“God the Lent-Whisperer”
The devil didn’t need Jesus to prove to him that he is the Son of God. The devil knew God’s Son from the moment he, the devil, was created.
Jesus didn’t need to prove to himself that he is the Son of God. He heard the voice of God the Father call him just that at his baptism and, no doubt, chewed on what this declaration meant, as he was on a forty-day fast and had little else to chew on.
Since you have the power, use it, whispered the devil.
Since you are the Son of God, feed the hungry. Since you are the Son of God, rule the world. Since you are the Son of God, show the faithful at the temple that even the holy angels will do your bidding.
Since you are the Son of God, forget for a moment just who you are and worship me instead – and all the big things you dream for will come true.
There’s the catch, right? Forget who you are, who you belong to, and follow instead the one who claims kingship of the world; the one who carves up and doles out pieces of the planet to the basest, lowest-minded bidders.
God chooses a different way.
Through the Incarnation of the Son of God in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God calls us, God adopts us – you and me – as his beloved children. And not just us, but everybody who accepts his invitation to join the family.
God’s call and adoption makes us not a passive family, waiting around to collect our inheritance, but rather co-creators in the ever-unfolding evolution of God’s Kingdom: God’s desire for the world as it could be, and not merely what it has become through the devil’s meddling.
Such co-creation that God invites us to share takes time and patience. Rarely is there a quick fix.
To be sure, before the Incarnation of the Son of God, by some accounts God made quick fixes himself to set things right – a flood here, a plague there, an occasional smiting for good measure.
But through the Incarnation – which was God’s plan to become one of us all along – God invites us to come alongside; to share in the labor; to rejoice when, with God, we get things right; and to grieve when, apart from God, we mess things up and must begin again.
A holy Lent is like this. God invites us, through the Church, to come alongside God once again from the places we’ve strayed. God is patient and doesn’t ask of us a quick fix – like Jesus’s one time Lenten fast in the wilderness, we, year-after-year, are accompanied by the Holy Spirit and are offered forty days of self-examination and repentance; of prayer, fasting, and self-denial; of reading and meditating on God’s holy Word (BCP 265).
Keeping a holy Lent reminds us who we are, just as Jesus’s forty days reminded him who he is, when he was tempted by the devil’s quick fixes and easy answers.
While we surely are children of God, we are not the Son of God. The big things we may dream of likely are beyond our individual authority to make true: world peace; an end to hunger and homelessness; sane and productive politics; climate-change reversal – all these require a collective will and collective action. That we haven’t succeeded yet is evidence that the devil has this much right: the kingdoms of the world are under his authority.
But there are big things in our own lives we can work on alongside God this and every Lent: continual conversion of life; being kind and merciful, compassionate and forgiving; opening our hands and our purses to help fix another’s problem; surrendering our souls to God’s grace in the sacraments and out in the world.
You see, God knows how to whisper, too. Since you are my beloved child, God whispers right now in the ear of your heart, come alongside me as I am forever alongside you. Let’s start again, together, to fulfill my dream for you and, eventually, for the world. †
Fr. Daniel S.J. Scheid, SCP
Lent 1 – March 9, 2025
All Saints’ Episcopal Church, San Francisco
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