Then the Spirit led Jesus up into the wilderness so that the devil might tempt him. 2 After Jesus had fasted for forty days and forty nights, he was starving. 3 The tempter came to him and said, “Since you are God’s Son, command these stones to become bread.”
4 Jesus replied, “It’s written, People won’t live only by bread, but by every word spoken by God.”
5 After that the devil brought him into the holy city and stood him at the highest point of the temple. He said to him, 6 “Since you are God’s Son, throw yourself down; for it is written, I will command my angels concerning you, and they will take you up in their hands so that you won’t hit your foot on a stone.”[b]
7 Jesus replied, “Again it’s written, Don’t test the Lord your God.”
8 Then the devil brought him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. 9 He said, “I’ll give you all these if you bow down and worship me.”
10 Jesus responded, “Go away, Satan, because it’s written,You will worship the Lord your God and serve only him.” 11 The devil left him, and angels came and took care of him. (Common English Bible)
Ash Wednesday 2021
This is our first Ash Wednesday together, and I realize that this is a day, and a worship service, that may be more sensitive than most, owing to its focus on our sinfulness and need for repentance. I have found that this vignette from United Church of Christ pastor Lillian Daniel, about her experience preaching her very first sermon as a field education student in seminary, in a book she co-wrote entitled This Odd and Wondrous Calling, to be helpful in setting the tone for such a day, and in defusing any unnecessary trepidation you may feel. She says:
I remember sitting at the back of the sanctuary, reviewing my notes for my very first seminary-intern sermon. It was to be a mighty word from God that would correct all the hypocrisy, greed, and faithlessness of the local church that was, nonetheless, supporting my education as they had supported that of so many others. As I mustered my courage to sock it to them, I overheard one woman lean across her walker and whisper loudly to her pew mate, “Ah, our new intern is preaching. I see it’s time for our annual scolding.” Later, I would pastor a church near that very divinity school, and hear for myself a few “annual scoldings.”
So, yes, Ash Wednesday has all the setup for an annual scolding, and know that as we experience Lent together, I will not shy away from its themes of penitence and repentance. But I am also acutely aware that what we are experiencing, and have been experiencing for eleven months now, is punitive. Nearly two-and-a-half million of our human siblings are dead from a virus’s yearlong rampage, and over one hundred ten million have been sickened by it. The United States has been deeply impacted, with nearly twenty-eight million Americans stricken, and nearly half a million dead.
And that is punitive. It is traumatic. We are in, have been in, the wilderness, and for much more than forty days and forty nights. And throughout our time in this wilderness we have been faced repeatedly with the very first temptation of Jesus by Satan, to turn stones into bread.
Please do not take this first temptation by Satan so literally for our purposes. Our bellies are very likely full right now, but it is important to remember that Jesus is starved—He has been fasting these forty days and nights. So what Satan is offering Him, with the chance to turn stones into loaves of bread, is literally a miracle cure for the starvation which afflicts Him. Perform this miracle, and you will have your cure.
Jesus, of course, resists this temptation just as He does all the others, because that is what the power of God is capable of. But it remains an open question for us, that when we are in our wildernesses, do we do so good a job of resisting Satan’s temptations? Faced with obstacles, sometimes titanic, soul-sized obstacles, do we seek miracle cures that will fail us in the end?
We have lived for a year-plus now with a virus that only now has a cure, one needing many months, the expertise of hundreds of scientists, and the volunteerism of thousands of trial participants, to arrive at. And there is still not yet enough to go around. But along the way, have we, you and I, found ourselves tempted to turn stones into bread, to reach for too-good-to-be-true cures?
I understand that temptation, I really and truly do. While I already love Birmingham, it has not been fun to have entire activities, entire places, not be safe for my family due to the pandemic. We have had to get creative in immersing ourselves in our new hometown, and while I am grateful that we have, there is also so much that I know we are missing out on.
I already love Valley, but it has not been my preference to be preaching week-in and week-out to a computer screen. I hope, sometime soon, to be preaching all of you in-person. We could have done that sooner, but we chose not to—we chose to resist a risky temptation so that when our time in the wilderness is up, none of us would be missing.
Because that is the hope that waits for us at the end of the wilderness—that community would reemerge among us once again. Jesus is no longer alone, for once Satan flees from him, as Matthew tells the story, angels appear to care for the Son of God. Even when we are alone or feel alone, even when we are tempted or feel vulnerable to temptation, there is a community out there waiting for us, to support us, to minister to us so that we might have the strength to see through this walk of faith.
And make no mistake: our resistance to temptation is
lifegiving—it literally saves lives. By turning not to quackery or
pseudo-science but the medical expertise behind the vaccine, we are
participating in an effort that the University of Washington’s Institute for
Health Metrics and Evaluation says will save one hundred and fourteen thousand
American lives by June 1. That, to me, is a culture of life. I am sitting here, alone in my office, speaking these words to you, and paradoxically, my solitude here is precisely because we value the lives that make up our beloved community. That, too, is to me a culture of life.
By resisting temptation in the wilderness, Jesus prepared Himself for the ministry of being the ultimate giver of life. His resurrection represents not only God’s victory over our sin, but life’s victory over death. We, in being called to follow Him, are meant to be lifegivers ourselves, so far as we are able, and that means repenting for the ways and times in which we have dealt in sin and death when we should have been dealing in truth and in life.
Today, today represents our chance to reverse that trend, that habit, that rut of being deathdealers instead of lifegivers, of being sinmongers instead of lovegrowers, and God, in God’s deep mercy, gives us this chance—chance after chance—to do right by what Jesus Christ teaches us, and embodies for us.
The beauty of God’s grace is that there are no shortcuts, no miracle cures, no corners for us to cut to find it, because it was already there the whole time, freely offered. Choosing to accept that grace the first time may take but a moment, but living into that grace, of relying upon God rather than upon stones and upon truth rather than the master of falseness, that takes a lifetime.
And in our one lifetime, may we resist temptation in the knowledge that angels will claim us after.
By the grace of God, may it be so. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Eric Atcheson
Birmingham, Alabama
February 17, 2021