Sermon: First Sunday in Lent, Matthew 4:1-11, February 26, 2023Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

Sermon: First Sunday in Lent, Matthew 4:1-11, February 26, 2023

Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness. There’s a long tradition among various religions to seek spiritual experiences in the wilderness. So it was for Jesus.

One of the things that attracts me to Phoenix is its proximity to desert wilderness and the spiritual dimensions of that closeness to the desert. And my choice of where in town to live has everything to do with the direct access I have to miles of trails in the Dreamy Draw Recreation area. Given where I live and given my interest in monastic spirituality, I fancy myself as a desert monk who lives in a cave.

Wilderness, of course, can take many forms. The wilderness which the Spirit led Jesus to was not unlike the desert around here. I’ve been to the Holy Land and it’s very similar to here. But the wilds also include lush rainforests and snowcapped peaks and more. In fact, the biblical Greek word that is translated wilderness most literally means a place of desolation. And a desolate place usually is understood to be bleak, dismal, empty and with no people. The root of the word desolate in Latin is solus, that is alone. I got a good sense of that from the plane window yesterday flying back here….

All of this means that places of desolation can also be pretty much anywhere. It can be a physical place. But desolation can also be a state of mind, an existential experience. The crowded streets of New York City can sometimes feel desolate in times of extreme loneliness. One can feel desolate, totally alone, even amidst huge crowds.

It was in such desolation that Jesus was tested by the tempter, the devil. And it’s compelling to note that in today’s story of Adam and Eve and the serpent, even the garden paradise was a place of temptation, and with the fall from grace also paradise became a place of desolation when the man and woman became aware of their nakedness, alone, exposed, in their distinct individuality.

The tempter loves places and times of desolation because that’s where and when we are most vulnerable to succumbing to testing, to trials, to temptation.

The pandemic in its first couple of years was a time of desolation for so many of us. Indeed, the hardest part of the acute phase of the pandemic for me was the social isolation. The pandemic had just been declared when I began my pastoral call in Arlington, Virginia.

I moved there in May of 2020 not even able to meet many members of the congregation. It was a full year before we started worshiping indoors again. To be in a new city and not being able to meet many people, I have never known such acute loneliness, desolation. And I have seldom been so tempted to lose my way, to lose my sense of self as a pastor and as a person, and sometimes even to come near to a loss of faith.

Perhaps you can recount similar experiences of desolation during the worst of the pandemic.

It’s also true that the tempter can appear in all manner of guises. Just as there are many and various forms of desolation, the devil is not limited to a man in a red suit carrying a pitchfork. In fact, more often than not the voices of testing, of temptation, are voices within ourselves that may have been with us for decades, voices that try to tempt us to concluding that we are not good enough, that we don’t measure up, voices that provoke us to despise ourselves, and not trust our innate gifts.

While we confess that Jesus is fully divine, we also confess that Jesus is fully human as well. So, when he walked this earth, he like us, knew times of testing, times of trial. His forty days in wild desolation in the desert became one such occasion for Jesus.

How was it that Jesus withstood the testing by the tempter, the devil? How did he persevere for those forty long hot days and cold nights especially without food? Jesus was human, he needed to eat. Surely he became hangry, that volatile combination of anger and hunger, when being really hungry makes us really cranky.

In short, Jesus withstood the testing of the tempter because he was strengthened and fortified by God’s word which he had memorized and incorporated into his whole being. Notice that each and every time the devil tests him, Jesus replies to the devil with quotations from scripture, the Hebrew bible, in the cases recorded in Matthew, the book of Deuteronomy.

“Jesus, you’re hungry? If you are God’s Son, turn these stones into bread,” the tempter entices. Jesus answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” That’s Deuteronomy 8:3.

The tempter immediately catches on to what Jesus is up to, so in the next temptation the devil also uses scripture but in a way that serves to tempt Jesus. The tempter quotes Psalm 91 – “God will command the angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”

So why not throw yourself down from the pinnacle of the temple? As if to tempt Jesus to suicide. In reply, Jesus offers Deuteronomy 6:16, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

The devil tries a third time to test Jesus trying to seduce Jesus to worship him rather than God. Then it’s Deuteronomy 6:13, the sacred words emanating from that place deep within Jesus where beloved, memorized words dwell: “Worship the Lord your God, and serve God alone.”

So, you see, Jesus was not so desolate after all, not so alone in that desolate, lonely place. The scriptural word was with him, was in him, in every fiber of his being through his years of study and prayer with and memorizing portions of the Hebrew scriptures.

And we would say also, then, that the Spirit of God accompanied Jesus, because the Spirit is living and active in God’s holy, scriptural word. It was after all, the Spirit who led Jesus to the place of desolation. And in the holy word, the Spirit did not leave or abandon Jesus in the wilderness.

So, too, we in our places of desolation. We are not totally alone, even if it can feel that way sometimes or even often. Because Christ, who in fact is the very word of God made flesh, is with us always and forever. And Christ has already visited the desolate places which we inhabit – been there, done that – so that we are not bereft, we are not left orphaned, as Jesus promises his followers in John’s Gospel.

Christ visited the desolate wilds of the cross on his last day of earthly life where he cried out, as we sometimes cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And Jesus was placed in the desolation of the tomb, alone there in death only to be raised on the third day by the glory of God, the one whom he calls Father, the whom he feared had forsaken him on the cross.

Adam and Eve succumbed to temptation by the serpent, that tempter, even in paradise. They ate the forbidden fruit that brought them and all of us to a world of hurt, of sin, of trespass, and of death. But Christ, the new Adam, changed all of that. As Paul writes in the second reading for today: “Therefore just as the trespass of one person [Adam] led to condemnation for all, so the act of righteousness of one person [Jesus Christ] leads to justification and life for all. For just as through the disobedience of one the many were made sinners, so through the obedience of one the many will be made righteous.” (Romans 5:18-19)

When it’s all said and done, in other words, in Christ our desolation does not have the last word. In fact, in our desolate, dry, desert wilds, there’s water – the water of baptism that makes our deserts springs of life.  

Moreover, in our desolate wilderness, unlike for poor, famished Jesus, there’s food for us. In fact, the very bread of life who is Jesus himself, made known to us in the breaking of bread and in the cup of wine, the Eucharist. It’s like manna from heaven which fed God’s people in their time in the wilderness.

And like Jesus, we are accompanied by the words of scripture, having been immersed in that word in worship and study sometimes for decades, such that we become living concordances where we, too, like Jesus, draw words from the Bible to meet the trials and temptations of our days, of our lives.

Maybe you’ve had occasions when scriptural words come to you during your dark and lonely times. Like Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want…”

Jesus had his forty days in the wilderness. We have now embarked on our forty days of Lent. But this season is anything but a place of desert, desolate wilderness bereft of food. Indeed, our Lenten journey at Faith-La Fe is in fact a feast of rich spiritual offerings – soup suppers and vespers and words of gospel hope from the various pastors of our Capital Conference in the Grand Canyon Synod who will be visiting us on Wednesday evenings. So, there’s no need to fast here for forty days. Rather, let’s take on more spiritual feasting through our extra Lenten devotional offerings.

Because of the many and various ways that Christ is present in our desolate wilds, these places of desolation are not just the domain of the tempter, the devil, Satan, the adversary. Christ is here, too, in our desolation renewing our faith in the power of the Spirit working through gracious means, feeding us, quenching our thirst.

And this strengthening is in the service of our being led up by the Spirit into the desolate, desert wilds of our world beyond the oasis of the church, that we, like Jesus, might accompany others in their desolation so that they are not so very alone and bereft, but can know of Christ’s presence through our presence and accompaniment.

So, here’s a Lenten challenge for you: surely there’s someone among your friends, neighbors and family members who may be feeling desolation, loneliness, times of trial and testing. My challenge to you? Reach out to them so they know they are not alone, that Christ is with them even in your reaching out to accompany them. That can make a world of difference in a desolate world of hurt. Amen.