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So, it’s that season of Lent again. It’s time to start giving stuff up, right? What’s it going to be? Chocolate? Alcohol? Coffee? Screen time? Or, should we make that noble decision to do something like give up lunch and give the money we would have spent to a food bank? Well, I used to approach Lent that way – the “do without something that might be considered a temptation or bad habit in order to realize my need for God” thing. But then I kind of thought to myself that my reasons for giving up that stuff had more to do with weight management and health consciousness than with actually drawing close to Jesus. It actually just made me more preoccupied with what I was giving up than I otherwise would have been if I didn’t give them up. Then there’s that false sense of pride for enduring or the guilt and shame for slipping up. Then I got to thinking, is cutting back on the chocolate, beer, and coffee the best I can come up with for drawing closer to him who was crucified on my behalf? That makes me feel Nauseous.
After that realization I decided to go a different route. Instead of giving up some sort of “bad habit” or “temptation” related something or other, I decided I would add something. I would make room in my life of habits for a new habit of a daily spiritual practice. Something like creating the habit of taking time daily to read Scripture and to pray. On the simple side, most of us have smartish watches now that can be programmed to give a periodic vibration to remind us of something. My watch vibrates every few hours to remind me to take a moment to start praying the Lord’s Prayer. I can reasonably say that the spiritual habits I’ve developed over the last couple of decades or so started with Lent or times in my life that felt like Lent.
By “felt like Lent” I mean things come about, things happen in life and we find ourselves realizing we’re not the persons we believe ourselves to be. One of the wrong understandings of Lent is that this is the season when we are supposed to make ourselves painfully aware of our sinfulness and that we are unlovable to God and it’s all supposed to culminate with Good Friday and Jesus dying for our sins. I don’t find that helpful or healthy. Lent in my opinion is time for us to focus more on who we are as God’s beloved children. The invitation of this time of year is for us to draw closer to God in an honest way, which is to bring our burdens, our brokenness, our shame, all that stuff that Medieval Bible-thumpers would have you believe makes you unlovable to God; actually bring all that to God who is present with us and who will bear these burdens with us until they are born away. That’s what Good Friday is about. We can’t let this season be about us trying to get rid of all our imperfections which we think make us unlovable to God and proving we’ve got strength to resist temptation and make ourselves lovable to God. Rather, it is about discovering and deepening our awareness that we are beloved by God, each one of us, no matter what.
Traditionally, the theme for this Sunday is temptation and we read about Jesus being tempted by the devil. But, temptation isn’t what is happening here. Jesus is being tested by the devil. The devil is testing to see if Jesus has a handle on his identity of being the Son of God, the Beloved. Remember this happens in Luke’s Gospel immediately after Jesus’ Baptism when the Holy Spirit descended upon him and God the Father spoke from heaven saying, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” And we also have to remember that Jesus is now full of the Spirit and was led by the Spirit out into the wilderness in order to be tested by the “diabolous”. That’s the Greek word here that we translate in good Medieval fashion as “devil” but it actually means “the slanderer”, the one who falsely accuses the identity of another. Since the Holy Spirit led Jesus to this moment, we must accept that this is something that had to happen for reasons we won’t know. Things happen to us and we don’t know why but they bring us to the realization that in Christ we too are God’s beloved children with whom he is well pleased.
The first test seems to be about what it is to live and whether Jesus fears death and can be manipulated by the fear of death. Jesus has been fasting in the wilderness for over forty days and the slanderer says, “If you are the Son of God command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Let’s note something here. Jesus is probably not miserably hungry. After several days of not eating you don’t feel hungry anymore. Your body adjusts to using its own resources and apparently there’s some cleansing and healing and mental clarity stuff that happens and some euphoria. So, let’s not think that Jesus is beside himself with hunger. The point is that after forty days he is at the point where he needs to eat or death will set in. So, will Jesus save his own life by using his power as the Son of God by whom, in whom, and through whom all things came into being to turn a stone into a loaf of bread and not die. Well, Jesus the Son of God doesn’t need to fear death. He lives whether he eats or not, whether he dies or not. He does not need to save himself to live. He lives!
The second test is odd. The slanderer tells Jesus to worship him and he will give Jesus the authority to rule the nations, authority which belongs to Jesus anyway and “on that day” he will return and manifestly take it back. There’s some weird logic here that needs to be figured out. Apparently, this slanderer has a lot of false power in addition to a slanderous ability to make us confused about our identity as beloved children of God. The slanderer says that all the splendour and authority of the kingdoms of the world have been handed over to him. The sense of the word for “handed over” in Greek is “betrayed”. Just as Jesus was handed over to Pilate, betrayed to Pilate by the Sanhedrin (the people in power over the people of God) so also have the splendour and authority inherent in human kingdoms, nations, and so forth somehow been betrayed over to this slanderer.
A key component in the Biblical understanding of the way things are is that there is a slanderous power standing behind the way we humans govern ourselves. It doesn’t matter if it’s a dictatorship, or a democracy, or a church, or just a group of kids trying to play together on the playground. There’s something twisted about the way we go about governing in community. We should be under the loving authority of the Son of God. We should reflect the loving image of our Triune God in the way we relate to one another. But somehow, we’ve been betrayed or it’s more likely that we betray ourselves over to the slanderer so that power is corrupted and abused amongst us by us.
So, the slanderer tells Jesus that he can have all that splendour and power if he just worships the liar and betrays himself. Then the world ordering would be under the rightful authority and all the world’s problems solved, right? I don’t think so. Good, rightful even devote leaders with the best and purest intentions can’t do the good, rightful, and devote things needing to be done to fix the world that they are called and appointed by God to lead because it will always involve worshipping at the altar of the slanderer to whom we’ve betrayed the splendour and power of human community in the image of God. So, it’s best not to buy into the power to rule and rather seek to serve. Jesus the Son of God came to serve not to be served. That’s the way around the slanderer’s test with respect to how the Beloved Son of God uses power.
The third test, the slanderer notices that Jesus quotes and heeds the Scriptures and that Jesus’ heart is set on serving God only and that Jesus doesn’t fear death, so he quotes Scripture back at Jesus, passages that test whether Jesus can really trust that God will be faithful to him. “If you are the Son of God about whom the Scriptures say God has commanded his faithful angels to protect, do this reckless, suicidal thing to get God to prove his faithfulness.” Jesus responds, “Do not put the Lord, your God, to the test”. This test has an interesting twist. Son of God is a title given to kings and emperors to make people assume that they have divine authority. The slanderer seems to think he’s just dealing with one of those men who can be deluded by power. Yet in Jesus’ case, Jesus really is God’s Son and therefore God. The slanderer just put God himself to the test. The slanderer tucks tail and departs.
So, what can we say about all this? Like Jesus, we each are beloved children of God. God the Father loves us each as much as he loves Jesus, God the Son. The evidence of this is the felt presence of the Holy Spirit and that Jesus went through betrayal by us and death for us and was raised. For me, the felt reality of knowing I am God’s beloved child is the coat I put on every morning and the rack I hang it on at night. When all is a mess, when the slanderer is trying to get me to know myself otherwise (and he does and it hurts), I can only fall back on the assuring, still small voice of “You are my beloved child” and wait for my God in his faithful love to work things for the good. In the meantime, and that can be years, I must resist the urge to control and use my personal power to get my way.
We, as congregations, are gatherings of the community of those who know we are beloved children of God. God loves our little communities of faith. We must not be slandered into believing we are anything other than the place where wounded wounders can come and become healing healers who selflessly and unconditionally live hope before this slandered and lied to world. The community of the beloved children of God where people can come to know themselves as beloved children of God is what we are and we need not be anything else. Amen.
