Year C
Luke 4:1-13
The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn
A Good Beginning to Lent
At every baptism, a question that is almost as old as the church itself is asked of those being baptized or of the parents of the children being baptized, “Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God”? To tell you the truth, I often wonder how many people today really believe in the devil. Our society has managed to relegate “evil” to a psychoses that can be named and explained. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with Hitler, Timothy McVeigh, Osama bin Laden that a psychiatrist and some therapy can’t fix, right? After almost twenty-two years in ministry, I certainly don’t believe in the existence of a red-suited man with a pitchfork but I’ve seen enough darkness, in my own life and in various other situations, as I know many of you have also, to know beyond a doubt that Satan or an evil force exists in our world.
When we are asked this question, “Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God” we vow with our answer to renounce them. Making a vow is relatively easy to do whether it’s a marriage, confirmation, or baptismal vow. The harder thing, as we come to discover, is living out that vow in a family or in a certain community of people. If we say, “I renounce them,” how do we live out this vow? How do we renounce Satan and the evil forces of wickedness that cause us to turn away from God because the temptations and the evil force that exists in our world are very strong? With a few good hints today Jesus helps us.
In today’s gospel story we find Jesus sends the devil packing and his experience offers us insight into how we might do the same. Each year on this First Sunday of Lent, we hear the story of Jesus in the wilderness for 40 days being tempted by Satan. Just before this story, Jesus had come to the Jordan River to be baptized by John the Baptist. After he has been baptized and the Spirit of God has descended on him, he is filled with the joy and strength of God. It is then the Spirit of God leads him to go into the wilderness where for 40 days he was tempted by the devil. The mountain top experience of his baptism soon becomes the valley in the desert.
Luke writes that “when the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time,” which leads us to believe that this will be an ongoing battle for Jesus, God’s Son. The battle is ongoing all the way to the cross. Just as the battle is ongoing for us and what we learn from this event is that being committed to the way of God in the world, does not exempt us from the struggle. In fact, it seems that those who are most engaged in the ways of God are the ones who experience most intensely the opposition of evil.
Over the years, I have served on many Cursillo and Walk to Emmaus retreat weekends. These three day retreats were always a spiritual gratifying experience of God’s love for me. It never failed that soon after I returned home something would happen that would bring me quickly back to reality. Yet, those experiences helped me grow in my journey with God and I learned that when tempted or discouraged, etc. I could be strong in my faith with the Holy Spirit’s help. I still fail, but as Paul reminds us today that if we call upon the Lord, we will be saved by grace even when we say yes to those temptations that cause us to sin.
In the gospel we read that the devil came to Jesus as a tempter but nowhere in the bible are we given a description of what the devil looks like. If we were given a description, I’m sure Satan would look a lot like Rembrandt’s famous pen and brush drawing of this text today which he drew in 1650 and of which you can see a copy of on the front of your bulletin. He shows the devil with a tail and bat wings; a very ominous looking creature who offers Jesus three things that look pretty good-bread, wealth, and power. There doesn’t appear to be anything horribly wrong with these things he offers Jesus. It’s certainly the American way, come to think of it.
Yet, when we get down to nitty gritty these things may not obviously seem evil, rarely is the devil obvious. That would be too easy. We could just avoid everything that looks evil. Rather, these things are a test to see whether they can lure Jesus from a focus on God’s will—or can lure all who believe into following a more comfortable messiah. Remember, Jesus more often than not asks his followers to go against the grain of what the world says is right and good. As we know, Jesus faced the temptation and resists in participating. You may or may not be thinking right now, of course Jesus resisted he is God. We forget sometimes that he was as human as we are which brings us back to how. How does the human Jesus stay strong and renounce the devil?
First, he encounters the devil in the strength of the 40 day fasting. He is spiritually strong as he encounters evil as a result of spiritual disciplines like fasting, prayer, and the study of scripture. When Jesus answers the devil’s enticing temptations, he doesn’t ask God to rescue him in some impressive way. He quotes scripture. This is the second way he renounces the devil. Jesus is so bathed in Holy Scripture that he is able to bring the story that is centuries old forward into his own life for strength, and his words send the devil packing. The Holy Spirit, spiritual disciplines and an immersion in scripture made Jesus strong enough to resist and continue to resist even to the cross and these will make us strong enough in this wilderness we wander in today.
The scriptures for today all differ in the way they challenge us for this Lenten season. From the summary of the story in Deuteronomy of God’s promise of fulfillment for Israel after forty years of desert wandering that reminds us that the work we do and the things we produce are given to us by the same God who gives us the strength to accomplish it, to the creed in Romans that Paul says is enough for our salvation, to the picture of Jesus leaning on prayer, fasting, and scripture to strengthen himself against the temptations of the devil, all to remind us that our lives depend on God alone. This makes a great beginning to Lent. May it be a season of growing into the love and strength of our Lord as we make this 40 day journey with Jesus toward the cross and the resurrection.