Luke 4:1-13
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 tested by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over he was famished. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”
Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God,
and serve only him.’ ”
Then the devil led him to Jerusalem and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,
to protect you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’ ”
Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ” When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.
I saw a cartoon recently. A sign in a bookstore reads “Dystopian Science Fiction has been moved to our Current Affairs section.” Maybe the best thing about times that feel dark is
the dark humor.
This is first Sunday of Lent. In a season that feels like endless letting go, what if Lent this year was about what we refuse to release? What if it was about holding fast?
A few days ago, I heard a pastor from a church nearby say she wanted to skip Lent this year. “I don’t want to let anything else go,” she said. “It’s felt like Lent for so long already.” And I understood what she meant. There has been so much letting go—thousands of people in our area are being let go from their jobs. Having to let go of workplace community, routines, and even financial security. I have heard people describe a painful letting go of a certain view of our country, the letting go of norms, or the letting go of institutional stability. Cancer or divorce force people to let go of their plans. Some people, wrongly I believe, are letting go of empathy. And it is even harder to see that temptation cropping up in churches. I came across these best-selling titles from Christian authors: Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion. And a new release, The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits. And the church doesn’t have a monopoly on this temptation. In 2013, one of the most read articles in the NewYorker was The Baby in the Well: The Case Against Empathy, by Paul Bloom. These are sensational titles that contradict themselves when you read them, but the trick is, most people don’t read them. They just hear that empathy might be a liability and it’s easier to let go of desperate people around the world, to let go of caring for people who disagree with them.
And though we like to think we live in the darkest of ages, we aren’t all that unique.
German Historian Hannah Arendt studied those who did the worst evil during the Holocaust. She was shocked not by their charisma or creativity but by how boring they were. She coined the phrase the banality of evil. People can be tempted to let go of their moral handrails if the details are boring, if the impact seems distant, and especially if it arrives in religious packaging. As the Gospel of Luke knew all along, the devil rarely acts like Godzilla. The devil wears God language.
So, in this context, I think “letting go” sounds way too polite, like my Southern relatives at the end of a phone call, “Well, let me let you go.” This kind of letting go is more like an acrobat letting go of the wrists of the person swinging toward them, neither one of them knowing for certain the strength of the net below. And it is not the Greatest Show on Earth. It is people’s lives.
In the midst of all this letting go, I keep hearing another phrase: Hold fast. Hold fast to that which is good, as Paul said. I think holding fast is the faithful cousin of hanging in there. Holding fast is not passive waiting. Holding fast is active resistance against despair and callousness. Holding fast is … might be the kind of fast we need this year.
The temptation of Jesus takes place in the wilderness. I wanted a much more cheerful sermon today, y’all, but Lent always starts in a terrain as desolate and dark as a Cormac McCarthy novel. Biblical wilderness always has certain features: there are no mileposts, no clear paths. There are real threats, but no park rangers ensuring your safe return. The granola bars are gone. The Nalgene is empty. And the wilderness quickly becomes an emergency. But what we know—what we have seen again and again in Scripture —is that wilderness is also the place of powerful spiritual awakening. From this kind of emergency, when everything else has been stripped away, something emerges that could not have come any other way.
In the wilderness, the Israelites receive the Torah and become a people. In the wilderness, Elijah hears the still small voice of God. In the wilderness, John the Baptist cries out, “Prepare the way.” And, though I had never noticed this before, according to Galatians, Paul went to Arabia—a wilderness—after his Damascus Road conversion.
And now, Jesus. Jesus, at the edge of the desert, at the edge of hunger and exhaustion, meets the devil and faces three temptations, and they are the same ones that still hiss away at us:
Temptation number one, Instant Gratification. The temptation to turn stones into bread. The promise of a quick fix, a shortcut to satisfaction. We know this temptation well. The world is full of easy answers, empty calories, and instant gratification. But Jesus holds fast to God’s provision, even if it feels far too slow.
Temptation number two, Power and Influence. The temptation to rule over all the kingdoms of the world. The lure of control, of dominance. We see it today—career advancement at any cost, social media influence as a measure of worth, political power at the expense of integrity. But Jesus holds fast to a higher call, even if makes him vulnerable.
Temptation number three, Spectacle and Validation. The temptation to throw himself from the temple, to prove himself in a grand display. The temptation of performance, of measuring our worth by how many people applaud. But Jesus refuses. He holds fast to his identity as beloved by God, a love that won’t ever play games with us.
So perhaps this year, Lent can be not about what we release, but what we refuse to release. Perhaps this year, the invitation is not just to give something up, but to cling tightly to what is good, what is true, what is holy.
After he left the wilderness, Jesus lived his life preaching and holding fast to the Kingdom of God and even yanking it out of places no one expected it. He preached the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. The salt of the earth. Yeast. Light. A few loaves and a few fish that fed thousands. A lily and a sparrow that lived free of worry. Healing person by person. Tiny acts of great love. Small things that produced outsized effects. Seeds that grow. The kingdom of God is a defiant germination of this world with the grace of Christ, and our job is to hold fast to that. To not just believe in Jesus but believe him. To hold on to his vision and tug.
Howard Thurman was a theologian. He taught at Howard University 20 years before the march on Washington but his words became a powerful inspiration for Dr. King. He planted a seed. Even though some of the Civil Rights victories were far away, and unlikely, he held fast to that which was good, saying, “Whatever may be the tensions and the stresses of a particular day, there is always lurking close at hand the trailing beauty of forgotten joy or unremembered peace.”
Rachel Naomi Remen is a brilliant author and doctor. She tells the story of when she was four years old and her grandfather brought her a paper cup. She expected to find something special inside, but it was full of dirt. Disappointed, she told her grandfather that she wasn’t allowed to play with dirt. Her grandfather smiled. He took her little teapot from her doll’s tea set and took little Rachel to the kitchen where it filled it with water. He put the little cup on a windowsill in her room and handed her the teapot. “If you promise to put some water in this cup every day, something may happen,” he told her.
This made little sense to a four-year-old, but little Rachel promised. “Every day,” he repeated. At first, Rachel did not mind pouring water into the cup, but as the days went on and nothing happened, it became harder and harder to remember to do it. After a week, she asked her grandfather if it was time to stop yet. Grandfather shook his head. “Every day,” he repeated. The second week it became even harder, but Grandfather held her to her promise: “Every day.” Sometimes she would only remember about the water after she went to bed and would have to get up in the middle of the night and water it in the dark. But, in the end, Rachel did not miss a single day of watering.
Then, one morning three weeks later, there were two little green leaves that had not been there the night before. Rachel was completely astonished. She could not wait to tell her grandfather, certain that he would be as surprised as she was — but, of course, he wasn’t.
Carefully he explained to his beloved granddaughter that life is everywhere, hidden in the most ordinary and unlikely places. Rachel was delighted. “And all it needs is water, Grandpa?” Gently, he touched her on the top of her head. “No, dear Rachel. All it needs is your faithfulness.”
Friends, we live in a wilderness of uncertainty—political divisions, cultural cynicism, a world where even kindness is suspect. But our work of faithfulness is the same: to water the dirt, to hold fast to goodness, to believe that Jesus and his love, though slow-growing, is still the most powerful force in the world. March mission madness planted seeds. The hypothermia shelter planted seeds. The smile you gave to a person in the hallway and the church you are building even by being here plants seeds.
It might feel like we are living in that bookstore sign—that the world has slipped into a story too bleak to be real. But the Kingdom of God is also a story, and it is being told in small acts of faithfulness. We hold fast to it, and in doing so, we become part of the telling. With that in mind, I’d like to suggest that the Current Affairs section of our lives be moved to one labeled Gardening.
So let us hold fast. Let us tend the soil, water the dirt, and trust that even in the wilderness, the seeds of God’s Kingdom are already growing. And come Easter morning, we will find that what looked like a barren place has begun to bloom.