This edition of the River of Life
we are focussing on the journey towards Easter that we call Lent. Our scripture
at the beginning of that Lenten journey is the Gospel story Jesus in the
wilderness (often called the Temptation). This story has always been one of my
favourites in scripture. It is full of danger and temptation, but underneath it
all it is a story about the quest for meaning. Jesus is being faced with the
core question that faces us all… ‘How will we spend our life?’ The temptation
story is full of power and passion, danger and potential violence. The story in
Mark only rates one verse but we are familiar with the expanded versions in the
other gospels which make it clear that in the wilderness he faced the darkness
of the world embodied in the Devil or ‘the Tempter’. And so in Lent we have
often also focussed on our own temptations and out own darkness. Yet in all
these years of reading about Jesus in the wilderness I missed the angels!
Jesus spends a self-imposed, agonising
time of self-examinatio
n in the wilderness but he is accompanied not only by
his lonely questions but he is also attended by angels. In fact in our version
from Mark the angels are just as present as Satan. Unlike the other gospel
writers Mark rarely refers to angels at all yet they are important in this
story. Lent can be a time to take stock of our lives, to come clean about the
things that tempt us and the things that scare us. It can be a very helpful
time of self-examination but in the midst of this deep time the angels are a
reminder that we are not alone. God promises to be with us in the wild, lonely
places of our lives and God promises to bring us blessing out of these deep
times.
I must say also that many people
regard parts of our beautiful presbytery as being wilderness. For me Loddon
Mallee contains a lot of wild open spaces, big wonderful skies and vast
horizons and, if we choose to accept it, spaces to reflect and be. And that our
Presbytery is ministered to by angels I have no doubt. I meet them all the
time, but I need eyes and a heart to know them. I invite you to make this Lent
a time to recount the angels you have known and the ones who currently attend
you, the ones who attend you in your wilderness times. I read an article recently
that referred to the angels, in the words of William Sloan Coffin, as the one
who remind us that there "is more grace in God than sin in us."
So this Lent I invite you use the
time as a time for an inner journey of reflection and the search for meaning,
but be reminded that in doing so that you too, like Jesus, are being ministered
to by angels, both human and Divine.
Rev Gordon Bannon
painting by Cheryle Bannon at https://cherylebannon.com/
