Lent 1 C: Identity Theft
Dear Partner in Preaching,
It really doesn’t have to be bread, power, or safety. Temptations, I mean. In today’s reading the devil tries to seduce Jesus with the promise of bread when he’s hungry, the glory and power of all the world’s leaders, and the promise of rescue paired with the suggestion that God is not sufficient to keep Jesus safe. And all Jesus has to do in return is worship Satan.
So in this scene, it’s bread, power, and safety. But it could be something else. Which is the key to preaching this story, I think. Because the point isn’t the specific temptations, but rather the underlying nature of temptation itself.
In short, I would argue that temptation is not so often temptation toward something – usually portrayed as doing something you shouldn’t – but rather is usually the temptation away from something – namely, our relationship with God and the identity we receive in and through that relationship.
Too often Christians have focused on all the things we shouldn’t do, instead of pointing us to the gift and grace of our identity as children of God. But the devil knows better. Notice how each of the temptations seeks to erode and undercut Jesus’ confidence in this relationship with God and therefore undermine Jesus’ identity.
Jesus, of course, picks up on this. Which is why when the devil offers him bread, he responds with an affirmation of trust in God. The next temptation is more transparent, offering Jesus the power of the world’s leaders in return for Jesus’ allegiance and worship. But again Jesus knows that his allegiance can only be given to the one from whom he has received his identity. Finally, the devil proposes that God is not trustworthy, and goads Jesus into testing that relationship. But Jesus refuses.
In each case, the devil seeks to undermine Jesus’ confidence in both God and himself. He seeks, that is, to erode Jesus’ confidence that he is enough, that he is secure, that he is worthy of God’s love. And in the face of these temptations, Jesus quotes the sacred story of Israel in order to assert that he is a part of that story and therefore reaffirm his identity as a child of God. Rooted in the Scriptures, that is, Jesus is reminded not only that he has enough and is enough but that he is of infinite worth in the eyes of God.
Bread, power, and safety. But it just as well might have been youth, beauty, and wealth. Or confidence, fame, and security. On one level, we experience specific temptations very concretely, but on another they are all the same, as they seek to shift our allegiance, trust, and confidence away from God and toward some substitute that promises a more secure identity.
Which is why I think this passage is really about identity theft. And not simply the devil’s failed attempt to steal Jesus’ identity but all the attempts to rob us of ours.
Consider the media barrage of advertising to which most of us are so regularly subjected. Nine times out of ten the goal of such ads is to create in us a sense of lack and inadequacy, followed by the implicit promise that purchasing the advertised product will relieve our insecurity. Or consider how many of the messages from the candidates running for president seek to create in us insecurity and fear. Terrorism, immigrants, corporations, joblessness, low wages, high taxes, the wealthy, the poor – depending on which candidate you listen to the target shifts, but the message is the same: you should be afraid because you do not and are not enough; elect me and I’ll keep you safe.
Dear Partner, our people are under assault every single day by tempting messages that seek to draw their allegiance from the God who created and redeemed them toward some meager substitute. And in response we are called to remind them that God loves them more than anything, loves them – and all of us – enough to send God’s only Son into the world to take on our lot and life, to suffer the same temptations and wants, to be rejected as we often feel rejected and to die as we will die, all so that we may know God is with us and for us forever. Moreover, God raised Jesus from the dead in order to demonstrate that God’s love is more powerful than all the hate in the world and that the life God offers is more powerful even than death.
And this love and life are given to each one of us in Baptism. Which might make this the perfect Sunday on which to remember our Baptism. You could have each person trace the cross on their foreheads and say to themselves as they do so, “I am God’s beloved child.” Or, if you feel more bold, you might have folks turn to each other and make the sign of the cross on each other’s foreheads, saying, “Remember your baptism, for you are God’s beloved child.”
All of which makes me wonder whether this, ultimately, might be not simply an exercise we do this Sunday but a reminder of why we gather each and every week? Tempted in manifold ways to lose our faith in God and confidence in ourselves, we come to church to be reminded of, and given again, our identity as beloved children of God. In the face of so many assaults on our identity, in other words, we come to church to have that identity renewed and restored that we might live in the confidence of God’s abundant life and share with those around us God’s unending love.
Lent is often focused on self-denial, sacrifice, and resisting temptation. All well and good. But might we instead, or at least in addition, imagine that Lent could be an ideal time during which we remind each other of the love and grace of God poured out for us in the cross. Might we, that is, enter Lent with our eyes fasted on the cross because in that difficult image we perceive most clearly God’s empowering love for us and all the world made manifest?
God loves us and will keep loving us no matter what, and for this reason we are enough. I know that I need to hear this declared again and again, as in the face of all the messages to the contrary that promise can seem so difficult to believe, and I suspect your people need to hear that word as well. Thank you, Dear Partner, for giving voice to this message of courage, confidence, and hope, and remember as you do so that you, also, are a beloved child of God and are holy and precious in God’s sight. Blessings on your life, ministry, and proclamation.
Yours in Christ,
David
PS: As some of you will have noticed, this is a post I wrote for this Sunday three years ago. Lack of time, and a hunch that some of it might still preach, prompted me to post it again.
What a powerful and needed reminder! Thanks once again David.
Lent is more than giving up something but your call to renew our relationship of our Creator is powerful. For many years I could not wait for Lent to be in the rear view mirror, but somewhere along the way I heard and was able to honestly preach a word that I wanted guiding me and my congregation into the future. This is what I hear you saying for the start of Lent. Peace and thanks
Hi David,Thank you as always encouraging and insightful.
I would add,especially in light of the Romans reading, that the weapon being used against Jesus and us is also our most powerful weapon in the fight against identity theft, this is words. The temptation of Christ is not simply a battle of wills it is a battle of words, The fear driven not enough culture ruled by advertisers,politicians and lobbyists is a world of whose words get heard the loudest.
What I struggle with in this passage and in David’s helpful discussion of it is: what about those who truly do not have enough? Whose children are dying before their eyes? When they don’t have enough bread to sustain their lives?
We experienced those choices being made in the Civil Rights movement. Some chose one route – others a different one. Love and hate were both options. Faced with children dying – and black lives do matter – forces decisions about how we respond. Or don’t.
I will eventually not have have enough, which is the common reality of all life. It is in acknowledging that reality that we find our commonality and from there compassion for ourselves and one another. I cannot take on the suffering of others, but I have or will have my own, doesn’t that make us siblings, children of the same family?
Absolutely. And why the cross is so important. God meets us in our brokenness, declares that we are enough – not necessarily in the sense of being able to take on everything but in the sense of being worthy of attention, dignity, and compassion – and makes it possible for us to meet others in the same places. We are, I suspect, most human in our vulnerability.
I watched the debates last night and wondered as I listened how our country, how my family, how I could deal with the dire circumstance of the world according to those who would be president. Then, David, I read this article. You are right, because of my faith, I am enough. God and I are enough. Thank you.
The consideration of Luke’s temptation narrative to Matthew 6 and Lenten disciplines may help reflect that these 40 days are not a temporary period where fasting, charity, and prayer are to give way to old habits…like a broken diet. Jesus response each time aims at a disposition and connection rooted in absolute trust in God. We could see this like some who give up sweets or the like only on Easter morning to indulge in what was given up. The temptations will reflect Jesus’s 3 years and trust even to suffer the cross.
Over 15 years ago, when I was in my last semester of seminary, Michael Curry — then a parish priest and now Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church — gave a sermon at morning worship in the seminary chapel. He asked us to turn to our neighbor and say, “God loves you.” (Then he added to his reserved congregation, “I will wait.”) As I participated in this exercise, to my utmost surprise I almost burst into tears! I still remember the power of that experience. Even on the verge of becoming ordained clergy in the Episcopal Church, somewhere deep inside me was a patch of insecurity about my soul’s acceptability before God. I share David Lose’s belief that the disciplines of Lent are not the main event. At their best they keep us mindful of God’s caring presence, which gives us the courage to grow up into the blessing God intends for us to become.
In addition to generating fear, the devil offers the temptation of entitlement. You deserve a break today! If fear and insecurity is one pull to the darkside, arrogance and entitlement is another. We’re special, we deserve to use resources and to be protected despite other’s needs – sound familiar?
I found this week’s comments very helpful. It reminds me of the part of the Passover service where the participant shout Dayenu meaning it would have been enough. For them it is a sign of God’s love that God continued to send the plagues to Pharaoh over and over. It is also a demonstration of God’s power prior to the Hebrew’s being sent into the wilderness.
Reading in other places about this passage, I keep encountering the idea that perhaps this passage is about Jesus’ temptations, not ours — or means to tell us something about Jesus, and only secondarily about us. Would love to see this engaged –are we rushing too quickly past the idea of what this means about jesus, because it would seem to become too theoretical, too theological?
Still appropriate 3 years later! Thanks for this take on the temptation of Christ.
Timeless message! Thank you so much!