March 6, 2022
Luke 4:1-13
It’s the first Sunday of the season of Lent, that penitential and reflective time that’s meant to prepare us for a transformational Easter. It’s a time launched by the lectionary each year with stories of the wilderness. And, today is no different.
We begin with day one of Moses and the Israelites in the wilderness after having crossed the Red Sea and escaping captivity in Egypt. Immediately they realize that they are not only free; they are homeless. They are outside of civilization and they must fend for themselves and their fears start to mount and they grumble against Moses and Moses appeals to God and God provides in a way that the people didn’t expect. This is a pattern that lasts for the next 40 years, going all the way through the Book of Exodus and into the Book of Numbers.
Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness is meant to remind us of these 40 years. Just as the Israelites emerge from the waters of the Red Sea into new being as God’s liberated people, so Jesus emerges from the waters of the baptism crowned with the Holy Spirit and proclaimed “the beloved.” And, just as the Israelites find themselves immediately in the wilderness, so does Jesus.
It’s a common homiletical move to focus on the temptations that Satan sets before Jesus as three distinct issues which Jesus must overcome. Lots of good sermons have been preached that way; I may have done that in the past myself, but not this time. This time they all seem to me to be about the same thing. They are all about giving up on God and not believing that God is sufficient enough to meet Christ’s needs. This is the same temptation the Israelites faced all those years ago, and it seems to me that it’s the same main temptation that all of us face today.
I think I told you about a mentor I had just before taking my first full-time appointment in the Methodist church. He gave me some very sage advice. He said, “When you are feeling dried up and depleted, when your faith is hard to feel, go out and visit somebody.” It wasn’t the advice I expected and I wasn’t sure why he was giving it to me, but I remembered it, and I used it, and without fail I found that it worked. There was something about dropping my fatigued faith for a bit in order to connect with and care for someone else that had a way of reintroducing something sacred back into my heart and mind.
I’ve been applying this principle a lot lately. These just feel like wilderness times. It’s hard to have confidence that God is sufficient to meet our needs. And, I say that knowing that I’m among the more fortunate ones in this world relative to the global population. I expect that most of us are.
As you know, I worry about the state of the church. Not just our church, but about the broader church in general – about decline, about confusing and unhealthy trends, about a kind of disconnect with past traditions and with current populations – and I know that I can’t fix things and I’m not clear at all what if anything God is doing, and I’m aware that it’s a wilderness that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. And, as I walk in that wilderness what I’m finding is the only way out is to pray, but not for the state of the church, or for clarity about God’s actions, or for whatever innovative ministry I might try next. It’s to pray for you and the concerns brought up as we voice our prayers; it’s to pray for Muirgheal, and Joyce, and Susie, and Mary. It’s to pray for my kids, and my wife, and my parents. It is to pray for specific people who happen to not be me, and in doing so, while I do not know what God will do, I do tend to find that suddenly God feels more real and present and life feels more full of potential.
Maybe you went to our Ash Wednesday service. It felt pretty serendipitous to me that Pastor Todd’s assignment to us all that night and this Lent was to look around us, see one another’s faces, and pray for one another. That, he said, is how we’ll find ourselves transformed, and I think he’s right.
It’s hard to believe that as we emerge from the last two years with the hopes that we’re finally through the thick of Covid the world has suddenly become exponentially worse with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. We’ve moved from one wilderness into another as we see the senseless suffering inflicted on another nation and as we contemplate all the ways in which a globalized world will or may suffer too. Are we supposed to pray that an erratic despot will change his heart and exit Ukraine, will limit his ambitions, will care enough to takes nukes off the table? Are we supposed to believe that our prayers will work?
I wanted to pray, but I didn’t have the words. I had nothing to say that I could say with faith. And there in that wilderness, because Kirsten and I had been talking, the words came from her in the form of a text that popped up on my phone. It’s a prayer for peace by John O’Donohue, written well before our present moment, and I’ll invite you to pray it with me.
As the fever of day calms towards twilight
May all that is strained in us come to ease.
We pray for all who suffer violence today,
May an unexpected serenity surprise them.
For those who risk their lives each day for peace,
May their hearts glimpse providence at the heart of history.
That those who make riches from violence and war
might hear in their dreams the cries of the lost.
That we might see through our fear of each other
A new vision to heal our fatal attraction to aggression.
That those who enjoy the privilege of peace
Might not forget their tormented brothers and sisters.
That the wolf might lie down with the lamb,
That our swords be beaten into ploughshares
And no hurt or harm be done
Anywhere along the holy mountain.
So, there, when I was seeking it but had none of my own, thanks to Kirsten Nestro and John O’Donohue, I had a prayer I could say, and mean, and even begin to believe.
The wilderness is not a fun place. To be honest, I hate it. But, it is part of life and therefore part of the life of faith. In fact, if you noticed, it’s not for lack of faith that Jesus finds himself there. It is because of faith. It is the Spirit that drives him there. And, as I think about that, I think he’s driven there not because we’re driven there too. I think he’s driven there because he knows we will be there. I think he’s driven there with the Spirit’s urgency because he knows/God knows that that is where we will find ourselves. There’s too much that we can’t answer, too much that we can’t bear, too much that we can’t know, too much that we can’t do, for us to end up not there. And so, there he goes.
And, there in the wilderness Satan gives him all Satan can, and Satan leaves without success. Later in the gospel Jesus says to his disciples, “I have seen Satan fall,” and of course at the end of the gospel we all see that it is Jesus who rises. Whether you see Satan as embodied and personified evil or you see him as a symbol for all that would corrupt and destroy those whom God loves, the point is the same. The point is that Jesus is our way out of the wilderness, or at least our way through. It’s not the power of our will, or the strength of our thought, or the inspiration of our faith. It is Jesus who died and rose again. It is Jesus who imparts his presence in bread and cup. It is Jesus who’s Spirit lives in us and is made present to us in our presence to one another. It is Jesus who says, “Love one another as I have loved you,” for that is how we will know what cannot be known, and that is how those prayers that seem foolish will somehow matter, and that is how lives that seem futile will become sacred.
It is the Spirit of God that lives in us. And if we are to know it, I must show it to you and you must show it to me. We must show it to one another and to the world around us, and when we do we will know the help of God.