March 9th, 2025
By Nicole M. Lamarche
I invite you to join me as you are moved as we pray Psalm 19 together. I have a confession to make. I haven’t preached very much about the devil. Over my nearly twenty years of ordained ministry, I bet I have only preached on that topic maybe twice. In our expression of the Christian tradition, in the United Church of Christ, not all of us, but many of us understand the Bible to be filled with poems, letters, liturgy, maybe some history, but we know there’s hard stuff, showing our human frailties and limitations, knowing how some of it has been used as a weapon to justify colonialism, sexism and slavery. And we know that the Bible has lots of mythology, sometimes mapped onto even older mythologies than our own, like one of the stories in Genesis that is a copy of a Babylonian creation myth, that is older than ours. And still we are held by these stories, by
these traditions, seeking truth. And so that is all to say that the devil is complicated for many of us, which is why on this first Sunday of Lent I wanted to begin with a confession, God forgive me for not more fully acknowledging the devil.
And so, because I and others have mostly discounted the idea of a devil, because we have moved quickly away from a red man with a tail and a pitchfork moving about on a flame cloud, because we laughed and said there’s only goodness, and maybe because along with that we conflated our belief that there isn’t a fiery pit with our belief that there isn’t a devil.
So, I think that maybe because so many of us discounted the notion of another force and other forces at work in the world, because many of us didn’t and haven’t fully, not really, acknowledged the devils among us, I wonder if they have gotten stronger. Because there weren’t enough people willing to see them, to name them, to confront them, to speak the truth, to
say what was happening and to change our behavior in light of the truth.
Last week we talked about the way we get through the cloud is through, not around, not over, not denying it, so I wonder if part of our invitation in this season of Lent where we are all about getting honest, I wonder if it’s time to confront the devils? Because there are a lot of them.
But here are just two that I want to name today: the devil of convenience and the devil of comfort.
Convenience and comfort are the American way. We have given up a lot collectively for both of these. We stopped going to movies because it’s more convenient and comfortable to stream from the couch. We stopped reading as many books because there’s so much to stream from the couch. We stopped knowing where our food comes from or how it was treated or killed or packed or whether the person who stacked and drove it has rights, because we don’t need to know, it’s so comfortable and convenient not to…because there’s so much to stream from the couch!
It’s the American way.
And you know convenience culture just doesn’t ask whether it is healthy and safe to eat, or whether the hands picking it had a bathroom break, the question convenience culture asks is can it come fast and can it come cheap?
And you know comfort culture doesn’t ask whether our purchase of that shirt supports a company that matches our values or whether the hands sewing it had bathroom breaks, but the question comfort culture asks is can it come right to my doorstep? And can it come fast, and can it come cheap?
And part of what causes so much harm, part of how these devils kill, is by operating on business models that rely on a system that gives comfort to just a few, not the workers, and not the earth.
As Cindy Pincus writes, “right now the individual comforts of the very very few are being safeguarded, defended, and brutally protected at the expense of literally everything and everyone else. These are the exact same individual comforts offered by the dang Devil himself after Christ was baptized and went to test the strength of his newly baptized soul in the wilderness.”
As you heard from this story in the Gospel of Luke today Jesus is led out into the wilderness, led to a place and a space that was arid and filled with uncertainty, where the devil shows up with temptations, testings, peirasmos, as it says in Greek, which means more specifically enticements.
Jesus is enticed to use what has been given to him to put himself over the whole world. The devils of convenience and comfort beckon him, lures him, offering him a chance to make things a whole lot easier for himself. He is tempted to gain popularity from a performative act, turning a rock into some bread, rather than the long haul, rooted, important and annoying work of organizing an inclusive movement around them. Then Jesus is tempted by political power, as we know that domination is always more efficient. Jesus is tempted by coercive power, invited to intervene in natural laws, being
tempted by the idea of being more important and mighty even than gravity and mortality. The devil tells Jesus to throw his body off a building and see what happens. But Jesus knows his place in the order of things, he knows his power and I think part of why we have this story is Jesus wants us to know our power too.
The devils of convenience and comfort, the devils of white supremacy, the devils perpetuating racist practices and policies, the devils of transphobia and the devils of hate and fear, the devils of you are not enough and you do not belong, the devils of you have to produce or create something valued by capitalism to be of worth, the devils that are destructing our Earth, valuing a tree only when it is cut down, the devils of everything must make a profit, those devils are loud right now.
Those enticements are sins, separation from God, from love, what we know is good, because these devils have created a culture of waste, where people and things can so easily be discarded. So today I want to speak the truth, with all of you, especially since Lent is about getting honest. Joan Chittister says that “We need to become human again. We need to see that what has led us to our profits and pretended to be moral power has really led us to our peril…”
So what a gift that we have this ancient story to support us in doing that right now, in becoming more fully human, moving from peril, seeing and naming and claiming our power. Lent is a season set aside to become more wholly and fully human, to live into who we are meant to be, who love calls us to be. Jesus shows us how!
Here is our checklist, our holy to do list. Our way to confront the devil. Are you ready?
1. We can’t turn our backs on what is happening, we must speak the truth, acknowledging the devils. We need to face them, engage them where we can. We can do this together and on our own and allow it to look differently.
2. We can see scripture and our stories as a source of wisdom and support. All of the time, but especially right now. When Jesus refers to bread here, he’s citing Deuteronomy 8:3; he’s showing us we can confront the devil with our texts, our poems, our prayers, our stories, all the resources of our tradition.
3. We must respond creatively to the devils, answering in non-linear ways. Right now, some of us are boycotting certain companies. It’s a power we have. We can choose not to worship the god of comfort. We can stop bowing down to the god of convenience. We can see this moment as a reset to support what it is we actually believe in, what we should have been
doing all along. Supporting companies that are run by BIPOC people, companies that are local, companies that support a livable wage. We can see this moment as a chance to atone, to right what is out of relationship.
4. Last, Jesus shows us that part of how we get the devil to go away is to hang on. Don’t give up. See this as a marathon. Do what we have to do in order to be healthy and hang on in the long haul. The devils will lose their power when we claim ours!
Communal Reflection
How do you connect to this story? Have you been tempted to compromise your beliefs for power, popularity, comfort, convenience, and other things? What are the devils that you see right now?
Beloved of God, let us not turn our backs on what is happening. Let us speak the truth. Let us confront the devils of this time. We can draw upon the strength of the Spirit and all the resources of our tradition. Let us respond creatively, claiming the power we have. Let us hang on, seeing this as a chance to prove where true power comes from, we know that the devils will lose their power when we claim ours! We know that God is love and that the question for us is not whether or not God is on our side. The question is whether or not we are on God’s side. May it be so. Amen.