2/22/26 Sermon

Usually I find nice ways to take off a sermon that kind of eases us into the point.  But for some reason, I just can’t find it this week.  So, we’re just going to launch into it. Since we’re talking about Jesus’ wilderness temptation, it brings up all sorts of Lenten thoughts about temptation.  There are people who are giving up chocolate right now because its a temptation.  I’ve seen several people giving up Facebook for Lent or screens in general. It’s a nice thought to me. I remember how peaceful it was when I gave up Facebook for Lent.  But we’re all talking about personal temptations and personal struggles and personal disciplines. And God knows, I’ve given several sermons on the first Sunday of Lent as to why that’s both important and good.

But, I don’t know family.  The past six months have just seemed so hard and heavy for me.  I’ve given up and lost a lot.  And it’s ironic that I was talking to a colleague the other day about the balance between being honest from the pulpit and not having it turn into a self-therapy session.  But I feel like I’ve been living in Lent since September.  The idea of giving anything up right now or taking on some new spiritual discipline is just… I don’t know… distasteful to me.

Now, here’s something that I want to share with you that I’ve found to be terribly true in my life recently.  If you give something up, if you let go of something, it means that you can pick something else up.  And what I’ve found over these past 6 months is that I’ve picked back up the Bible.  Maybe that’s not really fair to say. I’ve always been a fan of scripture - it’s kind of an occupational hazard. But I’ve picked it up in a new way. And my prayer life too.  Never in my life have I been able to get lost in prayer and meditation.  I’ve always chalked it up to my ADHD.  My mind wanders. My body gets restless.  I start thinking of the thousand other things I have to do.

But lately… Lately I’ve found myself lost in prayer and meditation sitting in this sanctuary at night.  I’ll look down at my watch and find that hours have gone by with barely a notice.  I don’t know how to explain it to my family.  Saying you’re coming in late at night from the office because you lost track of time praying? I mean come on.  It sounds like a lousy excuse.  And what prayer and studying scripture has been doing in me is not making me less engaged with the world — it’s making it impossible to pretend faith is something I can keep to myself.

And in this time studying scripture and getting lost in prayer and meditation, I’ve come to find another temptation that we need to talk about because it’s so pervasive.  And that’s the temptation to turn our faith into something personal and private that never gets shared, that never leaves the comfort of our own hearts and minds, and therefore never gets challenged to grow.

I’ve spent time searching the scriptures lately.  I mean really digging in to see what it says.  I’m trying to let it challenge me and the way I understand our faith, how I view certain doctrines, letting it question me on what I believe and why.  And I’ve noticed something that seems so small yet monumentally important.  I can’t seem to find a place where Jesus talks about having a personal relationship with him or with God.

It almost seems like he would view it as a nonsensical statement.  Jesus never really talks about a personal or private faith.  In fact, his number one response when people ask him how to get closer to God or how to follow him is to follow it up with another question:  How are you treating your neighbor?  And when pushed back on who our neighbor is, most of the time, his answer seems to be that our neighbor is the person who is most vulnerable and needs us to care. Its not the person who looks like us, acts like us, believes the same things, or lives next door to us.  In fact, its often the last person we’d expect or the last person we’d want him to say.  It’s almost as if Jesus is saying that our salvation, our faith, our lives are bound to the very people he calls the least of these in Matthew 25.  But somehow we’ve gotten it in our minds that faith is a personal matter and something that should be kept private.  We’re told its not something we discuss in polite society.  And God forbid we add politics into that mix.

But there’s a strange thing about Jesus’ world when you start studying it.  He doesn’t see a line between personal and public faith, its all the same.  And he also doesn’t view his faith as outside the realm of politics.  In fact, his faith informs his politics to the point where the two can’t be separated.  There’s another temptation to think that Jesus was only upsetting the religious order of the day, but he upsets the political order too.  What he’s teaching, this public faith that reaches out to the neighbors we don’t want to see, puts him in direct opposition to the political power of the time and they don’t kill him under the cover of religion. He isn’t tortured to death to repent from heresy or apostasy.  He’s murdered under the guise of treason and sedition.  He dies at the hands of state violence for political charges.  The gospel itself is inherently political.

Now that scares people when you say something like that from a pulpit. I have e-mails proving that it scares people if you say it as a pundit on the news too.  So let’s clarify something here because some people misunderstand what I mean.  The gospel is political but it isn’t partisan.  Jesus never heard of a democrat or a republican and it always cracks me up when people say Jesus would be a democrat or Jesus would be a republican.  I think he’d have a strong distaste for both in many ways.  In his time, there were four basic political parties all responding to Roman occupation and the machinery of Empire in a different way.  You had the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Zealots and the Essenes and we can get into their different responses on a different day. But it’s safe to say that Jesus rejected all of them.  He didn’t fit neatly into prescribed boxes.

And that’s why this story in Matthew 4 is so important especially right now in America.  Because in the wilderness, Jesus isn’t just being tempted in private.  He’s being tempted about what kind of Messiah he’ll be in public.  He’s being tempted with Power.  With Scripture. With Kingdoms.  The temptation is about what he’ll worship and what he’ll refuse. That’s why its a public temptation. Because his ministry is public.  And his messiahship is public.

Oftentimes we hear this text and immediately make it about personal morality.  And that’s not wrong per se. Hunger is real. Desire is real.  These wouldn’t be actual temptations if they weren’t enticing.  I haven’t met anyone who’s tempted to eat dog food. We all know what its like to be tired, depleted, lonely, uncertain, and vulnerable.  But if that’s all we hear, then we’re missing the deeper danger in this story.  Jesus isn’t just being tempted to make a few bad choices.  He’s being tempted toward a false kind of messiahship.  He’s being tempted to take up power in a way that looks effective, feels impressive, and is maybe even useful. But it’s the antithesis of God’s Kingdom.

The first temptation to turn these stones into bread isn’t just about bread. Bread is good.  Hunger is real.  Jesus is hungry.  The temptation isn’t wanting food.  The temptation is that he’s invited to use power on the world’s terms.  To seize control.  To define faithfulness by immediate results.  To let urgency become permission.  And if we’re honest, the church knows that temptation well.

How often do we tell ourselves that if we can just get enough influence, enough control, enough leverage then we can do some real good?  How often do we baptize our anxiety as faithfulness? How often do we confuse effectiveness with obedience? How often do we let quantity dictate quality? Jesus refuses that in the wilderness.  He won’t become a messiah of managed outcomes and grasped power.  He won’t trust bread more than God.  He won’t let fear write his ministry.

Then comes the second temptation and this one is even more nefarious for church people because the devil uses scripture to make his point. Satan uses scripture. Think about that for a moment… The problem isn’t simply whether or not someone can use scripture to prove their point or to find Biblical evidence to make a case.  The problem is with how scripture is used and to what end.  Scripture can be used to deepen our relationship with God or it can be used as a prop, a weapon, or a stage light for religious performance. Throw yourself down and let God catch you.  Make a spectacle of your holiness. Prove who you are.  Use the bible to justify the whole thing.  And Jesus refuses that too.  He refuses to turn trust into theatre. He refuses to use scripture to try and force God’s hand.  He refuses a faith that needs to dominate the public imagination through spectacle, performance, and proof.

And family, if we’re listening this is where the text starts to hit even closer to home. Because we’re still tempted by public religion that’s all display and no discipleship.  We’re still tempted to quote scripture in ways that protects power instead deepening our discipleship.  We’re still tempted to use the language of God to sanctify what we already want and bless our our prejudices as God-ordained.

And the third temptation?  It gets right to the point and the heart of the matter: “All the kingdoms of the world and their glory.”  There it is. Right to the punch.  All the power.  Rule. Control. Dominion. Do whatever you want. You can possess the world just as long as worship is misdirected.  That’s the heart of the temptation.  Not public faith.  Jesus doesn’t reject public faith.  Not engagement with the world. Jesus doesn’t reject engagement with the world.  He rejects idolatry.  He rejects the fusion of faith with domination.  He rejects the lie that the kingdom of God can be bought by bowing to the logic of Empire.

And this is where I just need to name something very clearly and very plainly this morning:  One of the clearest forms of this temptation in our time is this so-called Christian nationalism.  Now, I’m not talking about caring about your country.  I’m not talking about Christians participating in public life. I’m not talking about voting, civic responsibility, or loving the place where you live.  I’m talking about something else.  I’m talking about the temptation to fuse devotion to Christ with the pursuit of national power.  I’m talking about about using the name of Jesus to bless domination, exclusion, exploitation, oppression, and control.  I’m talking about about confusing the kingdom of God for Empire and calling it faithfulness.

But Jesus has already shown us what true faithfulness looks like in the wilderness.  He refuses bread without trust.  He refuses scripture without discipleship.  He refuses kingdoms without true worship.  And if we’re his disciples, then the church must refuse those temptations too.   

And let me say this as clearly as I can: the answer to Christian nationalism is not a weak faith, and it is not a silent faith, and it is not a private faith that hides in the sanctuary and keeps its head down.

The answer is a deeper faith.
A truer faith.
A faith that is public in the way of Jesus.

A faith that tells the truth without needing to control everybody.
A faith that loves neighbor without demanding domination.
A faith that can engage the world without bowing to it.
A faith that refuses both cowardly silence and idolatrous power.

Because those are the two temptations, family.

One temptation is to make faith so private that it never risks anything, never costs anything, never leaves the heart, never touches the world. And the other temptation is to make faith into a tool of power—something we can wield, brand, weaponize, and use to get our way.

Jesus refuses both.

He refuses the shortcut of spectacle.
He refuses the shortcut of control.
He refuses the shortcut of domination.

And because he refuses those things, he shows us what the church is called to be. Not chaplain to empire. Not manager of moral respectability. Not a religious mascot for nationalism. But the body of Christ. A people formed by truth. A people shaped by mercy. A people who know that worship belongs to God alone, and therefore no nation, no party, no ruler, no ideology gets to claim what belongs to God.

And if that sounds costly, it is.

It was costly for Jesus.

This wilderness story isn't just about one bad day in the desert. It’s the beginning of a way of life that will carry him all the way to the cross. A way of life that refuses to save the world by becoming like the world. A way of life that chooses faithfulness over force, mercy over spectacle, truth over domination. And family, that’s still the way.

So maybe the Lenten question for us this year is not only, What am I giving up? Maybe the deeper question is:
Which temptation am I refusing?
What kind of discipleship am I picking up?

What would it look like to refuse fear this Lent?
To refuse the need to win at all costs?
To refuse scripture used as a weapon?
To refuse the lie that our neighbors are disposable?
To refuse the seduction of empire dressed up in religious language?

And what would it look like to pick up the way of Jesus instead?

To pick up prayer that makes us honest.
To pick up scripture that challenges us before it comforts us.
To pick up courage.
To pick up compassion.
To pick up public discipleship that moves toward the vulnerable, tells the truth, and does not confuse Caesar with Christ.

Because in the wilderness, Jesus didn’t just resist temptation for himself. He revealed the kind of Messiah he is. And thanks be to God, he isn’t the Messiah of domination. Thanks be to God He isn’t the Messiah of spectacle. Thanks be to God He isn’t the Messiah of empire. He’s the Messiah of the Kingdom of God.  And that means the church still has a chance to remember who we are.

Amen