Lent 1: Testing our True Identity
Luke 4: 1-13, March 9, 2025
For Jesus to identify as the Son of God would be to Satan like waving a red rag in front of a bull. The story we always call “the temptation” is not temptation to a second helping of ice cream or one more episode even though it’s past our bedtime and we know it will keep us awake—but rather testing. The evil one is testing Jesus’ loyalty. Two of the three tests begin with the devil saying “If you are the son of God...” In other words, prove your loyalty to your lineage. Prove your loyalty to God.
The devil is testing Jesus’ identity and mission, an identity that has just been conferred upon him at his baptism: This is my son, the beloved. Jesus’ mission is what he will share with the people of Nazareth as soon as he leaves the desert: the mission to open the eyes of the blind and preach good news of liberation to the poor and outcast.
What are the temptations that test our identity and our mission? The catechism in the Book of Common Prayer defines the mission of the Church as “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” Our parish mission is “to spread the Promise of Jesus Christ in and beyond our community through worship, education, fellowship, and outreach.”
What tricks would the devil use to test us? With Jesus, he offered the temptations to be spectacular and powerful to distract him from his identity as the Son of God and from God’s mission of reconciliation. I think in our 21st century Episcopal Church context, the devils tests us with messages of timidity, discouragement, scarcity, and apathy.
There is much to despair of in the world. Messages of hopelessness are tests of our hope. Feelings of discouragement are tests of the power of love over fear.
I think we often feel powerless to impact systems around us as Christians because we think we’re not supposed to. After all, politics has no place in religion and religion has no place in politics. I might call this a temptation to detachment. To say our hands are tied in the public sphere because we are followers of Jesus, or to say that our concerns about the public sphere evaporate when we enter this space—I think this is to deny our identity and mission as Christians.
Since I’m new here, this is as good a time as any to talk about my position around faith and “politics”. Everything is political, and because we are humans with holiness planted inside each one of us, everything is also moral and spiritual.
I am occasionally asked to speak at campaign events. When I speak on behalf of candidates, I always start off saying: I could get in big trouble if I tell you whom to vote for. But I can tell you to vote your values. And then I usually say why a particular person or ballot measure aligns with my values. (And I make it a policy never to talk about someone I’m not voting for.) When our religion binds us to values of justice and human dignity, and when those values are at stake, to refuse to take a stand because we don’t want to mix our religion and our politics is something to interrogate in ourselves. Maybe even during Lent.
We are in a season—always, I’m afraid—when we are called to resist injustice toward our neighbors, and to resist bigotry and exclusion just as Jesus did as part of his mission and identity. This week I came across these words: The key to Christian resistance to the devil is to understand that the devil is not in charge, but that the power of self-giving love, made known in Jesus, must and will prevail.* Our power is in the power of love that Jesus embodies. Revolutionary love is the power that will allow us, as we heard in the Great Litany, to finally beat down Satan under our feet.
When we show up here week after week, when we gather at this table with the faith that God takes ordinary bread and wine and makes it a heavenly banquet, we are embodying the power of love. When we leave this place, nourished by this spiritual food for our journey, when we go forth to resist evil and proclaim good, we are living into our identity and mission, and embodying the power of love. May it ever be.
* Andrew McGowan, Andrew’s Version Substack, “Tempting the Son of God.”