Sermon for Sunday, March 9th 2025

First Sunday in Lent, rcl yr c, 2025
DEUTERONOMY 26:1-11; PSALM 91:1-2, 9-16; ROMANS 10:8b-13; LUKE 4:1-13

You are my refuge and my stronghold, my God in whom I put my trust.

There is a way that we can read this story of Jesus tempted in the wilderness as a story about human—that is, yours, mine, and our—temptations.

There’s a line of thought that I find quite helpful, and that is that these temptations aren’t as specific as they first seem. On the surface they are quite specific: I mean, I’ve never been tempted to turn a stone into bread; I’ve never been offered all the kingdoms of the world; I’ve never been tempted to intentionally throw myself from a high place. But it seems to me, and many interpreter’s besides me, that the temptations aren’t meant to be read as that specific.

I imagine that most of us haven’t been tempted to turn stones into bread. But who among us hasn’t been tempted to choose a quick fix to a complex problem, when so many pressing problems can’t be solved easily, and need systemic change? And while I would never discourage you from being charitable, I also wouldn’t want to suggest that giving away a little money—as good as it is—is going to solve crises like poverty and environmental damage; I wouldn’t want to suggest that posting the right memes on social media (which I will do from time-to-time!) will do much to solve the political crises of autocracy, oligarchy, and totalitarianism.

And please don’t get me wrong here, either; I am convinced that small gestures can make a difference—but they will only be effective if we work together, and treat our political challenges as the complex things they are; in fact I’m increasingly convinced that it will take communities like churches, including our own—it will take communities like ours, committed to empathy and compassion, committed to love one another, to garner a chance of resisting the dehumanizing tendencies that are becoming so commonplace.

It’s most likely, too, that few of us have been offered all the kingdoms of the world; but who among us hasn’t put faith in those things the world loves so much: money, power, fame, beauty.

These are the currencies of the kingdoms of this world, and we are tempted to put our faith in these currencies, and to worship the gods of these kingdoms, rather than the God of heaven and earth, to whom all the gods of the world will eventually pay homage.

I’d wager too that you’ve never been tempted to intentionally throw yourself from a high place, and to test God’s care for you. But we’ve all been tempted to put our own interests ahead of the interests of others, or ahead of the common good.

Again, I’m not suggesting that it is at all advisable to put yourself, or your families, at risk—there is wisdom in cultivating safe and healthy homes, and families, and communities. But there is often a temptation to overdo such a thing, and to hoard the good for ourselves, sometimes financially, sometimes in space or land; in fact there’s sometimes a win-win, and I would say that our efforts to care for others by having St. John’s Kitchen here for a time is a way that sharing space has benefitted our bottom line even as it’s benefitted the most vulnerable amongst us. We have participated in the common good, and we’ve done our best to avoid the temptation to care only for ourselves, assuming that God want whats best only for us, without consideration for others.

These are but a few ways that Jesus’s temptations tell us something about ourselves. We can also see here the way that even the devil can make use of Scripture, and for the sake of evil; as Shakespeare puts it  in the Merchant of Venice, “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.”

And perhaps we can find some solace too in that Jesus is “full of the the Holy Spirit,”and even that Jesus “was led by the Spirit in the wilderness”; this is the same Holy Spirit given to us, the same Holy Spirit that strengthens us when we face our own temptations; and with that comes the solace that with the Holy Spirit temptations can be resisted.

I wouldn’t want to end this sermon on this point, though; while it is good news that with the Holy Spirit temptation can be overcome, the truth of the matter is that the devil is a strong and wily angel, and that even as we resist temptation, we often fall into it in new and unexpected ways. That even with the Holy Spirit with us, the flesh is weak and we fall into sin, even the sin we know to avoid and work to overcome.

And this is why I would encourage us to read this story of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness in two ways: one, to read it as a story about human failing and temptation, and to give us confidence that by the Holy Spirit temptation can be overcome.

But I would also want us to see that the second layer to this story is just as important as the first: and to see this also as a story about human frailty, but a human frailty taken up by Christ, and a devil overcome by Jesus for the sake of each of us.

Jesus is called not just the Son of God in Luke, but also the Son of Adam; and the wilderness in which Jesus is cast is the fallen garden of Eden, the place of Adam and Eve’s first temptation: the temptation to eat what shouldn’t be eaten, the temptation to see themselves as equal to God, the temptation to see themselves as masters of their own fate. And that in this story, Jesus—the Son of Adam and heir to Adam’s sin—is the one who, for us, in representing us and all of humankind, accomplishes something that we cannot do on our own. Jesus does what Adam and Eve couldn’t do, in that other garden: Jesus resists the devil and the temptation to take the easy way, the temptation to give homage to the wrong gods, the temptation to put ourselves ahead of others.

In this way, we are—thankfully!—not left in this wilderness alone, but we are accompanied; and accompanied not just by the Holy Spirit who strengthens us, but by Jesus, the Son of God—the one in whom, by virtue of our baptism our lives are hid, the one in whom we find shelter, the one who offers himself for our sustenance, and the one who reveals to us the true nature of God, showing us that the true nature of God is found in self-offering. A self-offering made possible not because we can do it

when we try really hard, but a self-offering made possible because those who are in Christ die with him on the cross that we might rise with him from the grave.

And so we find solace in this story—we struggle, to be sure; the Spirit of God is with us, to be sure; and the devil and his ways are overcome, not by us alone, but in the Son of God who offers himself for us, that we might die and live with and in him, and all for the sake of a world under siege.

The Revd Canon Preston DS Parsons, PhD