Who We Are

by the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Luke 4:1-13. Click here to listen to an audio version of this sermon.

Who are you? And who, in God's love, are you willing to be?

That is the question set before us in our scripture readings today, and most especially in Luke's Gospel account of the temptation of Jesus by the Devil in the wilderness. In this story, temptation is all about asking the question whether we will be the people God wants us to be, or whether we will settle for something less: a lesser love, a littler life, a smaller self.

In the story, the Devil makes his opening move against Jesus by saying “If you are the Son of God…” Now remember: this all happens right after Jesus’ baptism. When Jesus was baptized he experienced the heavens opened up, and the Holy Spirit coming down like a dove, and the Voice of God saying, “You are my Son, my Beloved, and with you I am well pleased.” Jesus is filled with the Holy Spirit, filled with the awareness and the knowledge and the energy of being God’s beloved Son. And he goes into the wilderness to fast and to pray and to get focused on being ready to do the things he’s got to do in order to live out the mission of being the Christ, being the Holy One, being the Son of God. And that’s when the Devil comes to him and says, “If you are the Son of God… If. You might not be, you know. That whole Baptism thing might have been a hallucination. You might be deluded about yourself: maybe God isn’t calling you to be the Savior. You might be deluded about God: maybe God won’t be there for you when you need him. So, if you really are God’s Son, prove it. Show me. Demonstrate that God is with you, and then I and all the world will know.”

Each of the Devil’s temptations to Jesus is designed to get Jesus to doubt who he is, to lose sight of who God is calling him to be, and therefore to settle for something less than the fullness of life God wants to give to the Beloved Son.

“You’re hungry,” the Devil says. “Change these stones to bread for yourself.” The temptation for Jesus is to feed his stomach, but starve his spirit, to settle for something less than the full sustenance that comes from God.

“You’re destined to be King of kings and Lord of Lords,” the Devil says. “I can make that happen for you, quicker and easier than the way God has in mind.” The temptation for Jesus is to feed his ego, to grab for false glory in in a quick-fix, self-gratifying way; the temptation is to settle for something less that the true glory of Ascension that God wants to give him.

“Jump from the Temple,” the Devil says. “Surely God will protect you and hold you up — Scripture says so! You trust Scripture, don’t you?” The temptation for Jesus is to fear that his trust in God is misplaced, and so to settle for a cheap test of God’s love, rather than the deeper trust that Passion and Crucifixion and Resurrection will demand.

In each case, the Devil tempts Jesus to doubt who he is, to forget who God is calling him to be, to settle for a cheap substitute instead of the real love God wants to fulfill in the Beloved Son. And in each case Jesus refuses to take the bait. Jesus resists the temptation, not by exerting his will power, or gritting his teeth and bearing it — Jesus resists each temptation by remembering who he is, by remembering who God is calling him to be, by staying focused on living in God’s word, and worshiping God alone, and trusting that his relationship with God goes deeper than any cheap stunt could show. Jesus is God’s beloved Son, and nothing the Devil can do can make him forget that.

And that’s how temptation works for us, too. Temptation tries to make us doubt who we are, it tries to make us lose sight of who God is calling us to be, it tries to make us settle for something less than the fullness God wants to give to us: a lesser love, a littler life, a smaller self. And that doesn’t just happen out in the desert, out in the wilderness; it doesn’t just happen in the big, extreme moments of life. It’s happening all the time. It’s temptation when you want to settle for the momentary satisfaction of self-righteous anger against someone, rather than the harder, truer satisfaction of forgiveness and reconciliation. It’s temptation when you know you could speak out against injustice — when someone tells a racist joke, or makes a sexual slur, or uses language that’s hurtful and hateful — you know you could speak out, but you’re willing to settle for keeping silent and not making a scene. It’s temptation when you know you could use your unique gifts and skills and talents to do something beautiful and generous and Christlike — and yet you’re willing to settle for hiding your light under a basket and not showing forth the beauty that God has put in you. Day in and day out, in so many ways, we are tempted to settle for less, to go for the quick fix, the momentary gratification, the smaller self, and tempted to turn away from the real life God wants to give us.

And for us too, as for Jesus in the story, the way to resist temptation is not just to be strong and exert our will power. The way to resist temptation is to remember: to remember who we are, and to remember who God is calling us to be, and to remember the abundance of life that God has promised to us. Jesus defeats the Devil’s temptations by remembering that he really is the Son of God — and we defeat temptation by remembering that we are God’s children, too: remembering that we are sons and daughters of God, sisters and brothers of Jesus, and that God calls us and empowers us to be like Jesus, to share with Jesus in a life that is faithful, and truthful, and generous, and compassionate; a life that is nourished by God’s Word, and worships God alone, and trusts in God’s love that will never let us go — and doesn’t need any cheap stunts to prove it. We defeat temptation by letting God love us into being the people of love God wants us to be.

That’s what Jesus does in the wilderness. And that’s what we are invited to do in this Lenten season, as well. Lent can be for us a time to remember, a time to get focused, a time to know and to feel that we really are God’s beloved children, and a time to act like the children of God that we are: fervent in prayer and in works of mercy, using Lenten disciplines to clear the space in our hearts where God's love can come in, growing in God a greater love, a larger life, a truer self. That is what it means to keep a holy Lent; and that’s the kind of Lent that we can keep together. Amen.