Pastor Dana's Sermon Sunday March 10, 2019

Here we are in the first Sunday in Lent, the 40 say season. (Sundays not included; Sundays in Lent not Sundays of Lent) Last week I mentioned to the SS that Lent is a 40 day season and I talked about Elijah’s 40 day fast, the 40 days and night of rain with Noah, and 40 years of the Israelites wandering in the desert and such and Waylon remembered this story and the 40 days of His temptation.  I don’t know if he was reading ahead in the lectionary or not but I thought that that was pretty cool

Often we include some sort of a hardship as a Lenten devotion. You know no meat, no chocolate, no alcohol or something like that. The earliest fasts of Lent, which came fairly early in the history of the church, tended to be very strict, allowing one meal a day, and even then meats, eggs, and many other items were forbidden. The Eastern Orthodox Church follows this today. Now, in the Western Church, usually only Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are enjoined as strict fast days, but Fridays are set aside for abstinence from meat.

The practice of not eating meat on Fridays during Lent is why restaurants serve clam chowder as the soup of the day on Fridays year round. When I was much younger and single I used to work in a restaurant that was known for good  clam chowder. The soup couldn’t be reused so I would take a gallon jar of it home after work on Fridays and eat that during the week, eventually becoming sick of it. After that I did not eat any clam chowder for a couple of decades, but now I like it again.

As you may have guessed I was hungry when I wrote this.

I think that many of us are good about being very mindful of what we might do for a Lenten discipline and do a good job of being diligent with those. But the point isn’t the specific temptations, but rather the underlying nature of temptation itself.
In other words temptation is not so often temptation toward something negative but rather is usually the temptation away from something that is truly positive and life giving and that is our relationship with God and the identity we receive through that relationship.

I think that we often focus on all the things we know that we shouldn’t do, instead of pointing us to the gift and grace of our identity as children of God. But the devil knows better. Notice how each of the temptations seeks to erode and undercut Jesus’ confidence in this relationship with God and therefore undermine Jesus’ identity.
When I lament about difficulties that I face in life or in Lent I think of this scene.  Jesus fasted, was weak and as vulnerable as He was ever likely to be. The devil comes and tries with everything he had available. My daughter’s 5lb box of fancy chocolate treats left over from Valentines day that is on our top shelf in the kitchen is not a match for the A-game temptations that were brought to Jesus.

Throughout the gospels you may have noticed that, while the people, including His own disciples, did not always recognize Jesus as the Son of God; the demons that He encountered and cast out always recognized Him immediately as the Son of God. the devil was aware that this was his shot at Jesus and we can be assured that he came with everything that he had and came up short because Jesus endured everything that was thrown at Him.

Also note the first line of our reading. “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness where for forty days He was tempted by the devil.”

How often do we pray for the Holy Spirit to come and remove our hardships and pain? Yet here it is the Holy Spirit that leads a newly baptised Jesus to His temptation. Sometimes hardships are a part of growth, and the Spirit remains present and active even when we cannot see beyond our own personal suffering to recognize the presence of God with us.

When I was in about the 9th grade I had a growth spurt where I grew almost a foot just under one year. As my bones grew and changed, coupled with my low pain tolerance I was hurting and miserable much of the time, sometimes waking up in the night because I hurt so bad. It hurt and I did not enjoy it. But through the pain I grew physically, and it has been much easier for me to find stuff to hit my head on ever since then and I am the person that God created me to be.

This church is experiencing a time of growth and hardship as the model of church at GLP is changing how we do ministry.  It is difficult, it is painful, but the Holy Spirit is here to fill us up and to carry us and lead us.

This is done by affirmation that We are children of God and God will carry us when we need help remembering our true identity. Child of God.
Jesus knows the importance of identity and when the devil offers him bread, He responds with an affirmation of trust in God. The next temptation is more transparent, offering Jesus the power of the world’s leaders in return for Jesus’ allegiance and worship. But again Jesus knows that His allegiance can only be given to the one from whom He has received His identity. Finally, the devil proposes that God is not trustworthy, and goads Jesus into testing that relationship. But Jesus refuses.
Notice that the root of each of these seeks to undermine Jesus’ confidence in both God and Himself and His identity. And in the face of these temptations, Jesus quotes scripture in order to assert that He is a part of that story and His identity as a child of God. through the Scriptures Jesus is reminded not only that he has enough and is enough but that he is of infinite worth in the eyes of God.
Bread, power, and safety. But it just as well might have been youth, beauty, and wealth or any number of things that appeal to us as individuals. On one level, we experience specific temptations very concretely, but on another they are all the same, as they seek to shift our allegiance, trust, and confidence away from God and toward some substitute that promises a more secure identity.
Which is why I think this passage not simply the devil’s failed attempt to steal Jesus’ identity but all the attempts to rob us of ours.
We are literally under assault every single day by tempting messages that seek to draw our allegiance from God. And in response we are called to remember that God loves you more than anything, loves you enough to send Jesus into the world to take on our lot and life, to suffer the same temptations and wants, to be rejected as we often feel rejected and to die as we will die, all so that we may know God is with us and for us forever. Moreover,
And this love and life are given to each one of us in Baptism. Which might make this the perfect Sunday on which to remember our Baptism as we turn to each other and make the sign of the cross on each other’s foreheads, saying, “Remember your baptism, for you a beloved child of God.”
We are tempted daily to lose our faith in God and confidence in ourselves, we come to church to be reminded of, and given again, our identity as beloved children of God. In the face of so many assaults on our identity, in other words, we come to church to have that identity renewed and restored that we might live in the confidence of God’s abundant life and share with those around us God’s unending love.
Lent is often focused on self-denial, sacrifice, and resisting temptation. Which is a good practice. But in addition, Lent could be an ideal time during which we remind each other of the love and grace of God poured out for us in the cross. As we feel the sign of the cross on our forehead embrace Lent and keep your eyes on the cross because in that difficult image we perceive most clearly God’s empowering love for us and all the world made manifest.
God loves this church and God loves you and will keep loving us no matter what, and for this reason we are enough. I know that I need to hear this again and again, remember as you do so that you, also, are a beloved child of God and are holy and precious in God’s sight.