First Sunday of “Lint”
March 9, Year C, Lent 1
Deuteronomy 26:1-11 • Romans 10:8b-13 • Luke 4:1-13 • Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
On a recent laundry day, a tiny orange light appeared on our clothes dryer, next to the words, “Check Vent.” So began a day-long project. I already had a dryer lint kit with a vacuum hose attachment and a ten-foot-long brush for cleaning the vent tube. But even after the tools worked their magic, the “Check Vent” light was still on. We—and by “we,” I mean my spouse—dismantled the dryer and probed the vent all the way through the roof. Years’ worth of lint came out. But still, the dryer light begged us: Check. Vent. At last, we called in a professional. He discovered that some backed-up lint had knocked a belt off the dryer’s internal fan.
Here in the South, I’ve noticed that “lint”—the fuzzy substance—is often pronounced the same way as “Lent”—the liturgical season. In this season, for forty days before Easter, many of us do some deeper maintenance on our spiritual lives. Just as faithfully cleaning the dryer’s lint screen after every load isn’t enough to stop build-up, so the weekly confession that we’ve sinned against God and our neighbors, in thought, word, and deed, by what we’ve done and what we’ve left undone, might not take care of everything.
Over many centuries, the Church has developed specialized tools for the job. Thorough scrutiny of the conscience using the list of the Seven Deadly Sins was once a popular tool. These sins are pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. Someone off the hook for one sin might be wallowing deeply in another. Several of these sins pop up in the Great Litany that we use on the first Sunday of Lent. We asked for deliverance from “pride,” from “envy,” and from “inordinate and sinful affections”—which covers more than one of the seven deadlies.
But the specialized tool we use most often in Lent is a public review of the Ten Commandments. Like a ten-foot-long vent tube brush, these Commandments systematically audit our lives. Have we worshipped idols? Born false witness? Honored father and mother? On the remaining Sundays in Lent, we’ll read these commandments, and ask God for mercy.
I admit that this public review of the Ten Commandments can sometimes feel like a maintenance checklist. Some things I’m completely on top of, like “You shall not commit murder.” No problem—wasn’t even planning on it! We move through the list at such a steady pace, I don’t always have time to ponder Jesus’s interpretation of this commandment in Matthew’s gospel—that someone who is even angry at another person violates the commandment against murder (Mt 5.21-22).
Other commandments on the list don’t seem to apply to me, like “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” I’m sure I could use some more intentional and holy rest, but I’m not even trying to observe the Sabbath the way the Israelites did.
Still other commandments pierce my conscience deeply and quickly, like “You shall not make for yourself any idol.” I don’t have any literal idols. I can, however, think immediately of things that command far more attention and devotion than I should give them.
But the Ten Commandments aren’t simply a checklist. They’re a shorthand symbol of a deeper truth: that God beckons us to live in the most lifegiving ways, though we’re constantly tempted and constrained by sin to walk in other directions.
This is true not only of the Ten Commandments, but of all the commandments—even those that might not apply to us directly in our own context. So many of these commandments are found in the book of Deuteronomy. Passages from Deuteronomy show up in all three of our Scripture readings today. As a whole, the book of Deuteronomy contains teachings, commandments, and theological perspectives that probably developed over many centuries of Israelite history. But the book of Deuteronomy repositions these teachings, as if they were all delivered as speeches by Moses in the Israelites’ fortieth and final year of wandering in the desert. After the Israelites’ liberation from Egypt, but just before they entered the Land of Promise, the book of Deuteronomy depicts Moses giving them all the instructions, stern warnings, and inspiring pep talks they could ever need to keep them headed in the right direction.
Our first reading from Deuteronomy is chock full of “you shalls” that don’t directly apply to modern, Christian readers, but that still reveal something about God. These “you shalls” are instructions for how to observe the Festival of Weeks, or Shavuot. The commandment to observe this festival actually appears in the book of Exodus, inscribed on stone tablets by Moses as part of a set of “Ten Commandments,” different from the ten we’re more familiar with (Exo 34:22). In Deuteronomy, we get more details about the Festival of Weeks: “You shall” take a first portion of your harvest, “you shall” put it in a basket, “you shall” place it before the Lord, and “you shall” celebrate your bounty in a feast that includes foreigners and people with no land of their own. These commandments are a gift from the God who beckons all of us to live in more life-giving ways.
Quotes from Deuteronomy pop up in Christian contexts in our other readings. Our reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans opens with the words Moses uses in Deuteronomy to reassure the Israelites that the commandments aren’t too difficult. He tells them that “the law” isn’t something that has to be brought down from the sky by a go-between—which is funny, since Moses spent forty days and forty nights on Mount Sinai writing the commandments down. But, in Deuteronomy, Moses tells them, “No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart” (Deut 30.11-14). Paul quotes Moses to present Christian faith in the same way—not as an impossible standard, or an imposition from above, but as something welling up from our hearts and pouring out of our lips, beckoning us to live in more life-giving ways.
Quotes from the book of Deuteronomy are also Jesus’s best defense against the devil. Jesus quotes Moses’s words about manna—the bread that rained down on the Israelites in the wilderness (Deut 8:3). Jesus quotes Moses’s commandment to worship the Lord alone—a commandment Moses gave only after describing this God as one worthy of such worship: a God who “is not partial and takes no bribe,” who “executes justice for the orphan and the widow,” who “loves the strangers, providing them with food and clothing” (Deut 10:17-20). The devil tries to get in on this Bible-quoting game by quoting some Psalms, but Psalms are no match for Deuteronomy. Jesus quotes Moses telling the people not to put the Lord to the test as they did when they demanded water. Instead of testing the Lord, they should keep the commandments, which God gave them, as Moses puts it, “for our lasting good . . . to keep us alive” (6:20-24).
The teachings found in the book of Deuteronomy are probably out of sequence historically. But thematically, they’re right where they belong: between a great moment of liberation, and the people’s entry into the Land of Promise. The commandments have expanded and contracted over time—sometimes growing to more precise stipulations for how to observe each commandment in new contexts, and sometimes pared down to top-ten lists of just the basics. These can be tools that help us examine how we’ve gone off track, or to remove the accumulations that keep us stuck where we are. But they’re always a sign of the God who beckons us to life in its fullness, and the God we can cling to for the long haul.
~The Rev. Dr. Lora Walsh