Who hasn’t been in a crowded auditorium, stadium, arena, or other large meeting place, filled with people chatting about anything and everything, when all of a sudden, you hear over the public address system, “May I have your attention?”
Sometimes those kinds of announcements have some element of emergency; sometimes they are simply instructions about the next step. If you’re in a busy airport and the announcement happens to be from your airline, you listen carefully in case of a flight delay, gate change, or, in the worst-case scenario, a flight cancellation.
Those kinds of announcements typically succeed in getting our attention.
Our culture right now is like a large crowd of people in a crowded assembly hall, where every surface is a hard one and the sound of our chattering is bouncing back and forth in ways that make it almost impossible to hear with any certainty what others are saying. It’s so noisy that should a critical announcement need to be made, we likely won’t even hear it. And, if we do hear it and don’t like it, we will dismiss it as propaganda or “fake news” from one side or the other. The noisy gongs and clanging cymbals of our cultural conversations right now are stunningly void of love.
Perhaps like no other time in my life, I am grateful for the season of Lent that begins today – Ash Wednesday. It seems to me that this is a perfect moment for us to assume that God is saying to us, as we begin this journey toward Easter, “May I have your attention?” That the synoptic gospel writers connect Jesus’ baptism, the forty days of fasting in the wilderness, and the temptations from Satan to be the kind of Messiah religious people wanted, rather than the Messiah God sent Him to be, seems to me like a very “attention-getting” context for Jesus.
He is about to begin His ministry in and among the people of Judea, and it won’t be easy. He heard the voice of His father declare, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Immediately, He is led into the wilderness (“The Spirit immediately drove him,” according to Mark 1:13) to be tempted by Satan. It was a kind of “razzle dazzle, a miracle a day will keep the Romans away” approach to getting Jesus off track when it came to mission.
Apparently, those forty days of fasting in the wilderness had prepared Jesus in ways that enabled Him, as the authentic human Jesus that He was, to stick to mission. Satan’s first big attempt at winning is met by Jesus’ absolute obedience to what His Father sent Him to do. In Matthew’s words, “then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him.” (Matthew 4:11) Mark even adds that “he was with the wild beasts.” (1:13) Could that be a hint of sorts about some of the apocalyptic imagery in Isaiah that includes wild beasts? (Isaiah 11:1-9)
God had Jesus’ attention! I hope He has mine – and yours.
I know that if I faithfully spend the season of Lent – or any time in my life, for that matter – clearly focused on Scripture reading, prayer, reflection, repentance, seeking, and a whole host of other verbs that can describe our relationship with God, I am offering Him my attention, which can lead to obedience.
It did for Jesus. It can for us.
There seems to be an awful lot of “razzle dazzle” stuff going on all around us. Sometimes it is from the politicians. Sometimes it is from religious people who would take us off track when it comes to mission. In either case, if you listen carefully this week, you just might imagine that you are hearing God say, “May I have your attention?”
Lent can be a perfect time to stop, listen, and say, “Yes, God, I’m listening.”
Image by George Androsov from Pixabay
Wye Huxford 