February 28, 2007 - First Sunday in Lent
Luke 4:1-13
The Rev. Stephanie E. Parker


Today is of course the First Sunday in Lent. We were reminded on Ash Wednesday that it was dust from which we came and it is to dust that we shall return. This is a humbling reminder that all of humanity is in fact made of the same substance. We are invited to take this time to enter into in God's presence and allow ourselves to be stripped of all of the outward ways we try to define ourselves outside of who God created us to be.

It can be very liberating to discover that our uniqueness is found not in what we can achieve or accumulate, but in the simple fact that God created us out of God's infinite love. Think of the freedom that is gained when we learn that our greatest purpose in life is to do nothing more or less than to love God in return and to love one another as God loves us.

In this freedom we can silence the ego and pride that tells us it is achievement and success that sets us apart and we can exorcise the demons of self-doubt that say the only way we are worthy of God's love is if we earn it. This has always been humanity's greatest challenge. We cannot seem to grasp the fact that the saving grace of God is free.

We get so busy seeking and hoarding all of those things that we think will make us acceptable and perfect and worthy or safe that we very quickly lose our way and become lost. Time and again, lost in this great deception, we wander away from God's desire for us and from how we might be a gift to one another as we seek to share God's love with all.

This is one of the sweet invitations of our Lenten journey---to rediscover what it means to dwell at the heart of God and be unafraid of our failures and challenges. In God's loving presence we rediscover that it is not our failures or challenges in life that define us anymore than our success. A holy Lent calls us to reawaken the ancient memory that our truest identity is that we are sons and daughter's of God and to rejoice in that fact. Simply that-- rejoice.

Living in this truth we are not ashamed to remember that we are dust just like everybody else, we are instead given new eyes to see one another as God sees us and to want for one another all of the wonderful things we want for ourselves. What God desires for us is love, health, wholeness and peace and when we grasp this lovely truth, our hearts yearn to share this truth with the world.

God's loving and reconciling purposes unleashed on a world in need is a powerful force. The greatest mystery we may ever encounter is why in the world God entrusts this wondrous and healing power to a fragile and broken humanity? But that is what God does. God became flesh and lived among us. In Jesus Christ God became flesh and in so doing faced life as we face life. Jesus Christ knows our fear, our pain and our struggle and Christ knows what is to be tempted to turn away from God's purposes.

Today we have this rich and vivid description of the temptation of Christ. We are allowed to see Jesus as he struggles in the wilderness. But the landscape is an interior one. Luke's account externalizes Jesus' internal struggles with the one who would lure him away from his true self-from who God created him to be.

Notice at the outset that there is nothing in the text about the Devil "appearing" to Jesus. We read only of the Devil "speaking" to him. In other words, Jesus was alone there in the desert, and the voice that tempted him was an inner voice, just like that inner voice that whispers to us-sometimes enticing, sometimes tempting, reassuring, or scorning. This voice is different from God's because it talks to us of power and control, but it robs us of strength and peace.

Now we must remember that the devil or Satan is no cloven hoofed demon with a pitchfork-there is no such figure in our Scripture-we made him up sometime in the dark ages. No, the devil or Satan is far more dangerous than that. Satan is that energy that calls us away from God's mercy and purpose. The devil is "the slanderer" ----the force that from the beginning of time has called and tempted humankind from away the light of God's truth into places of shadow and doubt.


It's important to remember that immediately before this story, Jesus is baptized and a voice from heaven declares, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well-pleased." The same Spirit who names him "Beloved" then leads him into the wilderness to be tested. God allows Jesus to be tempted, not in order to prove his worthiness to be called God's Son-God has already named him as Beloved, but so that Jesus will know for himself who he is in relation to God. Jesus' temptations enable him to own and trust his identity as God's Beloved. Our own temptations and tests in life enable us to claim our own identity as God's beloved children.

Now I want to be very clear about this-these temptations and tests are about the way we fool ourselves into turning away from God's will for us. I am not saying in any way, shape or form that God does horrible things to us or allows horrible things to happen to us so that we might grow stronger or learn some valuable lesson-God never, ever acts so cruelly or capriciously. Now that's another sermon for another time-but does everyone get my point?

But you see, we are all given the freedom to choose who we will become in this world and to whom we wish to belong. God has already called us and named us as God's own, but is that the identity we want to claim for ourselves? Our tests and temptations, like Jesus', grow us into spiritual maturity. They give us the strength to bear God's healing love into a world that is often too fearful to hear or receive it.

So here we are, back to Jesus and his struggle in the wilderness as he seeks to define himself in light of God's will for him. The call to reconcile the world to God is a costly and demanding one---Jesus, who is also fully human as we are, wonders if he has what it takes. We need to take a moment and realize that in our Lectionary today we have actually gone backwards. All that we've heard about in the past weeks still lies before Jesus at this point. As we encounter him today he is fresh out of the waters of Baptism and just beginning to grapple with what it really means to be the Son of God, the Beloved. He has not yet healed anyone, cast out any demons or been transfigured on the mountaintop.

So, at this point in time, as Jesus contemplates his unfolding ministry, his thoughts seem quite sensible. As Fred Craddock says: "Turn stones into bread-I'm sure the hungry hope so. Take political control of the world---I'm sure the oppressed hope so. Leap from the temple-I'm sure those longing for proof of God's power among us hope so.

But here is the danger---our Scripture gives us various images of evil and we would be wise to realize are that the power of this evil is often very subtle and seductive. Our greatest temptations are almost never between something good and something horrible. Where is the temptation in that! Temptation in its most dangerous form is a subtle and deceptive thing that usually asks us to choose something that is outwardly good, but to choose it for perhaps for all the wrong reasons. All of which is to say is that a real temptation calls us to rise-not to fall.1 If we cast our memories back to Eden for just a moment we remember that the tempter did not ask, "Do you wish to be as the devil" but "Do you wish to be as God?"

Think of the subtlety of your own deepest temptations. I know I am tempted almost every time I preach to gain your attention by entertaining you---if you leave excited about the sermon, about our church, does it matter that it was more about my personality than about proclaiming God's word? Isn't it a good thing for people to be excited about coming to church? Do you see the danger?

What is important to remember as we watch Jesus in his struggle is that Christ came to show us the Way the Truth and the Life. God became flesh and dwelt among us so that we could see for ourselves that the saving hand of God is ever present-and can be as close as our nearest neighbor. If Jesus chooses not to struggle as we must struggle then God need not have become flesh to begin with.

The power of Jesus' struggle in the wilderness is that he chooses to use not his divinity, but the same gifts given to us to do God's will---the power of the Holy Spirit and the Truth of God's love for us as revealed in our Scripture! Think of it-Jesus knows our struggle, our fear and our pain and we are still named as God's Beloved---- we are still called to share God's love with a world in need; broken and fragile yes, after all we are people of dust and it is to dust we shall return.

But we are God's dust from beginning to end. So in this Lenten season I pray we may all enter into the wilderness filled with Spirit and come out at the end of our forty days renewed and strengthened-made worthy by God's grace and on fire to be God's hands and heart to this world we live in. Amen.



1 Fred Craddock , "Luke" in Interpretation.