First Sunday of Lent, March 6, 2022 – Deuteronomy 26:4-10; Romans 10:8-13; Luke 4:1-13

Often, during Lent, we sing the song “Just a Closer Walk with Thee,” and that is what I hope to do with my Lenten homilies every Sunday of Lent, to allow us to walk more closely with Jesus. In order to walk through the desert with Jesus this morning, first we have to understand the story better. This story appears in the gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke, and Mark’s was the first.

Mark’s story is very simple, only a couple of lines long. It says, “After Jesus was baptized, the spirit drove Him out into the desert. Like a punishment. Like being whipped. Drove Him out into the desert where he was tempted by the devil and ministered to by angels. End of story. No temptations are described. But Matthew and Luke have the same set of three temptations, in slightly different order. Where did they come from?

As Christians began to meditate on the meaning of the crucifixion, not just simply the event of the crucifixion, they began to see it in terms of the great sins of humanity. And Jesus unravelling the harm done by all those great sins. And so, the story begins with Jesus rejecting food, like our first ancestors had sinned by seizing food. Then the story turns to the huge mistakes of the so-called ‘chosen people.’ Their rebellion against God. Their failure to trust the One who showed them, so many times, how much God loved them. That’s where the temptations come from.

What about the forty days? Jesus didn’t actually fast from all food for forty days. Because, if He did, He’d be on life support. The number forty is a symbolic number in Hebrew numerology that always describes a period of testing, or learning, or both together. So, Jesus goes through a period of learning. In order to assist Himself in the learning process, He abstains from food, but not entirely. We’ll get back to that in just a moment.

Who is the devil? The devil is not a person with horns and a tail that we know from comedy. If you go back to the Book of Job, Satan, in the Book of Job, is not a bad guy. He is God’s assistant. He’s like a prime minister or an attorney general, and his job is to roam about the world and report back to God what people are saying and doing. That’s the mythology. It took a long while before that figure became the figure in which all the malevolence of the world is encompassed. And so, the scriptures are written in that in-between period, where the concept of Satan as an evil being is growing, but not really there yet. And so, this is a character we have to take very seriously in the story. Many times you see, especially in medieval and renaissance paintings, and even in modern sketches, you see a very imperious Jesus thrashing at the devil, the devil cowering in the corner. Perhaps we shouldn’t allow our visual images to disrupt our mental image of what’s going to happen next.

And so, from there we get to where Jesus is. He is in the desert of Negev. If you were to get out a map on Google, and google Israel, you would see that the Sea of Galilee is up in the north, a beautiful fresh water lake that feeds the river Jordan. And, as the Jordan comes down from north to south, it empties finally into the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is the lowest point below sea level in the world. And, because it is so low, it is barren of marine life, and it’s just a salt and empty waste.

John the Baptist was baptizing right where the river Jordan flows into the Dead Sea. That’s where Jesus was when He was baptized. Remember that, when Jesus came out of the water, He heard a voice say to Him, “You’re my Son, my Beloved One. On You my favor rests.”

So, right after that experience, Jesus goes out into the desert. The desert He goes into is not like the American deserts. It’s not like the Gobi or the Sahara. It’s more like a barrens. There is vegetation here and there. The occasional oasis. There are several rivers, streams really, that flow through the area. And there are four major cities located right in the desert. Significantly, Bethlehem is there. So is Jerusalem, Jericho, and Hebron. So where is Jesus going? Maybe He’s going to find His roots, going to visit Bethlehem where He was told, as a little boy, that He was born. Or to visit Jerusalem, where He had been so many times as a child. Going to see Jericho. Going to see Hebron, which looms large in the history of His people. And wandering between place to place, feeding on whatever vegetation’s there, the berries and the fruits, occasionally going into a town and buying or begging for food. So, that’s what happens. He eats meagerly, as He’s able to find sustenance.

Now, suppose that His encounter with the devil is a series of conferences with someone who is famous as a holy man or a wise man, something like Yoda. And Jesus goes to see him, or walks and talks with him. And the man says to Him, “So, you heard this voice say to you that you’re God’s chosen. Well, if you’re so hungry, instead of buying food, why don’t you just turn a stone into bread?” And Jesus drags out of His memory something He was taught. “Human beings don’t live by bread alone.” It’s a dialogue, not a confrontation. And they, as tourists, walk together into Jerusalem and up onto the parapet of the temple. And the wise man says to Him, “Well, you say that you’re God’s son. God wouldn’t let anything happen to his son. Why don’t you see what would happen if you jumped off the roof.” And Jesus is challenged to find something to say back to him. And the man nods, either wisely or slyly, and says to Him, “You know, you and I know that great civilizations are almost always built on power, and power is almost always evil. Suppose that I were able to give you the nations of the world. What would you say?” And Jesus responds to him. And Jesus journey is over. They part ways for a while. Jesus’ greatest temptation still awaits Him in the Garden of Gethsemane, when His understanding of Himself as Son and Beloved will be brought to the final test.

If we see it that way, then we’re being invited to walk with Jesus in a Lenten journey, because we, too, were told that we were beloved on the day of our baptism.

There’s an Elvis Presley song, from one of his movies, that goes like this:

Some folks like to tell you what to do
They think they know more than you
They say that you’re gettin’ sound advice
Ah, but as sure as you're livin'
It ain't sound, it ain't nice
Don't listen to their sound advice.

There is, what claims to be, sound advice all around us all the time. And then there is the quiet voice of God saying, “Don’t forget that you are my beloved, my chosen one.” And during this Lenten walk you ask God, “Well, what does it mean to me to be your chosen one?” One of the answers is found in the second verse of our opening hymn. “The wilderness will lead you to your heart, where I will speak. Integrity and justice, with faithfulness…”