"Ya gotta serve somebody"

Lent 1 Year C March 9, 2025

Reverend Will Berry

Beloved in Christ, I speak to you today in the name of the God who walks with us through the wilderness and who leads us towards abundant life. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please be seated.

Well, if it wasn't obvious by the change in our liturgy and our purple colors, friends, today is the first Sunday of Lent. I have the esteemed privilege of preaching about three things that Episcopal clergy love to preach about: temptation, repentance, and the devil. Lucky me. I feel like Adam always leaves me with these kinds of passages when he's on a trip, but as I prayed over this week's lesson, it dawned on me that this might actually hit a little closer to home than we realize. Because in these temptations that Jesus faces, I think we can see pretty clearly some of the temptations that we all face—the temptation to make rash decisions out of fear and anxiety, the temptation to court power and privilege and prestige to gain the world and forget our own souls (as Jesus later says), and the temptation to forget who and whose we are, to put God to the test, and to forget the promises that God has already made to us.

Well, friends, the story today begins with Jesus being driven out into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit just shortly after his baptism. If you recall, when Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan, the heavens opened up, and the Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove, and a voice from Heaven said, “This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” It's immediately after this moment that the spirit drives Jesus out into the wilderness with nothing but the robes on his back. That's where he comes face to face with the Devil Himself.

Now unlike in popular religious mythology (most of which actually is not found in the Bible), the New Testament never really gives us a full sense of who the devil is. He only appears in the Old Testament once as a member of God's Council who, if you recall, is sent to test Job. But, in the New Testament, Satan is depicted as God's enemy. He's also described as the ruler of the world. Now how he got that position we're not entirely sure, but it's clear that Jesus sees him as one of his main adversaries along with sin and death. and what the author of Ephesians calls “the powers and principalities of the world.”

Now I know the idea of the devil and demons may unsettle us a little bit, especially those of us who think we know better than to take these sorts of things literally, but in Jesus' time these were not simply metaphors. For them, these were the embodiment of all the things that seek to harm, manipulate. and coerce the children of God. So regardless of our personal beliefs or whatever we're bringing with us today, I think we have to take this morning's text seriously because I think it communicates something to us that is incredibly profound. It warns us about the very real and present dangers of turning our hearts and minds away from the lifegiving ways of God.

The first Temptation that the devil offers is rather understandable, given Jesus' situation. As I said before, Jesus is out in the wilderness of Judea with no resources or provisions to speak of, and he is absolutely famished. So the devil says to Jesus why not turn these stones into bread. If you know anything about Jesus then, on the one hand, this seems pretty reasonable, doesn't it? After all, we know that Jesus can perform miracles—he turns water into wine at the wedding of Cana, he heals people who are sick, and casts out demons;  he even turns a small amount of food into enough to feed 5,000 people or 3,000 depending on who tells the story. But I think the difference here is that Jesus is being tempted to use his power for himself. He's also being asked to prove who he is as if his miracles are some sort of cheap parlor trick that can verify his holy identity. So Jesus, instead of giving in, decides to quote from the book of Deuteronomy. he says, “Man cannot live by bread alone, but must live on every word that comes from the mouth of God”, which is the full text of what he's quoting. As we'll discover throughout this interaction both Jesus and the devil know the scriptures but the devil takes them out of context and tries to use them to manipulate Jesus while Jesus uses scripture to stand firm in his identity in God.

The next temptation that Jesus faces is a more obvious one. In a flash, Satan shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and tells him they can be his if only he'll bow down and worship him [the devil]. Friends, this is where we see the devil practicing his famous deal making tendencies as he tries to offer Jesus some good old-fashioned quid pro quo. Instead of giving into temptation, Jesus once again quotes from the book of Deuteronomy. He says, “Worship the Lord your God and only him.”

And that's when things get interesting. Somehow Jesus and the devil end up on top of the temple in the city of Jerusalem. If you're curious and are a researcher, like me, the temple actually had a flat roof that you could theoretically walk on but I'm not really sure there was a door up there. So somehow Jesus and the devil have gone on some mystical journey to the temple roof where Satan tries to test the limits of who Jesus says he is. He [the devil] says if you really are God's son then jump off and surely God's angels will catch you. Now, y'all, this is the final and probably stupidest temptation that Satan offers Jesus. Who knows, maybe at this point the devil was just getting a little desperate. When Jesus tells the devil not to put God to the test, Satan decides to leave him. But the text tells us that he plans on returning at a more opportune time which, in the Gospel of Luke, is actually when Judas decides to betray Jesus to the Roman authorities.

So just to recap everything that's happened: Jesus has essentially been offered three temptations. The first was to break his fast and to turn stones into bread. The second was to acquire power and wealth by worshiping the ruler of the world. And the third was to prove who he is and to put God to the test.

Now I'm curious where do you see some of these temptations in our own lives and where do we see them in our world now? Obviously, none of us are able to turn stones into bread or water into wine for that matter (which I always thought was a pretty convenient party trick). We are, however, often tempted to make rash decisions out of fear or anxiety—especially the fear that there isn't or won't be enough. To be clear, the need for food is one of those needs that are pretty high up there on Maslow’s hierarchy, and it's absolutely essential to our life, our vitality as creatures of God. But friends, in desperate times we are often tempted to take desperate measures. Even though our creator provides for us, it's all too easy to start thinking that we have to provide for ourselves.

Interestingly enough, if you go back to the Book of Genesis and read the story of Cain murdering his brother Abel, it's actually the story of a farmer who murders a shepherd and hunter-gatherer. That's a strange piece of biblical trivia I know. What I'm about to say might sound like a theological conspiracy theory but I've always found it interesting that in Genesis from that point on there's a shift from the hunter-gatherer system which subsists on the bounty and goodness of God to the agrarian system which relies on our own ability to cultivate food. In other words, after Cain murders his brother and humanity is driven even further from Paradise, humanity goes from being God-made to being self-made. As the story of the Bible unfolds, we see just how well that works out for us.

The second temptation that Jesus faces is a little more obvious. Friends, so often we are tempted to acquire a worldly power and prestige and, in the process, we end up worshiping the things that get us there instead of worshiping the God who made, knows, and loves us. As Saint Robert of Dylan once so wisely said, “You gotta serve somebody.” It might be the devil, and it might be the Lord but, either way, you're gonna have to serve somebody (that's off his album “Saved”). As people of faith we have to choose who we are going to serve. Are we going to serve God or are we going to serve power? We cannot serve both. As Jesus so wisely says later on, “No man can serve two masters.” He says that you cannot serve both God and wealth.

The last temptation that Jesus faces is also a temptation that I think we all face—a temptation to have to prove ourselves and to put even God to the test. Friends. who and whose we are should be enough. Knowing that we are God's beloved children who are made in God's image should be enough for us. But, so often we place our identities and other things, and the world often asks us to prove who we are even though as far as God is concerned we don't need to. In all these things, this morning we discover, as our collect says, a savior who was tempted just like us but who did not give in. Jesus was clear on his mission to usher in the reign of God. He knew who and whose he was and that sense of assurance led him to walk the way of the Cross, to give up his life as a ransom for many and to resurrect from the dead in order to draw all of the world back into the Divine Life.

So friends, Lent for us is a season for us to walk through the wilderness and to let go of whatever is leading us away from God and our neighbor. Lent is a time to prune our self-destructive habits and to turn towards the lifegiving ways of our creator. It's hard and it's holy work but, friends, it's work that gives life to the world. It's work that can even bring us peace and healing. In an often vain and narcissistic and power-hungry world, the way of repentance that we practice during Lent is deeply countercultural. When our own culture tends to worship people who flaunt raw power and wealth and who manipulate and lie to others for their own personal gain, letting go of our egos and our power-seeking tendencies is a radical and rebellious act. Acknowledging our faults and seeking the Holy Spirit to help us correct them is nothing short of an act of resistance because it flies in the face of a world that so often runs away from being self-reflective and which sees things like empathy and humility as sins.

I know that some of the themes in our gospel today are a little intense and perhaps even difficult to wrestle with, but as we are reminded of Jesus's presence with us in the midst of our own temptations, we are, I think, provided with the strength and wisdom to see the things that we need to turn away from in our own lives and in our world so that we might come to know the abundant lifegiving ways of our Creator. Friends, through this wilderness there is an abundant life that is waiting for us. We may just need to let go of some things in order to get there. Amen.

© 2025 Will Berry

Image credit: Microsoft stock image.