Listen to the Sermon.
Julien and I watch a series called Lucifer. The main character, Lucifer Morningstar has a way of looking deeply into a person’s eyes and asking them, “What is it that you truly desire?” The subject replies with an unconsidered and deeply honest answer. The kind of answer we wouldn’t normally share with our closest friends, much less a very well-dressed stranger who shares a name with the Prince of Darkness. And, yet, we all have those desires in us – to be loved just as we are, for fractured relationships to be repaired, to end violence in the world, for us and our loved ones to feel safe and secure, to know deep peace.
Did you know the word lucifer means light bearer? Could the devil be a light-bearer, inasmuch as our answers to his wily questions shed light into the deepest parts of our souls?
In Luke’s story of Jesus’ encounter with the devil in the wilderness, the devil comes armed with specific things he thinks will be tempting to the deepest part of Jesus’ soul. Finding Jesus hungry, tired, and alone, he offers food and power and safety to the Son of God.
The devil is often called the tempter because it seems that he is trying to trick Jesus into doing something he knows he shouldn’t. He offers temptations to Jesus in a moment of vulnerability. But perhaps these temptations are part of a bigger test. Perhaps the test is about what it means for Jesus to understand himself as the Son of God or the Messiah.
Jesus spends 40 days in the wilderness just after his baptism, when he received the Holy Spirit. In fact, Luke says it was the Spirit who led him into the wilderness. What if the point of these 40 days is not deprivation, but time to ponder his relationship with God? Time to digest what it means to live a life blessed in baptism and filled with the Holy Spirit?
What if Jesus’ encounter with the devil is not about his ability to resist all temptations, and thus set a perfect and unattainable example for us to follow? What if these interactions with the Tempter are actually challenging Jesus’ identity? How he understands who he is, in relation to God and other people? And how he lives into that understanding of who God has called him to be? Now that’s a test we can identify with.
What does it mean for us to embrace our identity as baptized people filled with the Holy Spirit? The devil tries to get Jesus to embrace a grandiose and idolatrous understanding of his role as the Son of God. We are tempted by that same idolatry when we refuse to acknowledge who we are in God’s eyes: Chosen and Beloved children of God.
Our idolatries and temptations manifest when we pridefully deny that we are broken and refuse to be humbled by God’s grace and mercy. When we refuse to acknowledge our sin and say we have no need of repentance or forgiveness. They happen when we fail to see ourselves as God does, beautiful and uniquely gifted. When we are so beaten down that we say we deserve nothing. When we find ourselves at those extremes, we have lost sight of our identity as God’s children: whole and beloved, and, at the same time, broken and unable to manage our own lives without God.
Like Jesus, we are continually tested in our sense of identity about who we are as believers, or committed Christians, or people called to be God in the world. Are we rooted in our identity that we are enough, whole and sufficient, as God has made us, and living fully from that knowledge? Or do we, like every human being, struggle with the temptations of our culture to be more, have more, do more?
Are our lives all-consuming or are we consumed by them?
Something that is all-consuming is fulfilling. We bring our whole selves to it – our energy, attention, passion and reason. And we freely commit ourselves to a high level of absorption and satisfaction with it. It fills us up, and leaves us feeling joy and peace, and energized for more of life.
On the other hand, if we are consumed by something in our life, that thing fills our days and nights. It greedily blocks out our attention to other important parts of our lives. Like taking care of our health, our family relationships, rest and renewal, or time with God. We may feel exhausted, depleted, and empty - and like we have little control over our lives.
That spiritual exhaustion and feeling out of control may be a symptom of our lives being out of sync with our deeply known, and sometimes ignored, identity as God’s beloved, unique children.
Lent is a season for a ‘timeout’ from our usual ways of life. Timeout from allowing our lives to consume us such that we are not attending to other, life-giving and important people and relationships. Lent IS time to consider how the mundane tasks of everyday life are where we are called to spread the Good News. To get our lives in sync with knowing ourselves beloved by God for no other reason that we are claimed as God’s children at baptism.
In the Litany of Penitence on Ash Wednesday, we confess many sins. One that sticks in my mind is that we confess “our failure to commend the faith that is in us” (BCP 268). We DO have faith. We DO know who we are. And we fail to recognize it in ourselves. Not recognizing the God within us, we fail to live from that deeply rooted identity, to let it spread to all aspects of our lives.
Weary from 40 days of fasting, Jesus finally finds his voice and responds to the devil’s temptations, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” Ah! Jesus has claimed his identity - and, in doing so, sent the devil and all his temptations packing.
We have spent the last 8 weeks since Christmas seeing the divinity of Jesus revealed to all the world, the light of God shining brightly for all to see. For the next 40 days, we turn our attention to God revealed in our lives. We dare to remember and reclaim our identity as God’s daughters and sons. And we, too, have an opportunity to confront the tempter who continually asks us for more of our souls - who offers false promises of beauty, fame, wealth, worldly success and security.
Lenten is a timeout from our usual patterns and focus. For these next 40 days, we are called into a season of journeying deeper into our identity as people of faith. So that, when the devil looks us in the eye and asks, “What is it that you desire?” we will stand firm in who we are – God’s beloved and chosen.
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