The water was still dripping from his hair. You must
remember that.
The River Jordan was only a heartbeat ago. One
moment earlier, there’s the crowd, the dove, the blinding
light, the unmistakable booming voice from heaven: You
are my Son, the Beloved.
And then, the Spirit—that same Spirit that hovered
over the water, that descended like a dove—turns to a
tornado. It doesn’t “lead” him. I know what your Bible
says, but Mark’s Gospel gives us the right Greek verb.
The verb is ekballo. It’s what Jesus does to demons. The
Spirit flings him, thrusts him, throws him, casts him,
drives him away from the affirmations of the clouds and
into the shadows of the wilderness.
Let’s be clear at the start of Lent: the wilderness is not a
punishment. It is not a detour. It is the arena. It is where
the truth of our baptism is tested to its breaking point.
It’s been forty days. The only thing Jesus has heard is
his own breath and the sound of silence. No doubt he
has felt forsaken. No doubt the memory of the water is
beginning to feel like a kind of cruel mirage. This is when
the Tempter moves in.
At first, temptation is a kind of polite suggestion. It
knows when your defenses are down. It knows what you
think you need. It arrives when you’ve begun to wonder
if that voice at the river was a beautiful hallucination and
nothing more.
The Tempter begins with a single word that unsettles
everything you thought you knew: if.
If you are the Son of God...
Remember, just a chapter earlier the heavenly voice
declared a definitive truth. You are my son. Beloved. The
Tempter subtly shifts the ground. IF you are. For most
of us, that’s all it takes. A question mark where there
was once a period. The original identity theft. Every
temptation that follows, all three, conceals the same trap.
If you are who you think you are… If you are who you
thought you heard God say you are… Prove it. Exploit
it. Trade it in for something better. That’s the whole
ballgame, folks. Losing yourself to prove yourself.
Temptation one: turn these stones to bread. Well, why
not? It’s been forty days. You’re famished. You’re
starving. Here is a rock. Why wait for this God who lets
supposedly beloved children go hungry? If you are
God’s Son, prove it.
There’s the trap. Turn the stone to bread, and you’ve
accepted the devil’s premise. Jesus refuses. He quotes
chapter and verse. Deuteronomy. One does not live
by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the
mouth of God.
He anchors himself not in what he lacks, but in what
God has spoken. The voice at the Jordan he trusts is
more real than the hunger in his gut.
The shadows deepen. The Tempter takes Jesus to the
pinnacle of the Temple for temptation number two. And
this time, the devil has a verse too—Psalm 91. If God
really loves you, God’s angels will protect you.
Listen to this. Not every voice that quotes the Bible
speaks for God. The devil knows the text. He uses it to
twist trust into leverage. If God loves you, the angels will
protect you. “Leap,” he says. “Force God’s hand.”
Same trap. If you are really the Beloved, make God
prove it.
Again, Jesus reaches for holy words. Do not put the Lord
your God to the test.
And now the last temptation. The first two were really
just warmups. This time, the Tempter takes Jesus to the
mountaintop, and he shows him all the kingdoms of the
world. Displayed before Jesus is all their wealth, all their
power, all their reach. And these are not illusions. What’s
on offer here is real authority. Real influence. All these I
will give you, if you fall down and worship me.
No more “if you are the Son of God.” Now it’s only a
transaction. You worship me; I give you authority. This
is your chance to escape the wilderness and skip the
cross. Seize the crown, straight to the throne. Trade your
identity for power.
Thucydides had written it centuries before. “The strong
do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”
What the Tempter offers here is the logic of every
empire. The powerful tighten their grip, and everyone
else must learn their place.
And now Jesus could control it all. All he needs to do is
give up his soul. This is the temptation that should keep
the church up at night because it’s the one we keep
failing. The history of Christianity is littered with the
wreckage of this bargain.
The church has blessed crusades and conquistadors.
The church has sanctified slavery and segregation. The
church has wrapped the cross in the banner of every
empire that offered us a seat at the table.
It rarely starts that way. It almost never starts that way.
Temptation whispers before it shouts. Temptation is
more trickle than a flood. Gradually, comfort crowds out
conviction. The great apostasies are built of defensible
cowardice accumulated. And we are all guilty.
Perhaps we tell ourselves we can do more good from
the inside. We tell ourselves that power is a tool safe
in our God-fearing hands. Or we tell ourselves that we
can bow a little and still be faithful. We ignore what we
should know best about ourselves, especially in the
Reformed theological tradition. We are well acquainted
with the depth of our capacity for self-deception.
The devil shows up with a shortcut. It doesn’t look evil. It
looks effective. It looks like a crown without a cross. And
Jesus says no. Jesus knew that a gospel in service of
domination is no gospel at all. It is a deal with the devil.
And so, one final time, he reaches for his Bible. Worship
the Lord your God. Serve only him. It’s Deuteronomy
again. It’s the command given to a people who had
chased after other gods and lost everything. Jesus
knows his history, and he will not repeat it. But the
question remains whether we will.
What does it mean, in the face of temptation, to worship
God alone, to serve one Lord? Because it’s easy to
quote the verse. We can find it in our Bibles. The test
comes when another kingdom makes us an offer. And
that offer sounds pragmatic. It looks effective. The crown
looks good on you.
The whisper is familiar. It’s either you or them. You can’t
afford too much compassion right now. You can’t look
weak. Yes, it sounds reasonable, and that is the trap.
In his lonesome valley, Jesus walked another way. He
told us where to find him. What you do to the least of
these, you do to me. He told us who they were. The
hungry. The stranger. The sick. The prisoner.
Do you hear that list? The very ones we are being told
to ignore. When people without homes are treated as
criminals instead of God’s children… When vulnerable
families lose even the most basic support… When
neighbors are threatened because of how they look…
And the church is silent or adds its own amen to
the chorus of cruelty, we must have the courage to
collectively ask:
Which kingdom do we want to reflect?
Whose voice will we obey?
In this moment, Jesus is offered control over all the
kingdoms of the world, and he refused because the
price was simply too high. Worship shapes what we
become. And whenever the church trades its voice for
leverage, whenever we ignore the cross to gain access
to power, whenever we defend what harms the least of
these because it preserves our comfort, we are closer to
that mountaintop than we think.
This temptation is not someone else’s. It is ours. The
voice that tempts institutions also tempts individuals. It
sounds like wisdom. It’s always positioned as patience.
Just wait. Not yet. The moment isn’t right. Wait until you
have more security. Wait until you have more influence.
Wait until someone else goes first. Wait until you’ve got
less to lose.
But the better moment never comes. You see, I know
this temptation. I know the sound of the voice that says
not yet, not here, not now. I’ve made that bargain, and
maybe you have too. But here’s the thing I am learning.
There is no future version of your life where faithfulness
is free. There is no tomorrow coming where courage
costs you nothing.
And while you wait, you are becoming someone.
Every day you stay silent, you practice silence. Every
day you go along, you rehearse compliance, training
yourself in apathy.
It occurs to me as I read Matthew 4 that the Tempter
does not need our devotion if he can get our deferral—
until the voice of Jesus becomes something we admire
but no longer obey.
It occurs to me that the Tempter is patient. That he
does not rush. He does not shout. He simply waits. And
whispers. And those whispers sound like wisdom.
It is easy to forget. And when we forget, we begin to
believe small stories about ourselves. That’s why we
need this place. It’s why we need this time. It’s why we
need these people. Here, we remember.
Before you proved anything—before you earned
anything, before you got it right or wrong—there was
the water. And there was a voice. You are mine. You are
beloved. And my friends, that is the truest thing that will
ever be said about you.
Jesus took that promise to the wilderness, where the
Tempter tried time and again to pry it loose. If you are…
prove it, exploit it, trade it in for something better. All
it costs you is your worship. He would not submit. He
stayed himself. And just when all seemed lost, just when
hope had faded, the angels arrived. I take great comfort
in that because some days faithfulness will not feel like
a victory march. It will feel like holding on.
Friends, we have one Lord. One Lord. One Lord. Serving
Jesus may cost us. But we will keep what the powers of
this world do not offer because they cannot give: we will
keep our souls, our God-given identity.
We will not bow to lesser gods. Because, before the
wilderness—before the whisper, before the stones,
before the mountain and the Temple, before the
Tempter’s if—there was a voice at the edge of the water.
You are mine. Beloved. If we can remember that, we will
find angels waiting in this wasteland. Amen.