The first reading is Deuteronomy 26:1-11
The second reading is Romans 10:8b-13
The holy gospel according to Luke (4:1-13)
Jesus,
full of the Holy Spirit,
returned
from the Jordan
and
was led by the Spirit in the wilderness,
2where
for forty days he was tempted by the devil.
He
ate nothing at all during those days,
and
when they were over,
he
was famished.
3The
devil said to him,
“If
you are the Son of God,
command
this stone to become a loaf of bread.”
4Jesus
answered him,
“It
is written,
‘One
does not live by bread alone.’”
5Then
the devil led him up
and
showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world.
6And
the devil said to him,
“To
you I will give their glory and all this authority;
for
it has been given over to me,
and
I give it to anyone I please.
7If
you, then, will worship me,
it
will all be yours.”
8Jesus
answered him,
“It
is written,
‘Worship
the Lord your God,
the
Lord alone shall you serve.’”
9Then
the devil took him to Jerusalem,
and
placed him on the pinnacle of the temple,
saying
to him,
“If
you are the Son of God,
throw
yourself down from here,
10for
it is written,
‘God
will command the angels concerning you,
to
protect you,’
11and
‘On their hands they will bear you up,
so
that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”
12Jesus
answered him,
“It
is said,
‘Do
not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
13When
the devil had finished every test,
he
departed from him until an opportune time.
The gospel of the lord.
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Lent is a time for self-examination and confession. Our midweek services are focused on
prayer, creating space to intentionally nurture and reflect on our spiritual
life, our relationship with God. On
Sundays, our confessions for this season have changed so that we all confess
aloud together, even as we also take time to confess silently. In that vein, I have a confession.
I struggle with Paul’s words in our reading today from
Romans.
I can’t do this whole faith thing on my own.
I do not always believe in my heart that God raised Jesus
from the dead.
The one day of the year that I am 100% certain that God
raised Jesus from the dead is Easter Sunday morning. Most of the rest of the time I will cast my lot, as they
say, with Jesus, but I am not always so certain. I doubt and sometimes I just plain struggle with disbelief.
I have always appreciated the imagery of Lent in the wilderness. It is sparse and wide open. There are no requirements of faith in
the wilderness—no test I have to pass or creed I need to confess. There is an open sky, dirt and
rocks. It is creation in purified
form. It is there for my
questions. The wilderness holds my
doubts for me—in hills, in pockets of snow and trees, in the infinite stars
that stretch out in the night sky.
In the wilderness there is space for it all—faith, doubt, questions,
even utter disbelief.
And
the wilderness is where we all come from.
Our ancestors in the faith and our biological ancestors were wilderness
wanderers. We hear the
proclamation today in Deuteronomy and join in with the claim that “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he
went down into Egypt and lived there as
an alien”
Migration
is the story of our faith from Eve and Adam leaving the garden to Sarah, Hagar,
and Abraham wandering to the new place God had in store for them. Joseph, his father, and his siblings
journeyed to Egypt during the famine.
Ruth and Naomi traveled back from Moab. Mary, Joseph, and eventually Jesus traveled to Bethlehem for
a census and then fled to Egypt as refugees. And throughout Jesus’ public ministry he travels, always
crossing over to the other sides, walking to new towns, up mountains, getting
in boats, and eventually he journeys up a hill with a cross and down to the
depths of suffering and death.
Our
faith is the faith of immigrants and we are aliens in this land. Even as we reside here—whether for a
short time or for generations—we belong to the one who calls us into being, who
calls our questions and our doubts from us in the wilderness. We all travel in our faith and somewhere
along our own ancestry we have ancestors—or maybe we are the ones—who began
journeys away from all they knew to live as aliens; immigrants, as we say
today. Holding onto a promise of
new life, hope for the future, they entered into the wilderness journey that we
too find ourselves on from time to time, especially in Lent.
But I find that the wilderness, while familiar and open for
my questioning, isn’t quite enough for me. I need that space, openness, and aloneness, to journey and
question but then I need to come back.
And even while I’m in the wilderness, I need a community of faith. I need a community that can keep the
faith for me, that can keep the faith when I struggle. That is why we come together each
week—to hold each other’s questions, doubt, and disbelief and to carry the
faith along our wilderness journeys when it is too much for another to bear.
In this way when I struggle, you can shoulder the burden and
when you struggle, I can shoulder it and together that burden is lighter for us
all. So I can “confess with [my]
lips that Jesus is Lord.” And trust in the community of faith to help my heart
believe that God raised Jesus from the dead.
Within this community of faith—here as Trinity and First—we join
Jesus in the wilderness of this Lenten journey. We rest in the openness of creation to all our doubts,
questions, and disbeliefs.
As Jesus encounters temptations and challenges in the
wilderness, and because together God makes us
into the body of Christ, we respond with Jesus. Even as we rejoice to receive communion and to have enough
to eat, we also know that others go without and that as an early passage in
Deuteronomy states and Jesus echoes in today’s gospel, “one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”
(Deut 8:3b)
As
we look at creation and the ways we use and abuse it, Jesus also empowers us
to “Worship the Lord your God, the Lord
alone shall you serve.” Even
temptations to power and prestige cannot claim us because it is God who is the
power and source of all life. And
in this community of faith instead of testing God or making deals with God for
healing, well-being, safety, or certainty, God creates the space for us to sit
together with our questions, learning to rest in God, to trust God’s promise of
life, made known to us in Jesus.
And
so we can “confess with [our] lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in [our] heart that God raised him from the dead.” God
creates the wilderness space for our journeys and God travels those journeys
with us, all the way to the cross and back. May this Lenten wilderness provide you with the space you
need to journey, doubt, and rest.
Amen.
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