1st Sunday in Lent

 Matthew 4:1-11

Our gospel story begins this week, “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness” and so we are called during this season of Lent to follow Jesus out into the wilderness.  To follow Jesus along his 40 day journey through the wilderness along the road that ultimately leads through death to resurrection and new life.  And I’m not going to lie, that doesn’t immediately sound very fun.  The wilderness can be a scary place.  When we picture wilderness, we often picture a place of desolation, a place of loneliness.  Perhaps even a place of fear and danger, from wild animals, from the elements, almost as if nature itself is standing against us.  And honestly most frighteningly, the wilderness is often a place of profound change.

And the Bible is filled with these wilderness journeys.  Just look at other wilderness journeys we encounter in the Biblical story: Adam & Eve cast out of paradise into the wilderness after the first sin; Jacob wrestling with God before reuniting with his brother; the people of Israel wandering in the dessert; Moses encountering God in the burning bush and then again at the peak of Mt Sinai; Elijah fleeing persecution and encountering God in the still small voice; John the Baptist retreating into the wilderness to preach repentance and prepare the way for Jesus.  Again and again throughout the Bible, the wilderness becomes a place of transformation and change.  And so today Jesus joins in this common Biblical theme.

And it strikes me that if we really want people to understand our wilderness story for today, we should really situate it better.  We probably should actually read this story on the 2^nd week of Epiphany.  Because in the actual sequence of events, Jesus is born, grows up, he is baptized and then immediately goes out into the wilderness.  Only then after that does he start his ministry, call his disciples, preach the Sermon on the Mount and do all the things that we have been learning about for the last few months.

Jesus himself doesn’t really do anything until after he emerges transformed from the wilderness.  And I know, it is a little weird to think of Jesus as needing transformation.  We usually think of Jesus as emerging as this perfect fully formed fully divine creature.  But think about it, at the time of his baptism, Jesus has become an adult with all this power.  He could literally do anything, anything.  He had the capacity to become the Messiah that everyone expected, the military warrior and the head of a great army, the earthly king, ruler the world, greater even than the emperor.  He had within him, all this power, all this capacity, and all the expectations and demands on his power that went with it. 

And so before he begins, the Holy Spirit drives him into the wilderness so that he can be transformed.  So that he can be prepared to be who his heavenly father had created him to be.  So that he can complete the ministry to which he was truly called. But the wilderness comes first, because he first needs to learn how to deal with the demands of this world.  He had to learn to deal with the real, unavoidable human things that we all still deal with. 

And so he is tempted by the ways of the world.  Make stones into bread – use your power for ease, comfort and self-service.  Throw yourself off the temple – use your power to test the limits and your privilege for self-protection.  And finally rule the world – use your power to subdue others and impose your will, even if you think it is for their own good.  Still tempting huh?  These are things we all still daily face.

But more than anything, I think the devil is primarily trying to distract Jesus.  He is trying to get a reaction out of Jesus, trying to get him to act on instinct, to make the obvious or easy choice rather than the right one.  And every time, Jesus resists.  He stops, he reconnects with his roots, with scripture, with who he knows he is called to be and only then does he act accordingly. 

And then, it says that when he does these things, when he resists temptation, when he acts out of principle, rather than just reacting, “Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.”  Because we are never truly alone on our wilderness journeys.  I suspect the angels were there all along, it just took the discipline of discipleship and discernment to become aware of them.  And so, when Jesus emerges from the wilderness, he is truly transformed.  Perhaps in the opposite of what we saw last week at the Transfiguration, here he is transformed into something more human, someone more in solidarity with all of us, someone more in touch with the experiences of the people he has come to save.  And when emerges, he is practiced, he is ready to live out his ministry.  And that he does.  He goes directly from here, and in quick sequence moves to a new city, begins to publicly proclaim the good news and calls his first disciples.  Guided by this time in the wilderness, his true ministry begins.

And this is what we are going to try to do this Lent.  We are going to go into the wilderness to allow ourselves to be transformed.  Because I know it is hard right now.  It’s hard to know what to do.  It is hard to know how to respond to the pain in the world around us.  It is hard to know what we are supposed to do with the power and privilege we hold.  And the world is constantly asking us to react, to act quickly, to do everything or nothing all at once, to get emotional and respond without thinking.  And that is really good business, but it’s bad for the future of the nation, it is bad for our ability to truly live in community and it is bad for the health of our souls.

So let’s do something else.  Can we stop?  Can we take a minute? Can we be open to the spirit of transformation in our lives?

So this Lent, we are going to worship differently.  We are going to sit, and sing, and listen and share a meal, together, slowly.  We are going to hear and inwardly digest huge chunks of scripture, these amazing, beautiful, full length Bible stories of real transformation told in their entirety.  And hopefully, we are going let the Holy Spirit teach us, form us, guide us and transform us.  And in the end, we will see where we emerge.  We will see where new life and resurrection emerges within us.  And hopefully we will wind up someplace a little calmer, a little more sure, and a little more ready to act, out of our principles, in service to God and our neighbors, in the exact ways that God is calling us be.  So lets begin this journey together.  Amen.