Lent 1: The Lord be with you.

The Lord be with you.

A friend, who I’ve since lost touch with, put a photo on Facebook a couple of weeks ago of myself with some university friends who’d travelled to Israel. [We had not been disrobed by passing trains as some in the parish managed on their travels.] The photo was taken at dawn on Mount Sinai, where Moses received the ten commandments, overlooking the desert. Seeing the places you’ve read and heard about a thousand times has a peculiar strong impact, like entering again into the story for the first time. The most striking place we visited, however, was Masada.  According to the Jewish historian Josephus, nearly a thousand Jews elected to kill themselves after being starved under siege by Romans at the end of the first Jewish-Roman war in 74AD. The place retains a chilling atmosphere, familiar to anyone who’s visited the various concentration camps or mass graves across Europe. Of which, we may expect more of soon.

Places retain memories. Hold atmosphere. We return again and again to certain places, not only because of our happy memories; But because we detect a sense of peace, or ease or joy there. Or a presence of a loved one. In medieval times this was referred to as the angel of a place. Gen Zs would call it the vibe or atmos’. [It’s a strange thing about young people today- the way they shorten words – When mandatory isolation ended we had a message from a young lady who was staying with us for a few months:  ‘Bozza is saying no isolashy for possy viddy come Thursday’ Understanding young people sometimes requires Google translate.

Neat segue – The liturgical greeting that has begun Christian services for over a thousand years: Dominus vobiscum. For Gen Z: Dommy vobby. Meaning: The Lord be with you. It might sound odd, as we generally describe God as everywhere – or nowhere – But it’s a form of prayer, of blessing; And it’s responsive The Lord be with you; ‘And with your spirit’ or ‘and also with you’. The Lord is here between us, among us. God meets us in personal and specific ways: The Lord be with you.

Now, it may have struck you one Christmas –  that Jesus has a second name. In Matthew’s Gospel, we hear: ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel’, which means, ‘God is with us.’ He does still get called Jesus, but Matthew’s is quoting Isaiah chapters 7 and 8: ‘Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.’ Then later: 

Band together, you peoples, and be dismayed;
   listen, all you far countries;
gird yourselves and be dismayed;
   gird yourselves and be dismayed!
Take counsel together, but it shall be brought to naught;
   speak a word, but it will not stand,
   for God is with us.

The Lord be with you. God is with us. It’s a theme that carries through his Gospel till the very last words of Matthew’s Gospel: “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

And this is a doctrine that runs throughout the Bible. God accompanies Israel throughout its wanderings in the desert – He is with the wandering Aramean - He is with the Ark when it goes into battle. There is a house built for God in Jerusalem. The presence of God in the Hebrew Scriptures is felt locally. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? This isn’t the god of philosophy. It’s more the slogan ‘think global, act local’; But even more personal than HSBC as the world’s local bank, which for anyone who’s ever phoned them up is simply not true.

This is that primal energy that is known – In the moment of good and evil – where tyranny that seemed impossible once again enters the world and men and women rise-up to fight it; When the thrill of a voice or a violin sounds your pain or your joy; In the liberating moment of forgiveness; In the note of praise that takes you beyond yourself; In the unexpected kindness that lightens your misery; In the billion stars of the desert’s night sky. St Paul says: ‘the word is near you, on your lips and in your heart’. The Lord be with you.

Jesus steps out into the desert. He is led by the Spirit. He is, we are told, ‘full of the Holy Spirit’. This matters because I don’t think we should read this moment as a time of doubt or weakness. Entering the desert for Christ is a moment of armament – Of remembering who he is and what he is about. Which is why through the Gospel we see him retreat at times to the wilderness for rearmament. TE Lawrence wrote of the Arabs’ experience of the desert, that there was:  “just the heaven above and the unspotted earth beneath.   There unconsciously he came near God… [in] its open spaces and its emptiness [he was] inevitably thrust upon God as the only refuge and rhythm of being.”

Jesus enters the desert to find the nearness of God. And what we find in the temptations, is Jesus overcoming those ancestral, iconic failings of humanity. We are told ‘He ate nothing at all during those days’, undoing the first sin of Adam and Eve in nibbling the apple. Jesus answers the devil of the second temptation: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve only him’ – reminding us of the Hebrews failure in the desert worshipping the golden calf, even as Moses brought down the ten commandments. Finally, Jesus quotes Deuteronomy in the third temptation: ‘you shall not put the Lord to the test’ Again, this relates to the experience of the Hebrews in the wilderness of Sinai –  when they lacked bread and water, they asked why had God led them out to die in the wilderness. They didn’t trust God. They asked – ‘is God really with us?’

In his 40 days in the wilderness Christ achieves what the Hebrews in Sinai could not achieve in their 40 years. He remains faithful. He trusts. He believes that God is with us, knowing in himself God is with us.

Now these are anxious times. Each year, it seems, is darker than the last. We are in a pandemic, a new cold war, a cost of living crisis. Each of us may have some personal struggle at this time. The 6 Nations is not going well for Wales. Where is our place for retreat and rearmament? Where will we find strength and purpose? What will remind us that God is with us?

God is with you. Not just in that generic God-is-everywhere way. But: The word is very near, on your lips and in your hearts. God is here where two, or three are gathered. Right now we may be on the mountain-top; We may be under siege. We may be in the desert, facing that question: Do you believe that God is with us?
”Listen, all you far countries; gird yourselves and be dismayed; Take counsel together, but it shall be brought to naught; speak a word, but it will not stand, for God is with us.”
“And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Let this place be a place of strength to you. A house of God, built before the estates to our left and right. A place ‘where prayer has been valid.’ On your lips and in your hearts.

 The Lord be with you.