The Third Sunday in Lent
“And Jesus replied, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.”
You might remember from a few years ago the cartoon that would often air alongside Bugs Bunny that told the story of Ralph and Sam. Sam was the dutiful English sheepdog and his nemesis, a wolf named Ralph. The clips were always the same – Sam and Ralph, metal lunch tins in hand, would get to the red punch-clock on the tree and punch in for work that day exchanging pleasantries along the way, “Mornin’ Sam…Mornin’ Ralph”. Ralph’s job was to steal the sheep, and Sam’s was to guard them. And much like the Roadrunner and Coyote, the fun was to see how creative the wolf could be even though he was always outdone by the sheepdog.
In one episode – ‘Steal Wool’ – Ralph sneakily crawls underneath a grazing sheep and stands up, sinking into its fleece and lifting it slightly off the ground, essentially donning the sheep’s coat so he can get closer to the herd or carry the sheep away. As always, his plan is foiled when he bumps into the vigilant Sam who sees through his ruse, grabs him by the neck and hits his snout so hard that it droops down like an unfurled accordion.
Silly though it is, I want to suggest that in this season of Lent there is another kind of unveiling going on each week in our readings. Part of it, yes, is connected to the continued and ongoing revelation of who Jesus is – something that will be revealed in its fulness on Easter morning – but it’s also a time in which the veil is being thrown off of the things in our own lives, even things we may think are good, but may actually be harmful for our souls, just as in the cartoon when the pleasant fleece of an innocent sheep was thrown off to reveal the tricky but dangerous wolf lurking beneath.
One of the things I said early in Lent was that this season is all about learning the dangers that beset our path as followers of Jesus, the season is compared to a wilderness, but a dangerous wilderness in which lurks temptations, lies, wolves in sheep’s clothing, and all kinds of other things that wish to yank us from the path we’re on. For three weeks in a row now we’ve heard about the tempter himself, the devil, and of those possessed by devils, and we know both from Genesis and from Jesus’ time in the desert, that the devil is not very creative and his only trick, really, is to try and make you believe the lie that you are God. Remember that Lucifer himself was the angel of light, the highest and best of God’s creatures, but one who was fully consumed with a belief in his own lie that he was God. To be possessed of a devil, says a certain preacher, is not some fantasy or fairy tale that belongs to an earlier and more superstitious age, but is alive an well in our time, and is at least about being possessed by the same sort of idea and lie: to have your mind, your heart, and your soul fixated upon your conviction that you are God.
Often enough we believe the lie because the lie is sweet. The liar comes to us, like Ralph the wolf did, wrapped in something familiar, comforting or appealing, maybe even something that we think will protect us or help us or at least something that is helpful because it soothes us by getting our minds off the thing that hurts to think about, to talk about, or to do. Sometimes we feel abandoned by God in those moments when we think God wasn’t present with us in our suffering; how much easier it is to simply believe that God wasn’t there than to discern how God might have been, but in ways we didn’t want to see.
In those moments of struggle or difficulty the tempter whispers in our ears just as he whispered in Jesus’ ear in the desert and tries to make us believe that God has never been there for us, isn’t listening, and isn’t needed. In fact, what do you need Him for anyway – all the kingdoms can be yours if you just will it.
The crowds in the Gospel today, when Jesus casts out the demon, accuse him of doing so by the power of Beelzebul, the prince of the devils, the chief of the liars, but Jesus snaps back and asks them, “Every kingdom divided against itself becomes a desert…if Satan is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand?” In other words, and to draw on an image Jesus uses elsewhere: a house whose foundation is built on shifting sands cannot stand, how then could a kingdom built on nothing but lies have any power or authority?
Even things that seem good, things that we allow to consume our hearts and minds can be those pernicious lies in sheep’s’ clothing when they whittle away at our confidence and our love and convince us that we are at the helm and that we are all we’ll ever need. So the answer, it seems, is simply to get rid of them, but the Gospel concludes reminding us that while this is helpful, it isn’t enough.
It isn’t enough to kick the tempter, the liar, and the things which possess us to the curb. Jesus uses this image of a house to address the crowds, he says the soul is like a house and sometimes our souls, like our houses, need cleaning and tidying. Sometimes we’ve let things get out of hand with the garbage overflowing and dog hair tumbleweeds blowing through the dining room, sometimes we’ve been lackadaisical with our door keeping and let in some of those liars, and our souls need cleaning.
Lent, of course, is a time of cleaning and tidying, a time to really pull the fleece off the wolf, check behind the couch and at the back of the cupboard for those things hiding in the dark and cast them out. But what happens, Jesus asks, when the unclean spirit goes out wandering through barren regions looking for another person or place to possess but finds none? It returns to the place from which it came and finds it well kept, tidied, swept, empty, and hospitable…and then it tells its friends, and we are worse off than we were before.
It's a funny image, maybe, but the point is that it’s not simply a matter of emptying ourselves out but about filling ourselves back up; it’s not only about getting rid of what is harmful but replacing it with something – or more precisely someone – who will bear fruit. We sweep out our souls so that they can be hospitable places for God, so that we can be possessed not by liars, but by truth. A truth that will be able to point out and unmask the liars when next they come around so that we can see them and their falsehoods for all their absurdity.
The swept, clean, and empty house or soul is an image of what we find when we believe the lies that the devil tells us – nothing, satisfying to look at, perhaps, but without substance. It’s like the Ikea showrooms – they look good, but they lack the soul, the spirit, the warmth that comes from places that are loved and lived in. The same house emptied of unclean spirits and filled instead with the truth and spirit of God becomes like a fortress.
Inviting God into our souls as a guest, to a room made ready and hospitable, will never leave us feeling empty or lied to, it will never convince us of anything besides the truth but will instead humble us and reveal to us God’s absolute truth, making our last state far better than our first. At the end of the Gospel a woman speaks up and praises Jesus, and says, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that nursed you,” to wit Jesus replies the summation, I think, of today’s readings, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it” – or, in context of the sermon today – “Blessed rather are those who fill themselves with the word of God and believe it.”
Amen.
