Sermon: Matthew 4:1-11

Theme: Lent

About this:

This talk is from this time last year.  It ponders what the wilderness is and how God meets us there.  As Lent approaches I find it helpful to refocus, and remind myself what Lent is about.  If you’re also thinking about how to ‘use’ Lent I hope these words will be helpful.

Here’s a link to the main Bible passage:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+4%3A+1-11&version=NRSVUE

 

Last Sunday morning we were on the mountain – with Moses, waiting in the cloud, and with Jesus being transfigured.  This week we find ourselves in a very different place – in the wilderness or the desert.  Whilst I was thinking about what to say this Sunday lots of things came to my mind: my prayer is that God will pull some clarity out of all the thoughts bouncing around in my head and that he will speak to you out of what is said.

One verse that seems pertinent as we look at this passage is 1 John 2:6: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.  Jesus calls us to follow him as we begin Lent I believe the challenge is to follow him into the wilderness.

I am aware that some of us may feel that we are already in the metaphorical wilderness.  Life gives us these experiences and, even if we are not there at the moment, I imagine that we can all think back to times in our lives which have felt like the wilderness, or maybe like a desert.  What does it feel like to be in this place?  A little lost; a sense of God’s absence rather than his presence; things feel hard or parched; there is a lack of comfort; a lack of sustenance; we feel exposed, alone, bereft.

The wilderness is not an easy place to be.  If you are in that place at the moment I hope that I can offer you some encouragement. 

We read in verse one of our passage: Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness.  The first thing we need to recognise in our wilderness experiences is that God leads us there.  You’re not there because you did something wrong – God is not punishing you.  He has led you to the wilderness for a reason.

In the wilderness it can feel like God is not with us but that is not true.  That is the whispering lie of the ‘devil’ who wants you to believe that God, who is love, has abandoned you.  It is simply not true.  We know from the stories we find in the Bible that God meets his people in the desert; in the wilderness.

When the Israelites wandered through the desert for 40 years God was with them and provided for them.  But that is not the story that caught my attention this time.  I came across the story of Hagar in Genesis 16.  After becoming pregnant with Abram’s child she runs away from Abram’s wife Sarah into the desert.  When you think about the human dynamics of this story it is MESSY:  Hagar was an Egyptian slave running away from her Jewish mistress whilst pregnant with her Jewish master’s child.  When she is in the desert God finds her and speaks to her.  And what drew me to this story is the name that Hagar gives to God – ‘the God who sees me’.  If you’re currently in a desert place, know this: God sees you – he has not turned his back on you.

In Hosea (chapter 2) as God speaks to his people he equates them with an adulterous wife and his words are harsh – there is no getting away from that. But then in verse 14 God says: So I am going to take her into the desert again; there I will win her back with words of love.  In another version it says: there I will speak to her tenderly.  What does that say to me?  It says that God leads us into those desert places we experience because he wants to speak words of love to us. 

You see, there is something about a desert, or a wilderness.  Something that strips everything else away.  We are vulnerable there.  We find ourselves ‘naked’ with nowhere to hide.  It’s a place where we drop all our pretences.  It’s a raw place.  And, hang on a minute – our nakedness doesn’t bother God.  Back in the Garden of Eden we were naked and we lived that heavenly life with God – Adam and Eve only hid, only wore clothes, after they had eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

So, when we are in this desert place – this vulnerable place – we are in a place where God can reach us.  The Desert fathers and mothers purposely went into the desert to do internal spiritual work – to find their true selves.  When we find ourselves in our metaphorical desert, can we acknowledge where we are and have honest conversations with God?  Can we use that open, vulnerable place to let God speak to us more deeply?  God is speaking those words of love to us in the desert – can we listen deeply and let his love reach right down into our emptiness?

Desert experiences are hard – no one is denying that – but God is present: talk to him.  God finds people in their deserts.  Teaches people in their deserts.  Deserts strip us of our defences, so it is just us and God.  It can feel scary but, God is there – he sees us, and he speaks tenderly to us.

Back to today’s passage: Jesus in the desert.  Jesus, who we should remember is 100% human, is led into the desert by the spirit and spends forty days and forty nights fasting.  I find it interesting that in the accounts of Jesus’ wilderness experience the focus is on him being tested by Satan.  But this test only happened after Jesus had been in the wilderness fasting for those forty days and forty nights.  Fasting for that sustained period is something beyond me, but in preparing for the tests I feel that Jesus must have drawn close to God.  Not in a ‘mountaintop’ way: sometimes when we are suffering that sense of God’s presence is just as real.  We unite with God in pain as well as joy.  In the suffering that Jesus was going through because of his fasting he was 100% focused on God – his suffering led him towards God not away from him.

Here is another lesson for us.  Sometimes we let our suffering come like a wedge between us and God – can we turn our suffering into that honest conversation we have just been talking about so that our suffering can draw us closer to God? 

As we enter this season of Lent how are we marking it?  Have we given up chocolate, or alcohol, or Facebook?  Or have we taken something up?  Whatever we have chosen to do, or if we have chosen to do nothing, is it worth pausing and thinking: is that change going to bring me closer to God?  It’s something that I am mulling over myself: how do I use this time of Lent to refocus on my God?  That is really what this passage is all about.

To quote NT Wright: These readings are not about ‘temptation’ so much as about true worship.  Jesus recognised his temptations as distractions from worshipping and trusting the one true God.

We need to be careful how we think about these temptations that Jesus faces.  It’s important to recognise that the things that Jesus is tempted by are not wholly bad.  He had been fasting for forty days and forty nights – in the Message version of the Bible it says ‘he was famished’ – so is turning stones into bread such a bad idea?!  The point is not that what Jesus is tempted to is evil, the point is that each of the temptations is a distraction from whole-heartedly loving and trusting God.  Turning stones into bread, proving God’s love by being caught, gaining glory and possessions – these are not evil in and of themselves but they are all pointless if they take Jesus’ focus (his love, his trust, his listening ear) away from God.  All that time alone with God in the desert has enabled Jesus to tune into God and he does not want any distraction from that. 

To quote NT Wright again: Every moment, God calls us to know, love and worship him, and thereby celebrate our genuine humanity, and reflect his image in the world.  Temptations lure us to turn away from that privilege and invitation, to lower our gaze, shorten our sights, and settle for second best or worse.  Sin, like a misfired arrow, drops short of the call to true humanness; to bearing and reflecting God’s image.

When I ponder this I am challenged to think about what my temptations really are: what are the things that distract me from God?  One example for me is staying up watching (or re-watching) tv programmes. Watching TV is not bad in and of itself, but – for me – it is a sometimes a distraction.

At the beginning of Lent, what is causing us to ‘miss the mark’ – to miss out on being beautifully human and reflecting God’s image?  How can we reflect the light if we’re not facing the light?  When our attention is called elsewhere we are ‘lowering our gaze, shortening our sights, settling for second best or worse’.  Maybe we need to reconsider what we choose to give up or take up during this season of Lent.

As I’ve reflected on this passage it’s felt like the temptations that the devil brings to Jesus are like a pestering.  Like he’s prodding Jesus; needling him; saying – stop looking at God, look over here.  It makes me think of the noise in my head when I try to be still with God – all the things that crowd in to distract me.  And I want to have the words that Jesus had to still that noise and focus on God.  But not just that.  I also want the words to stop hatred and bring love, the words to ease despair and bring hope, the words to bring joy to places of sadness…  Because God is not just to do with being still but to do with connecting and loving and bringing peace and joy and patience and kindness.  That is the genuine humanity NT Wright is talking about – that is the image of God being reflected.

So, when it comes to what we give up, or take up, for Lent, what do we do?  These words jumped off the page for me yesterday as I read my Lent book:  it all depends on fasting from unkindness and choosing justice.  Maybe for Lent we need to take up kindness as a spiritual practise – what would that look like?

This interpretation of Isaiah 58: 9-11 is also worth pondering: If you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech, if you bestow your bread on the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted, then light shall rise for you in the darkness… and God will guide you always and give you relief in desert places.  There’s the relief in the desert, the angels.  There’s the fasting, the kind of giving up that God desires of us.  And can I just say that if kindness is something you want to focus on during Lent, remember to be kind to yourself.  This is not about punishing ourselves – it is about drawing near to God and God loves you.  Sometimes being kind to ourselves is the kindness that is needed the most.

The words Jesus uses to refute the devil come from Deuteronomy, with two of his answers coming from Deuteronomy 6 which also includes:  Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.  Jesus was in the wilderness practising this command – practising loving, trusting, listening to God; the devil came to tempt him – to try and pull his attention away from God; Jesus had the words to refute him; the devil left.  And then: suddenly angels came and waited on him. I honestly don’t see why angels won’t come and wait on us in our deserts but, as wonderful as that would be, that is not our motive.

Our motivation is to love God with our whole being and to reflect his likeness into our broken world.  To bring light and love into the world.  As we set out on the wilderness journey of Lent let us remember that we are following in Jesus footsteps and let us do all we can to keep our eyes set on him so that we can reflect his love and light into our broken world.

                                                Photo by David McLenachan on Unsplash