First Sunday of Lent (A) - 2/26/23

Preliminary

The New Revised Standard Version The Temptation of Jesus

4 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. 3 The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4 But he answered, “It is written,

‘One does not live by bread alone,

but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”

5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6 saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written,

‘He will command his angels concerning you,’

and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,

so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’ ”

7 Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ”

8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; 9 and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” 10 Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,

‘Worship the Lord your God,

and serve only him.’ ”

11 Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

Recording: https://recorder.google.com/72e93525-ed18-4a17-9d02-b840a0c6eae7

Good morning,

Here we are again…First Sunday in Lent! We are, once again, embarking on a journey. And to be fair, your attitudes towards it may differ. Growing up, I did not know much about Lent and the name for it - postni obdobi, did not quite help as it literally means fasting period. That is pretty much all that I knew up until late high school and university. And yet, there is so much to Lent than just fasting! It’s like taking the first part of our reading today and then walking away.

Sometimes I am asked about the meaning of a tradition and I may start explaining this or that, but then there might be a follow-up question: “what is the point anyway?” And that is a different question really. It is less about what it means and more about what is meaning-making and meaning-giving processes like in the church. In the West, we give Lent a lot of meaning in the more traditional, Catholic churches such as Lutheran, Episcopal, or Roman Catholic. The church time is an ever-returning circle proceeding from Christ’s birth through his ministry to Lent and Easter and beyond and then all over again. From celebration to a long period of self-examination and reflection to another celebration.

Eric Law calls on those in the relatively content majority to continue attending to the Cross and those in the less fortunate minorities to attend to the empty tomb. At a congregation like ours, we can have both camps - those that need to self-examine more and those that need to celebrate more. Law’s reasoning is that those that are experiencing hardships do not need to spend more time reflecting the cross as they have more than enough experience with that and those that experience abundance, do not need to do more celebration as that would too be quite contra-productive.

Let’s try and look at our text with these dual lens - let’s attend where there are opportunities to celebrate and where there are opportunities to self-examine.

A first point of celebration may be that Jesus was tempted and thus we know that when we are called to repent, God in Jesus knows what it is like to be tempted - it is not some abstract concept for God. However, the cross moment is that, while Jesus ultimately succeeded in resisting all devil’s temptations, we are not always so adept. I do not think that anybody is wholly able to live in the civilization and not fall for some temptation every now and then. Thus, even though God’s call to repentance comes from a place of understanding, it is still a needed activity for a reason…or rather, let’s be real, reasons!

Let’s now look at Jesus’ statements to the devil one by one.

The New Revised Standard Version The Temptation of Jesus

One does not live by bread alone,

but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”

A point of celebration - we are to live by bread, too! It reminds me of my studies in Slovakia, when we were nearing the lunch break for our intensive New Testament classes and then we would get the word that the pizza delivery is here. Our New Testament teacher “Aďo”, by then very excited about what he had been teaching, which was indicated by him talking quieter and quieter, would finish up a concept and then exclaim: “The pizza is here…one does not live by the Word alone, so let’s go eat it!” Food and celebration go hand in hand of course, there are the perfect pairing, like peanut butter and jelly - how much of everyone’s culture is about the right food for the right celebration! Meat, dumplings, pudding, pies, fish, you name it…there is a code and if you want to truly understand a culture, you will have to learn the pairings. The cross moment is of course in the but…it’s not just bodily sustenance, but also the spiritual one! And on top of that EVERY word from the mouth of God? To again call on one of my Slovak teachers, this time Old Testament teacher Boďo - “you gotta take the Bible seriously…ALL of it!” What he meant is that you cannot just take a few verses, maybe something in Matthew, Isaiah, some Paul, and whole lot of Revelation and then build your religious worldview on top of it while ignoring the rest of the Bible. If you ever encounter someone that claims they know all there is about God, the Bible, and faith…unless they are literally Jesus, which is highly unlikely, they simply don’t. And that is where Lent can be helpful as Lenten studies can close the gap..even just a little.

The New Revised Standard Version The Temptation of Jesus

7 Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ”

A point of celebration can be harder to spot in this one. But I think it comes when we consider discipleship - if we are to imitate Jesus, we can rejoice in that - our God is not one that requires to be tested in any way, it is not some trickster god that enjoys such a thing. The cross is exactly the same - our God cannot be manipulated and strategies we sometimes employ with others will just not work. We pray to God, but we cannot tell God what to do.

10 Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,

‘Worship the Lord your God,

and serve only him.’ ”

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), Mt 4:10.

If you have grown up in predominantly monotheistic religious landscape - Christianity, Judaism, Islam…you may not realize how much of a deal this can be. Of course I only worry about one God! A different world can be found in for example Japan, where the still defacto national religion of Shinto has about 8 million gods (kami) Let us consider the experience of the founder of Churchless Christianity, Kanzo Uchimura, who was very religiously devoted in his polytheistic belief towards gods that dwelt in innumerable temples that were “ready with punishment to any transgressor that fell under his displeasure.” Upon becoming Christian, he could rejoice in being alive under one God rather than dreading the many possible punishments of various angry gods. How infinitely easier it is to focus on just one God rather than 8 million of them! An invitation to the cross comes, when we realize that to only accept one God is to also refuse all idols. And well, the world around us is filled with them, be it connected with money, fame, self-indulgence, or control.

As we can see, there are ways we can celebrate AND attend to the cross just in this text and perhaps keeping this tension in mind is a good thing in our world today that is also highly ambiguous. On one hand, we are blessed with ways to treat serious diseases or we can communicate with people around the world, but on the other hand, we have migrant children working overnight at slaughterhouses or innocent bystanders continuing to be shot and killed by disturbed people in public places. We have more opportunities to learn about other cultures and use technology in a wholesome way than in any time and yet, some choose to fuel hatred and violence towards the other with the very same technology. As humans, we are sinners and saints - capable of great good, but also great evil. To build up…and to tear it all down again. This Lent, let us attend to that, this complexity - through God’s grace, we are given the opportunity to both celebrate AND attend to the cross, to enjoy what the world has to offer, but also to stop, self-examine, and repent. Amen.