the scene of battle is in our soul. The higher and the lower appetites engage in battle. Christ in us must be victorious. We derive strength and comfort from the knowledge that we are not left alone in the fight, the Head and the members fight together, Head and members emerge victorious. So the Holy Gospel invites us to enroll in Christ’s school for training warriors. Today we are still beginners, at Easter we shall be victors.
Now we understand why Psalm 91, often called the Soldier’s Psalm, is so prominent in today’s Liturgy. The Antiphon is composed of the 15th and 16th verses; the Psalm Verse is the first verse; the Gradual brings the 11th and 12th verses; and the Tract repeats the first verse. This Psalm is our song of battle throughout Lent. It pictures the dreadful battlefield, thousands fall to left and right, arrows fly, lions and adders and serpents everywhere, but the heroic band fears nothing. They are covered by God’s pinions, and angels guard them in all their ways. For defense and offense their sword is deep confidence in God. As we enter the house of God on this day, we are greeted by God Himself in the words of the Introit: “When he calls to Me, I will answer him; I will rescue him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him.”
The Introit. “He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will deliver him and honor him. With long life will I satisfy him and show him My salvation. He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.”
This is a song of trusting faith. Christ meets His companions in battle with the comforting assurance that after the battle of Lent will follow the victory and glory of Easter and the satisfaction of eternal life. Here is the answer to prayer for help in the struggle that lies ahead. His tried and tempted servant will Call upon Him, and He will answer him. Long life and salvation join the temporal and the eternal, the blessings in this earthly life merge with the blessings of the life to come.
The Collect. “O Lord, mercifully hear our prayer, and stretch forth the right hand of Thy majesty to defend us from them that rise up against us.”
Here is the key to the triumph. We dwell in, we abide in, we have communion with Him who fought and won, who was tempted and conquered. We commit all our ways and needs to Him. Stretch forth the right hand of Thy majesty to defend us. This is the first lesson in the closer walk with God for the pilgrim whose days are carrying him nearer home. We enter the new and intensified battle under His shadow, with the tempter’s Conqueror brooding over us.
The Epistle (2 Cor. 6:1-10). “Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation,” this lesson calls to all who are giving themselves to God’s service as ministers, servants. We are to recognize the earnestness of the decision we are making. Prove yourselves to be profitentes, profitable to God. This Epistle might be entitled “The Christian’s Walk.” It shows the enemy and the enmity against us, constantly seeking our overthrow. But it heartens with the high and holy encouragement that we are workers together with Him. It exhorts and implores us not to receive the grace of God in vain, but to persevere and patiently bear all in Him who defends and delivers in every temptation those who are faithfully His own.
The Gradual. “For He shall give His angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.”
The Tract. “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my Refuge and my Fortress, my God; in Him will I trust. He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust.”
The Proper Sentence. “Christ hath humbled Himself and become obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”
The Gospel (St. Matt. 4:1-11). This Lesson was not appointed to establish some artificial connection between the forty days of temptations and of Lent, but because it shows our Lord tempted in every respect as we are, yet without sinning (Heb. 4:17). He who is to rescue us and give Himself for us must not only be Victor but sinless. He must not only conquer but know the depths and woes of our struggles. Through His experience of the trials and temptations that come to His servants, He is enabled to give them an understanding sympathy. There is no minimizing the dangers or the severity of the trials that lie in the way of all who work together with Christ. Their life will be a testing from every side: world, devil, flesh. It will test their will, body, heart, loyalty, love, faith. But in the Holy Gospel we see the victory of our Partner, and the precious assurance comes to us: the power which could not conquer Him cannot conquer us as long as we are workers together with Him, as long as we commend ourselves in every way as the ministers, the servants of God.
The Proper Preface. “Who on the tree of the cross didst give salvation unto mankind that, whence death arose, thence life also might rise again; and that he who by a tree once overcame likewise by a tree be overcome, through Christ, our Lord; through whom with angels,” etc.
OUTLINE FOR SERMON ON THE EPISTLE
Great Arguments to Help in Resisting Temptation
A. Our Position of Grace. In Holy Baptism we received the grace of adoption to be the sons of God. We need not wait for this grace to be given, for it is ours already. Ours is the grace of acceptance in spite of sins that are past, ours the grace of salvation by which to conquer the power of inward sin; and ours now, for “now is a time of acceptance and a day of salvation.” What we have to do is to see that this twofold grace be not received in vain, for received it has been most certainly. Every temptation is directed against our position as redeemed children of God. To help us we must remember how much we stand to lose if by sin we should forfeit our birthright. To realize the blessedness of sonship is to value it so highly as never to be willing to suffer the loss of it. Realized sonship is, in fact, the conquest of evil.
B. The Example of the Saints. Their labors show the intense importance of the message we have received at their hands, as the weariness and wounds of a dispatch rider testify the urgency of his tidings. Such a messenger was St. Paul, ever anxious not to hinder his message by offense; to deliver it in spite of all and every danger; to exhibit its power in his own spiritual life; careless of honor or shame, success or failure, counting every sorrow a joy, every privation a privilege. The labors of the saints show the importance of their message, and their example of self-denial reproves our weakness. Let us not disappoint those who have brought us the grace of God. If one argument against sin is our own loss, a second is surely what others would lose by our fall.
OUTLINE FOR SERMON ON THE HOLY GOSPEL
The first three Lenten Sundays are devoted to the consideration of temptation as proceeding from the devil, the flesh, and the world.
Our Lord Tempted by the Devil
A. When Our Lord Was Tempted. After a season of highest spiritual elevation, and when, therefore, He might have been least on His guard; at the hour also of His greatest weakness, and on the side of His weakness. Unlike the first Adam, tempted in the midst of every advantage, the second Adam was tempted with every outward circumstance in favor of the tempter. So we may expect temptation when least we fear it, at our weakest moment, and through our frail-ties and the sins which most beset us.
B. Why Our Lord Was Tempted. It was for us men and our salvation; that we might not, when tempted, feel guilty and doubt God’s assistance in our hour of greatest need; that we might not lack an example to inform us nor an as-surance of sympathy to encourage us and of sufficient grace to give us the victory.
C. How Our Lord Was Tempted. Every temptation, both Christ’s and ours, is directed against sonship, and its object is to interfere between the sons of God and their heavenly Father and to separate man from the favor and grace of God. Christ came to destroy the works of the devil and make us children of God (1 John 3:8,1,2). Satan comes to unmake the children of God. Christ was tempted in three ways; we in many ways, but always with the same end in view, that we may lose our birthright; for as long as we can retain this we are safe, nor can Satan rob us but by our own consent. Our Lord was tempted, and we are tempted:
1. To Distrust Sonship. To cast away faith in the care of a heavenly Father who had just claimed Him as His beloved Son (Matt. 3:17). To use His miraculous powers as His own to gratify His own wants rather than as a Son dependent on His Father’s will. So we are tempted both to distrust our Father’s care and to employ unlawful, because unfilial, means to supply our wants, for Satan has not let this favorite weapon rust in its sheath against Christ’s servants, though of no avail against their Lord. He still urges the necessity of bread and so also of sin; but our Lord tells of the greater necessity of obedience, by which alone men live, and not by bread.
2. To Presume on Sonship. Having failed to conquer Christ’s weakness, the tempter attacks Christ’s strength; His very faith shall be His temptation that His confidence in God may lead to presumption. Our Lord lays open the deception in the words: “You shall not tempt the Lord, your God.” To presume is to tempt God; it is to ask Him to bless our disobedience. We presume when faith in God’s care leads us to extravagance, or faith in His protection into needless danger, or faith in His mercy into carelessness of conduct; whenever we expect to receive the promise without observing the conditions.
3. To a Disloyal Sonship. The Father must be everything or nothing. The intention of the temptation is revealed in the answer: “Him only shall you serve.” The temptation was to do evil that good might come; and the answer must ever be that whatever comes of evil will not be good. That for which our Lord desired empire was indeed good, for He desired to rule the world in righteousness. Satan can tempt us with baser gains, for instance, some temporal advantage won by sin or escape from difficulty by means of untruth. We are tempted to reject the crown of righteousness when it seems a crown of thorns. So we are in danger whenever the turmoils of the world and the heat of them, the pleasures of the world and the mirth of them, the riches of the world and the glory of them, so take us up that we love them more than God, whom only we must serve.
THE HOLY COMMUNION
In Holy Baptism we received the grace of adoption as sons of God. Temptations are directed against our sonship. In the wilderness, Christ’s temptations were directed against His Sonship. Ours are to interfere between the sons of God and their heavenly Father. For help to resist and overcome, for assurance and strength, we come to the Lord’s Table for communion with our Lord, the Conqueror. Communion is partnership, fellowship, partaking. The Son of God calls us to His Table to assure us in a special way that we are in partnership and communion with Him in our battle against temptation. He comes to us, gives us bread to eat and tells us that as we eat, we receive His Body, make our own that Body which He gave into death for us. He gives us wine to drink and tells us that as we drink, we receive His Blood, make our very own the Blood shed for the remission of our sins. We eat His Body and drink His Blood, we partake of Him, we have fellowship, communion, partnership with Him. We become part of Him, and He becomes part of us. We are His partners. As His partners, we share in all He is and has, in all He has done and will do for our salvation. His invincible power against temptation is ours. We share also in His Sonship. We have been called into fellowship of the Son of God. He sat down on the right hand of God and received power over all His and our enemies, also over Satan. In this power we share, He is at our side in every battle. With Him at our side, fighting for and with us, we must conquer.
