Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent

“Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

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Now, it is the season of Lent. With Ash
Wednesday, we dispense with all pretense, all our conceit; we confessed that we
are nothing, we can do nothing, and we are destined for nothing.

With ashes placed on your forehead you placed
upon yourself your own death sentence: “Thou art dust, oh Man, and to dust
thou shalt return.” Think deeply upon this; meditate on the weakness of
your flesh, the helplessness of your will.

Cast away from your mind any secular, worldly
notion of ‘loving yourself,’ of ‘self-confidence’ and ‘being strong and
independent.’ Bury any idea of ‘self-esteem’ or ‘self-actualization.’ For your
self is mortal, it is ash, and to ash it shall return. Know that you are
utterly defenseless, against the devil, against the travails of this life, and
perhaps most notably, against yourself.

Look upon your own mortality, and despair of all
your efforts to give meaning and purpose and pleasure to your life. Look
inward, and see the writhing abyss, the senseless nothing which dwells therein.
‘Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.”

Then draw your gaze up from the vanity and
emptiness inside you; and look up outside yourself to the face of Jesus, Our
Lord, our champion. See the mercy in his eyes, and the command of his lips, the
compassion, mixed with authority in his countenance. And in your soul, pray to
him the only prayer that ‘a broken and contrite heart’ can utter: “Arise
O Lord, Save me, O my God.”

For ‘everyone who calls on the name of the
Lord will be saved.’

Join the patriarchs and saints; join all Israel
in the wilderness, join the Church everywhere in crying out to God with these
words. And hear the one word he speaks in reply to our supplication: “Yes.”
John writes that Jesus is ‘The Word.’ And much has been written on what this
might mean. Is it a reference to the Torah? Is it a reference to the divine
speech within God? Is it a reference to the word of God’s sacred name? All of
these may have their validity, but today perhaps it is enough to think that the
one Word, who is Jesus, is the word ‘Yes.’ God’s ‘yes’ to our broken prayer,
Christ’s ‘yes’ to will of his Father.

The Holy Spirit fills our Lord, and commands him
to go into the wilderness, to face our ancient enemy, the murderer of our race.
The Temptation of Our Lord has begun.

Within his mind, within his heart, the devil tortured Our Lord’s soul. At every turn, Satan seeks to destroy the oneness of Christ’s heart and will, his utter devotion to mankind and to his Father in heaven; he seeks to sow the seed of selfishness, even in such small ways.

The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” For in ancient times, just as once God lovingly preserve his people in the wilderness by raining down on them heavenly bread, so too must the Son of God feed himself and his people; so too must the Messiah institute a feast, a supper. And Satan does not contradict this holy task; rather he makes an insidious, a suggestion. “If you are the Son of God, you must feed your people and sustain them, therefore, take these stones, and make them bread by the mere utterance of your word.” This is the Supper of Satan, a supper of bread only, without wine. A Eucharist of body only, without the shedding of blood. “Feed your people, Jesus, but it is unnecessary that you feed them with your rent and torn body, and your shed blood. Forgo all the pain and suffering the Father has destined for you, and feed them here with bread born of rock.”

But it is written, “Man shall not live by
bread alone.” Indeed, man shall live by the Word of God, the utter and
complete assent to the will of the Father, the “yes” given in response to God’s
path; a path which must lead to Passion and agony and cross, to the shedding of
blood, that the New Man might live not ‘by bread alone,’ but bread and
wine, body and blood.

The devil seeks to pervert our Lord’s spirit yet
again. He shows to Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, and tells him: “If
you, then, will but respect me, it will all be yours.” He is not merely
trying to bribe Jesus with worldly power in exchange for submission. For Christ
has indeed come to claim the world and all its kingdoms, he has come to receive
the inheritance due him as the Son of God, just as it is written: “Thou art
my son, this day have I begotten thee; ask of me, and I will give thee the
nations for thine inheritance, and the ends of the earth for thy possession.
Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron, thou shalt dash them to pieces like a
potters vessel.” Again, what the devil offers is the completion of Jesus’
divine mission, though by different means, by means which do not require
suffering and passion, but rather, glory.

But Christ responds: “You shall worship the
Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.” It is as if he says: “No
Satan, I will obtain my kingdom, I will have my inheritance, and I shall
receive it as my Father wills to give it to me, even if in blood and torment.
In humility, and silence.”

Finally Satan seems to surrender: “Son of God,
now call down your angels, and take the world, do not bruise your heel to crush
my head, I will surrender and leave, and your heel will only strike rock; you
can have what is yours without a fight.”

Now the will of the Father seems meaningless, or
worse, disordered. If there is no need for suffering, why suffer? If there is
no enemy, why fight? If Satan has already surrendered, why conquer? This is the
last temptation Our Lord faces in the wilderness, a call to apostasy, a call to
no longer say ‘Yes’ to God, but ‘why?’

Great is the Love of our Lord, that he went
through such anguish, such tortures in his mind. The Love that asks no
question, but obeys, even unto death.

But the devil is defeated, and Our Lord
conquers, when he rebukes the devil, finally and perhaps fatally. “You shall
not put the Lord your God to the test.” Here our Lord confesses the
perfection of his faith, he confesses that which every creature owes to his
creator, the confession that God is God, and his will is Law. Jesus shows forth
the faith of Abraham, who believed that God would give him a son in his old age
even as God commands him to kill the son of his old age. 

The devil is put to flight by our Lord’s
complete obedience to the will of God, even when that will seems absurd. It is
written: “And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from
Jesus until an opportune time.”

“An opportune time.” The devil is not defeated yet, for though he
has failed to tempt Christ to forsake his divine mission with words, he will
soon tempt him with whips and nails and thorns. He merely awaits the opportune
time.

But remember that this ‘opportune time’ of the
devil is synonymous with our Lord’s ‘hour.’ The hour of his glorious exaltation
found within the humiliation of his Passion.

This season of Lent, we, who are but dust, fix
our eyes upon our only hope, Jesus, the Christ, as he sets his face like a
flint to Jerusalem, to Mount Zion, to the cross. The devil attacked Jesus in
the wilderness, and was defeated; now Jesus goes to Jerusalem to attack the
devil. He seeks to enter the strong man’s house; he is determined to do battle
with the strong man face to face on our behalf. And like David before Goliath,
Jesus will face him without armor, but naked and clothed in human weakness. But
by his voluntary death, Jesus will descend into the very heart of Satan’s
power, and he will face the devil as the True Son of Man, there to plunder the
strong man’s house, there to bind Satan and to abolish his fiercest weapon,
that is, death, through the glory of his Resurrection.

See Christ high on the cross, the entire earth
beneath him, and see that our ancient prayer has been answered:

“Arise, O Lord; and destroy thine enemies, and
make all the world thy footstool.”

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Preached by Pastor Fields

Sermon Texts: Deuteronomy
26:1-11; Romans 10:8-13; Luke 4:1-13.