Matthew 4:1-11 and Wilderness Blessing by Jan Richardson
Hi everybody! Thanks again for being here. Thank you for the privilege of your time. I invite you to join me in a spirit of prayer. May we all receive whatever we need to today. Gracious God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart and all our hearts, be acceptable in your sight as we seek to live in love. In the name of our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Standing on its back legs, rearing up, with its blue body and fire red blazing eyes, I conjured up the image of Blucifer the cast-fiberglass sculpture at the beginning of the Denver airport, when Jackie told our Breathing Space gathering that this year is the year of the fire horse. I don’t know if that’s quite right, because he doesn’t move. In Chinese metaphysics, the zodiac comes from a 12-year cycle, with each year represented by an animal sign that is accompanied by related characteristics: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig. And along with them are the elements, wood, fire, earth, water, metal, each rotating in cycles being paired with the animals, which his how we get the pairing in the 60-year cycle, 2026 connecting the horse with the element of fire. And as we celebrated with our 60th anniversary as a church, we remembered that 1966 was a significant year in all kinds of ways. The last fire horse was in 1966, when China’s Cultural Revolution began, a time of political and social upheaval.”
As one columnist wrote, “A fire horse year is often described as being fast-moving and high-energy.” And boy does it feel like we are there again?
A fire horse year is forecasted to be one of “intense, fast-paced change on a personal and global level.”
And here we are.
In our tradition, Lent is a time of getting things right, of repentance, which has often been misunderstood to mean beating oneself up for a while. How useful is that? But the word metanoia in Greek means to change direction.
So this season of Lent as a time of getting honest about what is diverting us from our true self, separating us from God who is love, from what is deceiving us about what is good or what we need.
It is really about making space to turn around where we need to, to change direction, to realign our intentions with our actions, and in part about shedding what isn’t true so we can see things as they are. So today I want to talk about that at three levels. Our individual lives, our church and our country.
What do we need to strip away to see things more clearly? What must we let go of in this wilderness? In this season of realigning and turning closer to God, what needs to be shed?
As we heard from Jan Richardson, often blessings themselves invite us to let go, and maybe that is because they often come after we have let go to make room for something new. Maybe the shedding itself is a blessing.
As we heard from Jan Richardson, often blessings themselves invite us to let go, and maybe that is because they often come after we have let go to make room for something new. Maybe the shedding itself is a blessing.
It has been my experience that often getting closer to who I want to be and to how I show up, has asked me to shed something, to let go of something. And sometimes what that has meant is letting go of illusions, those little stories, those little lies we tell ourselves about why we are doing something. It’s hard. You know because we live in a culture that prioritizes personal comfort and convenience over most everything else. We are told we are supposed to do what feels good, to follow our pleasure, in some cases whatever the cost, and often as we know our patterns of consumption separate us from the harm we are doing, the externalities created, we don’t have to feel the harm with our choices.
I have shared with you before about my own journey in my household. It has been interesting navigating with not everyone on the same page. For about 14 months, I have fasted from Amazon purchases online for a whole variety of reasons, but one was me realizing how much I had prioritized my own personal convenience over whatever harms were being caused. There was a gap between my choice and how I want to be. Not considering the environmental impact, the exploitative business practices, the actions of the CEO and on I could go. In the scheme of things, it is a minor sacrifice to no longer have this option in my life, but the way I am thinking about it is that it is a chance to practice on a small level all the things that need to be replicated and scaled up and practiced on a bigger scale, scaling up goodness and shedding all the parts of our lives that are causing harm -even in ways we don’t feel it.
At the level of the church. We are asked to do everything. We can’t do it all well. What do we need to shed so we can see what our purpose is?
For those of us who claim the identity of Christian or follower of Jesus or whatever label you use, I do believe it asks something form us. Being rooted in the teachings of Jesus and the early Christian writings reveals a steady discipline of cultivating certain characteristics internally that would then invite modifications in how we show up externally, in the world so to speak. We are asked to give our allegiances to things that are immaterial, which again in this country is quite radical. Robert Bryant who writes, getting “close to God involves conflict and struggle that will lay bare (our) deepest passion and loyalty,” and so therefore Lent is also about revealing what it is that truly has our allegiances.
And on the level of our country, what needs to be shed, about the stories we are telling, about who we are, about where our loyalties really lie?
At this moment in our nation, my heart has broken again and again to see how many are loyal to their position and the privileges of their position instead of protecting kids. Super rich men all offered all the power in the world in exchange for the lives and livelihoods of mostly young girls and they said yes. Tempted by greed and the need to fulfill every pleasure and fantasy, they convinced themselves that anything goes, it doesn’t matter. Drunk on power and the belief that they are above the law, both the law of humans and God’s law, it seems acting they with impunity, operating as if they are immune from what is right and good, I feel moved to be bold about letting go of the lies we have told about where our allegiances lie. It is only when we can see clearly the truth that we can get to the other side.
Sometimes life offers us what become tests, uncovering what is true, which make it unavoidable to see what is really there. But it is time for the truth, for justice. It is time to repent. And it is time to shed lies.
In this story of Jesus in the wilderness, he is tested three times and as Douglas John Hall points out, all the tests are a variation on the theme of power. Jesus is symbolically asked to try and defy the laws of nature in the first test. In the second test he is asked to turn down the power of getting all the attention or as one writer says, “saying no to being a spectacle,” even throwing in some angels to make it more exciting and dramatic. The third test is about the temptation of the kind of power that comes with political influence. Hmmm… I wonder what that has to say to this moment? Beware of what that kind of power can do to you.
And we should note that the word devil is drawn from the Greek words dia and ballo so as Robert Bryant writes, this together means “to throw over or across,” in its broadest usage, the noun comes to mean “the one who attacks, misleads, deceives, diverts, discredits, or slanders.”
Jesus is told that he can have all of the kingdoms and riches and everything he needs if devotes himself to another kind of god, to another kind of power, to having everything he can imagine, to another vision of how the world should work. Richard Rohr suggests that first Jesus is turning down the need to look good, that second he is turning down the need to think of himself as superior, that third he is turning down the need to be in control.
The point is that Jesus says no to being deceived, to being thrown off and thrown over, from being diverted from love.
The point is that Jesus says no to being deceived, to being thrown off and thrown over, from being diverted from love.
Dia Ballo loses because Jesus is not misled. Jesus says no to the short-term pleasure that would cause so much harm in the end and who knows if the devil would have kept his bargain. Jesus clarifies his loyalties and I wonder what he had to let go of, what he had to shed to do it, to see things clearly, to not be hooked or allured by the temptation of having power like that? Jesus shows us discipline. I would like today to offer the invitation to reclaim some discipline. Being a progressive Christian does not mean anything goes. Discipleship requires something from us. And this is a moment to claim and reclaim a theology of sin.
As you might remember, in the Gospel of Mary, sin is what we create when we love what deceives us, in some translations it says, it is what happens when we love what tricks us, that’s what makes us sick, that’s what ultimately kills us inside and sometimes outside, when we aren’t honest about the harm our actions are causing.
Being rooted in the teachings of Jesus and claiming this identify with our lives, calls to us and asks something from us. It is time for some discipline with our discipleship. What a joy that we are joining Christians around the world in this Lenten season, albeit knowing it means different things for us, but it’s about getting right with God, in all of the ways we can and being honest about what needs to be shed so we can do that.
I pray for more all over the globe and especially our elected officials to feel the presence of the fire horse, that turns clashes into breakthroughs. I suspect that part of what needs to be stripped away in our collective conscience and unconscious are the lies we have been telling about who we are. It is time for the truth. Let us see our devotions clearly. Let us see all of the places where our resources are used to protect power and those in positions of power and causing harm. Let us see all of the places in ourselves where we use our internal resources to protect our egos and are causing harm. Let us see all of the ways that our church can shed what we need to, in order to make the circle wider. Where are we being tempted by illusions of power from something, like Jesus in the wilderness? And what needs to be shed so that we are turning closer to God and to who we are called to be? This is the fire horse year, may we individually and collectively prepare ourselves for the intense change that is already here.
May it be so.
Amen.