First Sunday of Lent                                     (today’s lectionary)
On the road again
When we got to the Tomitas on Saturday afternoon, Miles and Jasper were sleeping. I promptly went to sleep myself. Miles woke up first and began watching Paw Patrol; he gets half an hour or so on the iPad on Saturdays. In the morning the whole family went to his soccer practice for five-year olds, got kolaches at Central Bakery, and played at home till naptime.
Jesus ate nothing in the desert for forty days, to be tempted by the devil. “Command this stone to become bread.” But Jesus said, “One does not live on bread alone.”
Jasper woke up after awhile and ate grapes Margaret cut in half for his snack. They put on their big rubber boots, and we set out on our walk to the Little Free Library in a neighbor’s front yard. This outdoor bookstand has been flourishing for over four years. Bring one, take one. We brought five and took four. Jasper wanted to read one of the books (The Thing About Bees: A Love Letter) to some big goldfish in the neighbor’s pond. Miles saw two black spotted fish he was certain would poison him if he got too close.
We walked back around the block. Margaret went inside, but the boys wanted to take a road trip to Chicago. Our car sat outside ready to go. Miles decided he would drive, and Jasper hooked up his seat belt in the backseat. He was bouncing up and down. I set up the Prius’ GPS map app for our route to Chicago. We rolled down the windows, turned on the hazard blinkers, and turned on the radio. Beethoven. Violin Sonata #3 in E-flat major. All three of us like classical music.
The devil showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world in a single instant. “I shall give to you all this power and glory.” But Jesus said, “It is written, you shall worship the Lord your God, and him alone shall you serve.”
I pointed out that a trip to Chicago means we’ll be in the car all day, stop for the night, then be in the car all day again. They didn’t seem to care. “We’ll need lots of windshield washer,” I said. Miles and Jasper jumped at the chance to fill up the reservoir, and we just happened to have a gallon in the hatch. Off came the seat belts.
Miles pulled the latch and we propped up the big white hood. I plopped Jasper onto the front of the car. All of us helped hold the big blue jug. Then. Miles pulled out the dipstick, asked for a napkin, wiped off the stick and pushed it back in. He pulled it out again and checked the oil. There was plenty, and it was clean. Where did he learn how to do all of this?
A seven year old neighbor rode her bike around and around the street circle where we were parked. She’s had her bike a long time, she said. I am pretty sure she would have been excited to go on our Chicago road trip, but Miles and Jasper were too focused on their work to invite her.
William Least-Moon would have been proud of us. Our trip was imaginary, but rich with experience. I thought of the real trip I’ll be taking in a few days, first to Indiana and Illinois, then down Route 66 to New Mexico, and imagined the billboards, the scenery, the cities …
The billboards we passed posed a challenge to the sky and the mountains, lost their bid, and in losing, revealed the sky and mountains for what they really are: protagonists of a timeless story in which the billboards get only a few lines. Nature defeats American mass culture on the highway—for that matter, American mass culture defeats itself on the highway, as it does not in a city or on the Internet. Standing alone by the asphalt, whether as a billboard or a building or a neon sign, it can’t help but confess its most embarrassing secret, that it needs us far more than we need it.
As you can see in the article, these particular billboards continue down the highway, changing with the scene behind them, reflecting reality in two dimensions. I might wonder about what is real and what is less real. If I have been fasting forty days, I think they would make me dizzy. If the devil offered me his version of the power and the glory, what would I say?
Jesus said to the devil, “You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.”
 But a more “human” version of power and glory? Something more palatable to my human desires?
Oh, the priest said, that’s another thing altogether – God is love. I don’t say the heart doesn’t feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint pot of ditch-water. We wouldn’t recognize that love. It might even look like hate. It would be enough to scare us – God’s love. It set fire to a bush in the desert, didn’t it, and smashed open graves and set the dead walking in the dark. Oh, a man like me would run a mile to get away if he felt that love around. – Graham Greene in The Power and the Glory, p. 137
Saturday afternoon, loving and being loved by Margaret, Miles, Jasper, and the seven year old on the bicycle … and then there’s God, loving me, loving all of them, setting fire to bushes in the desert. Let the little children come, Jesus says to us. Speaking to the devil, he is far more firm.
How much can we handle? Or must we settle for “the smallest glass of love, mixed with a pint pot of ditch-water?”
Billboard art by Jennifer Bolande
Painting “In the Wilderness,” by Ron DiCianni
(Deuteronomy 26, Psalm 91, Romans 10, Matthew 4, Luke 4)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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