Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent—Year C
February 21, 2010
Texts:  Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Psalm 91:1-2,9-16; Romans 10:8b-13; Luke 4:1-13

Wilderness!  Have you ever had a wilderness experience?

This can be anything from a planned respite in a remote area,
To getting lost in a forbidding place,
To a time of mental and spiritual training.

A wilderness can be anything from a physical place
To a state of mind in which you find yourself.
It can be a time of training, testing or wandering, or perhaps some combination of these.

The Olympics have provided numerous examples of wilderness experiences.

In the NBC interview, you may have heard Apolo Ohno and his Father
Tell of the time that his father left him in a wilderness cabin at the age of 15,
To re-focus himself after a disastrous national Speed Skating competition.

After eight days, he had made up his mind that he wanted to skate
And was ready to recommit to the discipline of training.
For him, the wilderness was a time of testing and strengthening.

Of think of Lindsey Jacobellis.
She has survived four years of criticism
For having performed at trick at Torino in 2006,
Which cost her the gold medal in the snowboard cross event.

She has gone through four years of mental wilderness,
Complete with mental isolation, with  a series of what if questions playing in her head.

During this four year time she trained and tried to keep her focus on Vancouver,
And a chance to redeem herself. 
Four years of preparation and testing.
Four years, which came to an end in a crash landing
During the semi-finals in Vancouver. 

Will Lindsey continue to wander in a wilderness
As she pursues a dream of gold?

Then there is the Russian singles skater Yevgeny Plushenko.
Did you happen to catch the interview with him on Tuesday night
During the airing of the singles short program?

For a couple of years after winning gold in Torino
He seemed to wander in a wilderness without focus,
As he chased a hot image for himself.
Life seemed to consist of seeking pleasure
In expensive, fast sports cars and going with beautiful women.

He finally went back to skating
Mostly to have a goal and a focus for his life,
The goal of winning a second gold medal.

However, the imprint of his wilderness wandering seemed to stick with him.
In a commentary on his short program, Dick Button said,
“His skating seems to command you to look at him,
Like some sort of evil character.”

The desire to be seen, honed in his wilderness attention seeking experience
Flowed into his ice performance.

His years of wandering in the wilderness,
Were not a time of training to refine and purify his skating,
But the marked his performance.

This wandering also marked his behavior following his winning of a silver medal.
His desire to be noticed
Resulted in his unsportsmanlike criticism of the American winner’s performance.

Wilderness time—a time of wandering, testing or training.
How about you?
Have you had an experience of wandering in the wilderness?

Have you have a time when you weren’t sure where you were going?
Have you have a time of being strengthened and purified for another life stage?
Have you have a time when you were being tempted or tested?

Training, testing or wandering!!
What does the wilderness represent for you?

For the Israelites whom we heard about in the lesson from Deuteronomy,
The forty years in the wilderness had all three aspects.
They wandered for 40 years, before God released them
From their sins, particularly the sin of failing to trust God,
And freed them to enter the promised land.

During that time in the wilderness,
God tested them with adversity
To see if they were ready for the responsibility of being God’s chosen people.
And finally God trained them during this time
With the gift of the Law, the Ten Commandments or Torah
Which showed them the way that they were to live
And marked them as God’s own people.

In the Gospel today, Jesus has his own time of wandering in the wilderness.

Fresh from his baptism, maybe even wet behind ears,
Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness,
Where the devil tries him and tests him,
With a whole array of tricks from his tool kit.

The devil tests the starving Jesus,
Weakened by 40 days of fasting,
By offering him the opportunity to turn stones into bread.

When Jesus passes this test
By refusing to give into the devil,
The devil pulls out the next trick:
An offer to Jesus to possess worldly power,
The very power that everyone else expected a Messiah to have.

All Jesus has to do,
Is sell his soul to the devil by worshipping him,
And he could look like a Messiah,
And have the power to save his people from Rome.

When Jesus survives this attempt at testing,
The devil pulls out all the stops.
He offers Jesus the opportunity to test to God’s love for him
By jumping off the pinnacle of the temple,
And allowing God the opportunity to save him.

This test foreshadows the demand that the soldiers,
The crowd and finally, one of the criminals will make of Jesus,
When he is on the cross,

“Are you not the Messiah?
Then save yourself and us!”

Jesus refuses the temptation offered by the devil,
Just as he will refuse the temptation to save himself from the cross.

In each of the devil’s temptations,
Jesus refutes the offer by quoting Scripture to him,
Scripture found in the book of Deuteronomy—
The same Biblical book which chronicles the Israelites wandering in the wilderness

For Jesus, the time in the wilderness is a time of training and preparation.

Jesus’ testing by the devil
Is a kind of certification
That the Spirit’s infusion into him at baptism
Has strengthened him,
And he is ready to begin his ministry in Galilee.

You can think of Jesus’ time in the wilderness
As a form of “tempering” or “hardening”—like steel that is tempered or hardened.
Or a kind of “stress testing”—like high quality electronics go through.

Jesus’ path from baptism to ministry
Follows a 40 day path through the wilderness
During which God tests him,
Guides him through reverse example
And finally certifies him as fit for duty in the Galilee and beyond.

With Ash Wednesday last week,
We, too, have entered an important 40 day time period
A kind of wilderness, known as Lent.

For you this 40 day period can be:
A time of strengthening,
A time when your faith is deepened,
A time when you give God space to draw closer to you,
And a time when you remember your identity
As a baptized child of God.

Lent is a time of deeper personal spiritual practice,
A time when we gather more frequently for community worship
And a time of heightened but subdued fellowship in the Christian community. 

Lent is a time to pray, reflect and meditate,
Giving you time to listen to God,
And giving God space to act in your life.

There are a lot of approaches to Lent
Some of which are helpful for spiritual growth
And some of which may be merely holdovers from tradition.

If you are fasting,
Because you have always fasted
Or because someone told you Lent is about fasting,
Or because you think denying yourself is how you get rid of your sins,
I ask you to re-consider if this practice is really helpful.

However, if you are fasting,
Because the fast heightens your awareness
Making you more vulnerable and open to God’s presence,
Or because you purposely give money saved from fasting
To a cause that helps others live,
Then fasting may be appropriate for you in Lent.

Lent is about drawing closer to God
And giving God time and space to change you,
Strengthening your faith
And making you ready to experience Jesus’ resurrection on Easter.

Contrary to popular media images,
Lent is not intended to be a 40 day time of suffering or imitating Christ.

Sometime we refer to Lent as a journey to the cross
And although that is not wrong,
It may be more helpful to think about Lent
As a 40 day journey in the wilderness,
In which you reclaim your baptism,
And remember that you have already been marked with the sign of the cross,
The sign that you are a child of God.

The 40 days of Lent can be a time of spiritual training,
That strengthens of your life as a Christian,

Lent is not a 40 day time of testing,
In which you prove your worth to God.

God has already chosen you and declared you worthy in baptism.

The time of Lent should be a gift to you,
Not a time to be suffered through.

Instead of giving something up,
Give yourself a gift of time to do something.
Spend some time each week in service to other people
Or give yourself a gift of devotional time.
And use the time to start or reinforce a spiritual practice.

Use a gift of time to sit quietly or play some music.
Pray or meditate on a Bible verse,
Listen for the Spirit to move you.
Use the time to read the Bible,
Perhaps the entire Gospel of Luke, from beginning to end.

Use the Portals of Prayer,
Or my daily meditation blog to jumpstart your own prayer and reflection.

Lent is not about suffering,
But about giving God room to draw closer to you.
You don’t have to create an opportunity for suffering.
Jesus has already suffered enough for you. 
And you don’t have to save yourself by what you do in Lent,
Jesus has already saved you. 

Jesus was tested and strengthened
For forty days in the wilderness
So that he could endure the rigors necessary to save you.

You now have the 40 days of Lent
As a gift from a gracious God,
Who has already claimed you in baptism
And who now wants time and space in your life to be closer to you.

You have 40 days of Lenten wilderness time,
To build spiritual fitness
And allow God to reclaim you from all of the distractions
That have pulled you away from God:

Forty days of wilderness learning time,
To be strengthened
And to remember who is in control of your life
And to learn what it means to live as a child of God in God’s kingdom.