First Sunday of Lent 2025 St Andrew’s Milngavie
Today we celebrated the First Sunday before of Lent accompanied by John.
This Week
Tuesday 10am – Prayer Group in the Garden Room
2pm – Lent Course, All Saints Small Hall
Thursday 10am – Said Holy Communion followed by coffee in Friendship House.
Saturday 1.30 – Church Walk, meet in the hall, return after walk for tea, all invited.
The Lent Study Group will begin on Tuesday 11th March in the small hall at All Saints. We are reading Wild Bright Hope – all welcome
There is also an opportunity as in previous years to join the online Ignatius Spirituality Centre Lent Course. Steve Parratt has kindly given us copies in book form to accompany the online course. Please let me know if you would like one.
The Church walk is on Saturday 15th March. We will meet at church 1.30pm, walk around Douglaston and back for tea. Everyone is very welcome.
Readings for next Sunday – Second Sunday of Lent – Genesis 15:1-12,17-18 Phillippinans 3:17-4:1 Luke 13:31-35
Today’s readings – Deuteronomy 26:1-11, Romans 10:8-13, Luke 4:1-13
“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil.”
We begin our forty-day journey through Lent with Christ’s forty days in the desert which of course is appropriate. Like Julie Andrews, we start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. Jesus goes up from his baptism in the Jordan to the wilderness country and is tempted by the devil before receiving rest and reprieve from his trials prior to starting his preaching ministry. The shape of Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness has traditionally served as a model for how our Lent should be spent.
There is a temptation to look at this passage as some kind of guide on how to resist temptation. After all, the devil tries to lead Jesus astray–perhaps to get him to doubt his divine kinship or to doubt his mission–by twisting Scripture and Jesus thwarts him at every turn. It’s a great example of resistance and we could learn from that. But the thing is, this is Jesus we’re talking about, he is God incarnate. So, its Satan that is really the one getting the lesson because Jesus cannot by the nature of his divinity fall to such temptation. We can certainly learn from how Jesus responds to the temptations for our own fights with temptation, but because of our complete humanity as opposed to Christ’s divinity we won’t always win like he does. We have breaking points, where we still give in, despite our knowing better.
Luke 4:1-13 isn’t necessarily a roadmap for fighting temptation in our lives, but it does show Jesus modelling the shape of Christian life. First, he has been baptized in the Jordan. Having been baptized, he is subjected to attacks by the devil, trying to lead him away into sin. After being subject to these temptations, he is given respite; the other Gospel writers mention Jesus being ministered to by angels. This is a lot like the shape of our life: we are baptized into Christ, and throughout our Christian lives we are subjected to many challenges and temptations, we struggle and wrestle with life until God grants us his rest, either when we die to go to him or when Christ returns, whichever comes first.
These two experiences in the life of Jesus, baptism and affirmation followed by wilderness and struggle, are inextricably linked. They are two sides of the same coin and it’s only after he has lived through both these experiences that Jesus is prepared and ready to begin the work and ministry to which he is called: to proclaim the good news that “the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near”.
So, after leaving the wilderness Jesus can begin his ministry, affirmed and strengthened. And what a ministry it is! Crowds flocked to hear him teach, heal and absolve, he drew all kinds of people to him. But it wasn’t all joy and success: he fought with the Pharisees; his apostles were often slow to understand his divinity and calling. Finally, he faced death and betrayal.
We may recognise in our own life experiences some stark contrasts between times of joy and times of sorrow; times of hope and times of fear; times of health and times of pain or illness. Sometimes we can live through times when contrasting events and emotions are running side by side and it feels like we’re on an emotional rollercoaster.
The season of Lent offers an opportunity for us to reflect on our spiritual journey and how life-events are affecting our faith and our relationship with God. Here too we may know contrasts: the “mountain top experiences” when we feel close to God, warmed by his love and excited about where he’s leading us and then the wilderness experiences when we feel alone, abandoned and afraid because God doesn’t seem to be there and our prayers seem to go unheard.
We may feel surrounded by wild beasts of uncertainty, redundancy, serious illness or bereavement and we may be tempted to give in to despair or to give up on God as he seems to have given up on us.
Our Gospel reading offers us the knowledge that Jesus, even after being affirmed as God’s Son, had to face a tough personal struggle. He remained faithful to God and he remains faithful to us in our struggle. Sometimes knowing someone is alongside us in the hard times is like receiving the ministry of an angel. When that someone is Jesus himself we may perhaps have faith again as God’s beloved son or daughter.