The traditional gospel reading for this first Sunday in Lent is the story of Jesus’ 40-day temptation by statan in the wilderness. Behind this story of Jesus’ temptation is a foundational story from the OT. That story tells of the trials and temptations of the people of God that took place between the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt and their eventual entry into the promised-land. Between those two events of Exodus and possession of the land, the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years where they encountered many difficult situations that continually put their faith to the test. Jesus’ temptations by satan in the wilderness during his 40-day period there, recapitulates the temptations in the desert that beset the people of Israel after the Exodus, whereby Jesus’ righteousness and his obedience overcomes Israel’s temptations, then and since, showing Jesus to be the true Son of Righteousness and Son of God, whose divine power can stand up to and defeat even satan, sin and death.

We should note that the story of the Exodus is central to our celebration of Easter that we have just begun, as we prepare to journey together, in penitence and reflection, through Lent. Thus what we have with these two readings, the first from Deuteronomy that contains a confession of faith that is rooted in the Exodus story, and Luke’s account of the Temptation of Jesus that also takes its departure from the story of the Exodus, is an Exodus-based model not only of our Lenten journey, but also of our life’s course from baptism to death.

Traditionally Christians have regarded life as a kind of wilderness-wandering, a pilgrimge through the terrors and temptations of this world from baptism with its promise of Christ’s saving presence, to the grave when the baptismal promise of new life in Christ will be fulfilled. Like the ancient Israelites after the Exodus, we too, having been freed from our bondage to sin and death by our passage through the waters of baptism (as they passed through the waters of the Red Sea), are on our way to a land flowing with milk and honey. On the journey though, we must pass through a territory replete with pitfalls, roadblocks and dangers. However dangerous and trial-ridden it may be, we are led through the wilderness of life by the Holy Spirit, just as the Israelites were led by the pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. So does the Holy Spirit lead and guide us on our way to the fulfillment of God’s promise. We are in that wilderness with Christ, who endured and overcame his own wilderness temptation; our strength is his strength, and our resistance is his work in us. Only with him by our side can we actually make it through the wilderness to the Promised Land.

That hope does not mitigate the fact that between the promise and the promise’s fulfillment, the way through this life can be pretty rough. Lent helps us to face life’s difficulties, with all its problems and temptations, yet defiant of satan’s power, and mindful that our actions may prompt a negative reaction from those who are still intimidated, even as we proclaim the Lordship and saving power of Israel’s God. The Holy Spirit gives us the strength and courage to look evil squarely in the face and not flinch at its seductive and death-dealing power. In a harsh world, our steadfastness in faith means that we shall have to renounce and denounce evil in all its forms, as we are called to stand up and to stand fast against the temptations of self-preservation, self-promotion, and self-justification.

This call to resist sin, death, and the power of the devil brings to mind a sermon by the Lutheran, Edmund Schlink, who taught theology before, during and after WWII. After the war he addressed the failure of the church to stand up against Hitler and his religioius supporters, the German Christians. Hitler set up a German Church and installed a loyal hand-picked Nazi leadership cadre. Schlink said:

“Just as the great guilt of the political lealdership is the guilt of those church leaders and pastors, who like the false prophets of the OT cried, ‘God is with us,’ when God had already long been against us, and who proclaimed God’s blessing when they should have threatened God’s jugdment, who applauded when they should have been silent, and who were silent when they should have given warning. They accommodated God’s commandments to the totalitarian claims of political power, whose commands were proclaimed as God’s commands and whose actions as God’s actions. They perceived an arbitrary independence in political actions, the administration of justice, and the waging of war that does not belong to them, and they have failed to measure them clearly and openly against the norm of the divine Word. I am speaking here not only of those German Christians who mixed up Christ and Hitler in the most amazing way, who persecuted the true church by denouncing her preachers and congregation members, and who helped to make possible the persecution of the Jews by rejecting the OT. I am thinking here also of the others who thought they could preach the gospel without proclaiming the divine law, who thought they could nurture a pious inwardness, without calling out publicly from the rooftops God’s claim on all, and who still excused and hoped when the stones already cried out for God’s thundering fist. I am thinking of the many whose highest principle was to preserve the church and their own office by compromise and silence, who in secret rejected National Socialism, but in public ‘joyfully affirmed’ it.”

“Do not put the Lord your God to the test,” Jesus told satan. We may not face the same life-and-death situations that challenged the church in Germany under Hitler, but we do face our own temptations that are still basically about self-preservation, namely: whenever the truth of the gospel is at stake and we are silent, whenever we are complicit with evil in just a little bit, whenever we put our faith on a shelf, whenever we loosen our bond with the community of faith, whenever we turn a deaf ear to God’s commands, whenever we go along to in order to get along, whenever we relax our guard against those who lie to us for political advantage or financial gain, whenever we put our personal interests above God and neighbor—whenever we do any of these things, we put the Lord our God to the test.

Lent is a time when we consider these and other temptations, and look at them honestly, repent of our past inaction when action was called for, and of our misguided actions when discretion was called for. Lent is a time not only for such self-examination and repentance, but also for renewal and reform, a time to dig deeper into the spiritual resources of Word and sacrament, a time to refresh our understanding of what it means to be in, to live with, and to follow Christ. It is a time for us to be, as Luther said, “little Christs” to our neighbors, to renew our faith in the God of Israel, and to order our lives accordingly.

Let us resolve to go through the wilderness of this life together, in faith and with confidence that the Holy Spirit is leading and guiding us every step of the way, just as it led the people of Israel into and out of Egypt and gave to them, and still promises them a land flowing with milk and honey. We too, in the midst of life’s temptations and terrors, must keep our attention fixed on the promise and our eyes on the goal, which is a totally new life in Christ, not only for us, but for the whole world and the creation God promises to redeem.

-Amen-