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| Gustav Dore, Jesus in the Wilderness |
The Lenten season begins on Ash Wednesday, which reminds us that we begin as dust and to dust we will return. The Gospel reading for the First Sunday of Lent takes us into the wilderness, where Jesus undergoes a series of tests given to him by the devil. This wilderness ordeal takes place immediately after Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan. According to Luke, after his baptism, Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit, who then led him into the wilderness. While he was in the Wilderness, Jesus fasted for forty days and nights, after which he was tempted by the devil. The forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness form the basis of our Lenten season, whether or not we join Jesus in his fast.
Over the centuries many have followed Jesus into the desert, hoping to purge themselves of spiritual distractions and sin. Desert fathers like St. Anthony went into the desert and practiced extreme forms of asceticism. According to their testimonies, like Jesus, they battled the devil. It’s just something that happens when you go into the desert by yourself to pray.
Many people find fasting to be spiritually liberating. Our Lenten season coincides this year with the Muslim season of Ramadan. During this season, many Muslims will fast from sunrise to sundown. My Muslim friends have reported that they find this time of fasting spiritually invigorating. This fast takes place during daylight hours, so when the sun goes down Muslims break the fast by first eating a date and take a drink of water. After that, they have dinner. The dinners can be spiritually important, especially when shared in a community setting. So, on Thursday evening, Cheryl, Brett, and I attended the Iftar dinner sponsored by the Intercultural Association of Michigan. While we didn’t fast on Thursday, we did help our Muslim friends end their fast for that day.
Ultimately, the decision to pursue the kind of spiritual ordeal like the one Jesus endured is a personal one. Whatever form our own discipleship takes, whether it includes ascetic practices or not, the question is, will we follow Jesus along the road less traveled? Or, will we take shortcuts that ultimately lead us away from God’s purposes for our lives?
As Luke tells it, after Jesus fasted for forty days and nights, he was famished. He desperately needed to eat something, but the wilderness didn’t offer him many options. All that lay in front of him were stones. According to Luke, the devil appeared to him at just that moment. The devil suggested that he could solve his hunger by turning these stones into bread. While that might be true, was this what God would have him do? That is, does God’s pathway involve taking a self-serving shortcut?
After Jesus resists this temptation, the devil increases the pressure offering even tougher and more enticing temptations. These temptations involve shortcuts to power. If you want to get things done, you need power, or so many people think. So, if you can get power the easy way, why not go for it?
So, with that in mind, the devil offers Jesus two shortcuts to power. The first temptation involved trading power over the world for worship of the devil. All Jesus has to do is worship the devil and the world is his. If he takes this path, he won’t have to face the cross. Later on in history, Christians faced demands that they venerate or worship the emperor. Many Christians complied with this demand, believing it was a mere formality. Since idols are nothing, burning incense to them is nothing. But is this true? Might our leaders demand our complete loyalty and even veneration? Sometimes this simply involves going along with the status quo, even when the status quo means rejecting God’s ways. How many Christians in the United States accepted slavery, Jim Crow or the forced removal of Native Americans from their lands? Many Christians accepted and even supported Hitler’s attempt at exterminating the Jews, Gypsies, gays and lesbians, and people with disabilities.
The third temptation involved the use of a spectacle. Why not get the crowds on your side by doing something spectacular like jumping off the pinnacle of the Temple, letting the angels of God lift you up. That will get people’s attention. It might be entertaining, but is that the path God would have Jesus or us take?
Jesus rejected each of these three temptations. He used Scripture to answer the devil, especially when the devil tried to use Scripture for his own purposes. While this story might be familiar to most of us, the question is, what might we take from it besides acknowledging that this is the foundational story for the season of Lent?
Perhaps one of the messages that arises from this passage is that the devil tried to sow mistrust. Could it be that the devil tried to put a wedge between Jesus and God? Might the devil have tried to raise doubts in Jesus’ mind about God’s faithfulness? After all, at that moment Jesus was starving and vulnerable to the devil’s intimation that maybe God wasn’t truly present with Jesus
David Lose wrote some time ago that “our natural insecurity” can lead to mistrust of God, making us open “to the possibility, appeal, and temptation of the proposition that it is all up to us, that God is not able to provide and so we’d better take matters into our own hands.” Maybe you feel this way at times. Sometimes we can even spiritualize it by saying that we are God’s hands and feet, while taking upon ourselves our own yoke, not that of Jesus. Even if we don’t try to solve our problems by ourselves, perhaps we embrace the promises made by powerful people that they alone can solve our problems.
As we enter this Lenten season, we live at a time of deep mistrust. People don’t trust our institutions, whether it’s the church or the government, or other institutions. This mistrust often breeds fear and cynicism. That can be dangerous because fear and cynicism can entrap us and make us vulnerable to manipulation.
The message we hear this morning, as I see it, involves heeding God’s call on our lives. That involves following Jesus’ lead. A number of years ago many Christians wore bracelets with the letters WWJD on them. This acronym stands for What Would Jesus Do? I think that’s a good question to ask at this moment as we face self-serving temptations that can lead us away from the path that God would have us trod.
As we begin our Lenten journey, might we follow Jesus in rejecting the seed of mistrust, which is often rooted in enticing messages that can lead to idolatry, injustice, division, and even violence? When the devil offered Jesus power over the entire world in exchange for worship, Jesus said no. That’s because we’re to worship God and serve only God. This is an offer we should reject as well because it’s said that we will resemble the one we worship. In saying no to the devil’s offer, he invites us to follow him along a different path that involves worship and service to God. That involves loving God and loving our neighbor as we love ourselves.
If we are willing to follow the path laid out for us by Jesus, then we will discover our True Self. According to the Franciscan writer, Father Richard Rohr, the devil’s temptations reflect the “False Self.” He writes:
Satan does not tempt you so much to the “hot sins” like greed, lust, and gross ambition. They are too obviously evil and will eventually show themselves as such. Instead Satan tempts you to proper, defensible, and often admired things, but for cold, malicious, or self-centered reasons. [Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond, (Jossey Bass, 2013), p. 46.]
In contrast to this false self that leads us away from God, a pathway that Jesus rejects, we can follow Jesus toward the True Self. We discover our True Self, when we encounter God living within us and around us. The fruit of this discovery of the True Self is, as Paul wrote to the Galatians: “love, joy peace, patience, trustfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” Against these, Paul says, there is no law (Galatians 5:22).
In his Wilderness Ordeal, Jesus faced the question of whether he would trust God or the Tempter. As we engage in our own Wilderness experiences, we face the same question. In whom will we place our trust?
It is worth noting that while Jesus put his trust completely in God, the temptations didn’t cease. Life didn’t get easier after this encounter. But he found peace, joy, and strength in his relationship with the Father. The same can be true for us. But, we must let go of our fears and our mistrust and put our trust in God. In this, there is hope for the present and the future. But, we have to say no to invitations that will take us on a path different from the one God set before us. So, let us follow Jesus, even though his path takes us from the wilderness to the cross.
Preached by:
Dr. Robert D. Cornwall
Pulpit Supply
First Presbyterian Church (PCUSA)
Troy, Michigan
Lent 1C
March 9, 2025
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