Sunday Readings
February 10, 2008 :: First Sunday of Lent
Scripture
GENESIS 2:7 — 9; 3:1 — 7
The serpent tricked Adam and Eve, and they disobeyed God.
ROMANS 5:12 — 19
Adam and Eve brought sinfulness; Jesus brings righteousness.
MATTHEW 4:1 — 11
The devil tried to tempt Jesus, but he was not tricked.
THEME
The serpent is an old symbol of evil. It can strike suddenly and quickly, or it can enter slowly over a period of time. It can strike suddenly and catch us off guard, or slither into our lives and slowly choke the goodness out of us. We humans often give in to sin, but Jesus showed us how to live a life of righteousness.
FOCUSING OBJECT
A rubber or wooden snake, or a picture of a snake
REFLECTIONS
Peer pressure works like a snake. Sometimes it is a slow process, and without realizing it you just gradually start doing things and saying things and thinking things that your friends do, say, and think. Sometimes it is a quick strike and you are suddenly in a situation and have to make a choice. Some friends are trying to get you to do one thing and some are trying to get you to do something else. Peer pressure can be negative or positive.
• Which kind of negative peer pressure are you more likely to be influenced by — the slow, gradual type or the high-pressure, fast type?
• Which kind of positive peer pressure are you more likely to be influenced by?
• Can you give an example of when positive or negative peer pressure influenced you?
• Do you ever use positive peer pressure to influence others? Do you think you are more likely to influence others slowly, over the long haul, or quickly, in a sudden or specific situation? Can you give an example of when you have had a positive influence on another person?
CLOSING
From the time they can heard a goat,
From three years and nine months on,
Maybe earlier,
The smallest African child can spot a snake
lying on a rock,
way up in a tree,
just slithering into an ant hill.
Never,
Never,
Never a quick move, around a corner,
under a low branch,
through tall grass.
Have you ever felt your hair
stand up
seeing snake signs on soft ground,
digging into a pile of stones,
moving through an abandoned hut?
You feel python-chatu around springs,
puff adders in corn fields,
green mamba on low branches.
The kids in Old Blue yelled:
Don’t run over it.
Don’t injure it.
It’ll attack someone, if injured.
We saw a full-sized,
head-up,
slow-moving,
clear-across-the-road
Black Mamba
and stopped to ponder,
to remember,
to be Adams and Eves.
In the Serengeti
We joke about lions,
We warn about cape buffalo,
We laugh at hyena,
but we have one eye alert
for broods of viper,
sunning serpents,
SNAKES.
Like our baby chicks sense
hawks day one,
immediately,
by the shadow,
So Africans
All-Adam-and-Evekind sense
The serpent instinctively,
biblically,
by ader antennae.
Don Larmore
For complete Sunday reading go to http://www.usccb.org/nab/
In Touch With the Word: Lectionary-Based Prayer Reflections, by Lisa-Marie Calderone-Stewart (Winona, MN: Saint Mary’s Press, 2004).
Copyright © 2004 by Saint Mary’s Press, www.smp.org.
All rights reserved. Used with permission of the publisher.