Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Romans 10:8b-13
Luke 4:1-13

God be in my words and in my speaking; God be in our hearts and in our understanding. Amen.

It is interesting to note that today, the first Sunday in Lent, all of the assigned lectionary readings have something to do with how we define and understand our relationship with God. The passage from Deuteronomy recounts instructions for a kind of first fruits offering, to be made by the children of Israel when they “have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it…” The children of Israel are instructed to take some of the “first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest” and to offer it to God in a particular way. The words they are instructed to say recount the story of the exile into Egypt and (in shortened form) the deliverance God provided. “When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us…we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm … and he brought us into this place and gave us this land…” The offering the passage describes sounds like something that would easily translate into a religious ceremony. It expresses, in the ritual of the offering made and the words said, a particular connection, a particular relationship to God. It acknowledges a covenant through which the people whom the Lord brought out of Egypt continue to assert their connection to God. God is their God, and they are God’s people. They remember and recount the past actions of God, make their offering to recommit themselves as God’s people, and then they celebrate the continuation of their relationship with God.

The section of Psalm 91 appointed for today echoes some of these themes of covenant and connection. “You who live in the shelter of the Most High…will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.” Because you have made the Lord your refuge…no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent. For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, so that you do not dash your foot against a stone. … Those who love me, I will deliver; I will protect those who know my name.”

The reading from Paul’s letter to the Christians at Rome encapsulates another understanding of relationship to the Divine. “For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, ‘No one who believes in him will be put to shame.’ For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ This is like the understanding expressed in Psalm 91; but Paul takes it a little further. The understanding of the children of Israel was that their relationship with God was an exclusive one: they were God’s people; other ethnic and cultural groups — lumped together in the term ‘Gentiles’ — who were not descendants of the “wandering Aramean,” were not connected to God in the same way. But Paul, by evangelizing beyond the Jewish community, demonstrated a wider, more inclusive theology; and in this passage, he quotes bits of scripture to support his theology. Paul’s theological emphasis is not on being saved so much as it is on who can be saved. “No one who believes…will be put to shame;” and “Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” “For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him.” The idea that there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, the understanding that God loves all human beings and longs for all of us to enter into relationship with the Divine is a theological revelation that helped to make Christianity a history-changing force in the ancient world; and that inclusive understanding of the love of God expressed in Christ Jesus continues to challenge, define, and shape us, even today. Our individual relationships with God are important; but so is our community’s openness to any and all who are seeking God’s presence. And through us — both as individuals and as a community of faith — we know that God is constantly reaching out to, and encouraging us to draw in, other beloved children whom God loves.

The story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness is one we always hear on the first Sunday in Lent. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’ Lenten experience occurs immediately after his Baptism (which we celebrated at the beginning of the Epiphany season), and we are told that after his baptism, “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.” The story uses folktale elements: forty days to express (in story-teller’s code) a long time (remember the forty days and forty nights of the Flood?); the devil personified, so that the temptations may be cast as conversations; three (a good, symbolic number) temptations; exaggerations, vivid imagery, and so on. We are told that Jesus ate nothing for forty days, and at the end of them “he was famished. The devil said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.’” In some ways, this is a deceptively innocuous temptation. What’s wrong with bread, after all? But of course, it’s not really about bread. What’s significant in this temptation is the attempt to get Jesus to collude in redefining who he is according to the devil’s (not God’s) definition. “If you are the Son of God…” then overthrow the created order that God established by turning this rock into food. In short, if you (as God’s Son) have access to the Divine power, then use it to satisfy your own needs. But instead, Jesus responds, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’” Hearing this, we need to remember (as Luke’s audience would have done) the rest of the passage of Scripture Jesus cites: “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” The first temptation, then, is to stop listening to God and to allow oneself to be redirected — and redefined — by one’s own needs.

The second temptation is one we recognize all too clearly. In an instant of time, the devil shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, and offers him power in exchange for his integrity. “If you, then,” the devil says, “will worship me, it will all be yours.” This is the same temptation that whispers to us, whenever we swallow our qualms — in our jobs or our politics or our interpersonal relationships — and do or say whatever we think will improve our position, rather than what we know in our heart is right. It’s usually not as stark, for us, as world domination; but whenever we choose to do things in the name of security or comfort or looking out for ourselves, we have succumbed to the temptation Jesus was wise enough to reject. “It is written,” Jesus reminds the devil — and us, “‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” Sometimes I think it is difficult for us to grapple with how radical and fundamental this answer is, both to Jesus’ earthly ministry and to our own attempts to follow his example. When Jesus rejects this temptation, he is rejecting not just temporal power, but all ambition to be or do anything other than that which God wills for him. For Jesus, there are no greater goals, no extenuating circumstances, no rationalization, no ends that justify means apart from God’s vision and direction for him. It’s also important for us to pay attention to the fact that for Jesus, worship was is no way separate from service; Jesus couldn’t serve God if he spent all his time in passive contemplation. Prayer is a part of it, and Jesus indeed takes time to pray, but most of his energy is spent in teaching, healing, listening, working — serving God, in short, in every moment of his daily life. In our own Lenten wilderness, we might do well to think about how, for us, the most meaningful form of discipleship comes from following Jesus. It isn’t enough just to come to church and quietly absorb our weekly dose of religion if we are not also putting God first in our daily life, and asking ourselves, with great regularity, whether our actions reflect our faith and embody Christ to the world.

At first, the third temptation seems almost ridiculous to us. The devil takes Jesus to a high place and says, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” And we are left thinking that no one could really be fool enough to fall for that sort of reasoning. But in a way, this last temptation the devil offers Jesus is also familiar to us: it’s the temptation of believing that everything is about us, our lives, our individual concerns. In a sense, the devil is encouraging Jesus to think he is the center of everything, so important, in fact, that the very angels would be sent to rescue him if he did something foolish. We know better (or think we do) than to jump off a building, but we’re vulnerable to the idea that what we want is so important that God, the universe, and Fate will help us to get it. “It is said,” Jesus answers the devil, “‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

This Lent, I challenge all of us to spend some time wrestling with our own temptations. Let us each examine those things that get in the way of our faithful attempts to follow Christ, to serve God. If by ‘worship’ we mean participate in Sunday services, and regard God and Christ with a kind of holy but paralyzed awe, then it’s far easier to worship than to follow; but as disciples, it is following to which we are called. In his earthly ministry — shaped, no doubt, by his own time of wrestling and testing in the wilderness — Jesus proclaimed powerful, new ideas about the relationship between God and people. He taught that God was present and active in people’s daily lives, not fenced off from the common people by Temple ritual and priests. His teaching and healing efforts were not reserved for those people who, through their influence or wealth, could “advance” his message. He spoke out against the injustices of his time, and angered both the religious hierarchy and the political overlords. According to our modern culture’s standards, he was neither successful nor comfortable, but he walked so closely with God that we, two thousand years later, are still inspired to call him Lord and to strive to follow where he leads us.

This Lent, let us consider all the things that hinder us from following. Let us wrestle with our modern devils of complacency, comfort, apathy, and self-involvement; and through all of it, let us cling to the knowledge that we are called to worship and serve the Lord our God, and to follow Christ wherever he — with his boundless compassion and thirst for justice — leads us.

In the name of Christ, AMEN.

Sermon preached by Beth Hilgartner
at St. Barnabas, Norwich, Vt.