War games

Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger

“A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.” You may remember this quote from a science fiction thriller called “WarGames” (1983). A young tech geek, David Lightman, played by Matthew Broderick, hacks into a high security computer named Joshua whose sole function is to calculate a winning strategy should the nation come under nuclear attack. Enjoying his own brilliance, David somehow manages to trick Joshua into thinking Russia has launched nuclear warheads. Terrified at last by what he has set off, David engages Joshua in a game of tic-tac-toe against itself. Exhausting all possibilities, Joshua concludes the game must stop because it is unwinnable.

The movie, as it turns out, is a kind of parable about the uselessness of war. In most cases, everyone who engages in it loses. So much pain and suffering result that its own real purpose — and “accomplishment?” — turns out to be that a lot of things get broken and a lot of people die. We can leave that issue now for debate and reflection, but one kind of war certainly follows the pattern of this story: playing the Devil’s game on his terms is a losing strategy. Why? Because Satan is a loser and his only game is to bring everyone down too.

Jesus, who never sinned, was sent into the desert — by the Holy Spirit no less! — to be tempted to sin. Every First Sunday of Lent we read a passage about this from one of the Synoptic Gospels. At the end of his forty days and forty nights of fasting, Jesus is in a weakened state from hunger and, no doubt, exhaustion. I suspect he is tired as well because of the spiritual warfare he is fighting under Satan’s assaults. The temptations are summarized at the end but the gist of them all is, if you are who you think you are (the Son of God, as he heard from heaven at his Baptism by John), why put up with all this. Just listen to me and not the God of heaven who has betrayed you by subjecting you to this.

Where have we heard this before? If you are at all like me, it is something like this that drove you to your last confession! In some way, whatever our sin or sins might have been, it was a fall from living the conviction about God’s unconditional love for us, a seduction to submit to some lesser god or idol, an act of choosing a temptation from the world, the flesh or the Devil, to indulge in something that is not and could not be of love, of God. That’s what any sin is. And it must be admitted and confessed in order that we might — by God’s graceful love — be freed of it.

Yes, if you guessed Eden as the place where you first heard of it, you were correct. The first sin is portrayed in a garden of delights. We know the story. Our story. Adam and Eve are seduced by the Evil One into thinking God is hiding something from them that will make them happier — richer, more satisfied, more powerful. The same temptations are proposed by the same tempter to Jesus, by God’s plan for him, as they are to us in our fallen state. Jesus will resist them then and go on to redeem us from them on the Cross, where the tempter returns for one last shot (“If you are the Son of God …”).

The reality of temptation and sin must be acknowledged and confronted. If we are to win, we cannot play the Devil’s game! It seems oxymoronic to speak of being “saved” if there is nothing to be saved from. In other words, why acknowledge our need for a Savior unless we are aware of the trouble we are in if we go on the way we are living?

Last Sunday, the Third of Lent, the “Cycle A” readings included the famous Gospel of the Woman at the Well, another parable-like conversion story. Again a human being encounters a God who is revealing divine love as an eternal thirst for the love of a human heart. Yes, God longs for us infinitely more than we might be yearning for God. Though we are made to long for God, as saints we admire like Francis, Augustine and the Teresas remind us so powerfully, and find our true happiness only in God, we fall for the lies from lesser gods. So the woman at the well, a sinner beaten down like so many of us, has little hope of much more every day than the same old same old. Jesus wants to give her more.

Before he can give her the “living water” he has (is), something else has to happen. Ever so gently, he brings up the relationships or patterns standing in the way. In her case, the dangerous liaisons with “lovers” who do not love her. This is not just the woman’s story, but that of every one of us in need of the balm of God’s love. It is also an invitation to play Satan’s game or, to put it another way, advice on how to engage in spiritual warfare. It starts with confession!

In my mind there is no doubt that the gift of the Holy Year of Hope which Pope Francis has so lovingly offered us is a call to repentance and forgiveness. All of the promises of indulgences, graces, the fun of making pilgrimages with good friends are aimed at restoring order into our lives — the order of holiness — and the lives of those we love. It is a “together” thing that wants to bring healing to the three essential relationships of every human life: God, community and our common home, God’s beautiful creation. The best way to begin our battle against sin is a good confession. Nothing drives the evil spirits away more quickly and effectively than this.

“I believe in God,” we boldly say, but do I trust God? This is where the hope comes in during this Holy Year of Hope. It’s what the Annunciation is all about and Mary’s trust. In the words of Elizabeth, “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled” (Lk 1:45). Mary makes all the right moves. She conquers Satan’s wiles by her sinless life of complete trust in God and she invites us to confess and live the same life of grace, of trusting God’s love in us. All the right moves are in the Beatitudes! If ever there was a living icon of a life lived in accord with them, it is Mary’s. And Jesus invites us to make it ours. “Repent and believe the Good News” we heard on Ash Wednesday. That is our battle command if we need one. Trust God like the saints, like the woman at the well, like Mary, and let the good times roll!