Who Am I? A Lenten Meditation
See what great love the Father has lavished on us,
that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! John 3:1
The great longing of the human heart is to know who we are. Much of our life revolves around striving to secure an identity. Our sense of value and meaning derives from what we do, what we have, how we look or what people say about us. Yet behind these superficial identities lingers a desire for identity rooted in something more profound. For centuries, the Church has offered a season to reflect deeply on this longing for identity. We call it Lent.
“At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness,
and he was in the wilderness forty days…” Mark 1:12-13a
The season of Lent is associated with Jesus' forty days in the wilderness as described in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. After forty days of prayer and fasting Jesus found himself approached by Satan who sought to undermine Jesus' ministry right at the start. And The Accuser knew the source of Christ’s life and ministry. So The Adversary cut to the chase: "If you are the Son of God..." (Mt. 4:2)
The larger context of this passage is instructive. In the previous chapter, Matthew describes the beginning of Jesus' public ministry and his baptism. Chapter 3 closes that account as the heavens open and God proclaims, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” (Mt. 3:17). The chapter division is a bit unfortunate because the narratives of the baptism and temptation clearly go together. Jesus's identity as the beloved son is dramatically confirmed by God and Jesus immediately goes to the desert for forty days of fasting and prayer. The schemes of the tempter were ineffective because after forty days of meditation on his Father’s words, Jesus was certain of his identity as God's son.
In Scripture, the wilderness is a place of deep encounter with God. Moses came to know God by his personal name in the dessert. He received the Ten Words after forty days on a wilderness mountain with God. Elijah came to know God as sustainer during his forty days in the wilderness. No wonder that many early Christians fled the world they knew to go to the desert. These desert fathers and mothers were not seeking to escape the world as much as they sought to be with God. And in the wilderness of prayer and fasting they came to understand their own identity as God's beloved children - an identity independent of possessions or performance.
This is the tradition of Lent. In Lent we don't deny ourselves in order to prove our commitment to God. Nor to we deny ourselves in order to increase our will power. Instead, we deny ourselves those things that provide a false sense of identity: food, entertainment, people. As Jesus made clear, “Man does not live by bread alone, but from every word that comes from the mouth of God.” So, this Lent let us be reminded that our source of sustenance and significance is the Father who loves us.