Date: March 3rd & 6th
Preacher: Pastor Ashley Rosa-Ruggieri
First Reading: Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalmody: Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
Second Reading: Romans 10:8b-13
Gospel: Luke 4:1-13
“For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” This is the ending line of our passage from Romans today. This part of the passage stuck out to me as we enter into the season of Lent. Each week we will be focusing on different parts of the Lord’s Prayer as a theme for the season. Since we are starting this first week with the lines, “Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be your name,” this verse that proclaims the power in invoking the name of the Lord seems like a great start. When we pray the Lord’s prayer and ask that God’s name be hallowed, we call upon the name of the Lord. It is by God’s holy name that we are saved, and we are promised that God receives our words when we call out to Jesus, God the Father, the Holy Spirit, or any of the names we use to address God.
The hallowed name of our God comes in many forms. The Lord, Emmanuel, Alpha and Omega, Prince of Peace, the Great I AM, the Lamb, Savior, Messiah, the Advocate, Mighty Comforter, our God, three-in-one. There are dozens of ways that God is named throughout scripture, and each of them contributes to our understanding of the holiness of God’s name being spoken into the world. And so, when we look at the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness, we notice the ways that he does not infringe upon the holiness of the Lord’s name, no matter what the devil offers Jesus in return.
We journey through this season of Lent just as Jesus did in the wilderness in our passage today, and this passage can teach us three connections between our own faith journeys and Jesus’s time in the wilderness. First, the connection that we are joined by the Holy Spirit. The start of our Gospel reading tells us that Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, enters the wilderness and is guided by the Spirit. This passage in Luke comes right after Jesus’s baptism, and so we too have the reminder that the Holy Spirit joins us in our journey, a promise that we claim through our own baptismal waters. The word for wilderness can also be translated as desert. This can remind us that when we enter a time in our lives where we feel like we are roaming through a desert, where there is no water, and our weariness grows each day traveling in the sand. God promises the guidance and renewal of the Holy Spirit, refreshing us for the days ahead, so that we make it through the times of desert and wilderness in our lives.
The second thing we can gather when we relate our own journey through Lent to Jesus’s journey through the wilderness, is that there will be temptation. The devil tries to temp Jesus in the wilderness with a variety of things that sound nice when they are said in the right way. The devil first tries to temp Jesus’s bodily, human needs. Turn these stones into bread so that you can eat because you are hungry. But the devil does not care that Jesus is hungry, rather the devil cares that Jesus’s hunger can make him weak, and weakness is easier to control. And so, we are called in our own lives to care for our own bodies, to feed them, wash them, rest them, nurture them, move them, in ways that keep us mentally, emotionally, and physically healthy. When any part of the body is in trouble, it is so much easier to give into the difficult parts of life because there is no energy to fight back.
Next the devil tries appealing to Jesus from the stance of power. Do this one thing, worship me, and I will give you power and authority. But Jesus again refuses this temptation because we have a God who is the only one we worship. Jesus knows that to give into this temptation of power and worship the devil is to abandon our God. Power and authority from the devil are not true power and authority, because power and authority start and end with God.
As the last temptation, the devil tries to tempt Jesus by using his words of faith against him. Jesus is asked to prove that God is the one to be worshipped, by proving he would not be hurt when jumping from this tall place, as it mentions in scripture. The devil uses the words of scripture to tempt Jesus out of his faith. But Jesus knows that this is merely a test for the Devil’s own pride, and so he refuses, quoting scripture back that the Lord is not to be tested. When these three encounters have finished, it says that the Devil leaves Jesus, waiting for an opportune time. This is not the end of temptation. When we overcome temptations in our own lives, those are not the last ones we ever encounter, there are always more waiting to strike at the right time. And yet we remember that throughout all of this God has not abandoned us. The Holy Spirit is with us, and even when we feel like we have failed, there is grace from God who stays with us as we begin our journey again.
The final connection we can see between Jesus’s 40 days in the wilderness and our 40 days of Lent, is that this time does come to an end. Jesus did not stay in the wilderness, he eventually left to do ministry throughout the region. To call disciples, to teach the crowds, and to show us how to love God and neighbor. This transition is true for our own season of Lent, but also our personal times of wilderness too. There will be an end. The wilderness will not stretch on forever. We keep walking toward the end, even when it seems in the far distance, guided the whole way by the Holy Spirit.
Whenever we are in these times of wilderness, during this season of Lent or other times of the year. We can call on the name of the Lord. This does not mean that our pain will go away immediately, or that our wilderness suddenly stops. But we have a God who became human and went through the wilderness here in this world. There is hope in calling on the name of the Lord, knowing that the Spirit is already with us, but acknowledging that we need God’s companionship in that particular moment. Again, I quote our passage from Romans: “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” We may not understand what saving means in every moment, but we can rely on the truth we proclaim in the Lord’s Prayer. The Lord’s name is holy, and there is power when we call upon it.