Year A

Matthew 4:1-11

The Rev. Denise Vaughn

Spring Cleaning of the Soul

Once again we have arrived to the season in the church year called Lent. Lent from the old English word Lenten, meaning “spring” which is not only a reference to the season before Easter but, also an invitation to a springtime for the soul. A springtime of forty days to cleanse the system and to remember what it is like to live by the grace of God alone and not by what we can supply for ourselves. Lent is a time to enter the wilderness with our Lord. The wilderness can be a place where we learn how to fill the empty space inside of us, that space that we tend to fill with everything but God. The simplest definition of an addiction is anything we use to fill the empty place inside of us that belongs to God alone. It is that space that if we are not walking with the Lord and closely listening for God, it can be filled with another voice, a voice that can lead us so very cleverly away from God.

In our shiny, modern, intellectual, sophisticated world many have been persuaded to believe that evil as a real entity does not exist and perhaps this is the evil one’s greatest achievement. We have been duped into thinking of Satan, the devil, Beelzebub, the spirit of evil, as something to be taken lightly, a ridiculous superstition out of an old primitive time. But the witness of God’s word is insistent that there is an evil force and call it what you will, in my opinion it obviously is at work in our world. Just one example of many that we hear in the news over and over again is of young people bullying other young people to the point that they are taking their own lives and this doesn’t just happen with young people today. Our world is full of adults bullying other adults with words or actions, and even killing.

There is an evil force that daily puts us to the test; that evil that works in the hidden corners of our hearts and minds in our day-to- day lives causing the need for our souls to be cleansed for the journey ahead with Jesus. No wonder on the first Sunday in Lent, in a season that calls us to repentance, we hear Matthew’s story of Jesus’ encounter with evil. It is the evil in our world that takes Jesus to the cross and the confrontation with evil is as real then, as at the very start of humanity. Today we read from Genesis about the fall of Adam and Eve. They are given the choice to live a life that either chooses God, or chooses acting outside of God. Because of Adam and Eve’s brokenness and their choice to act outside of God, the testing comes to all of us even as it came to Jesus, true God and yet truly human.

Immediately following his baptism, Jesus was subjected to the most rigorous test ever to happen to a human being. Jesus was directed by the Spirit to the wilderness of Judea. This wilderness is one of the most desolate areas on earth, a rare combination of mountains and desert and for the most part the landscape is utterly barren. This event we know from the scriptures is ordained by God. It was a necessary task for Jesus to perform in order to qualify for his role as the true Messiah. For Jesus to be the savior of the world he not only had to die for our sins, he also had to live a life of obedience. He was faced with the choice and as the scriptures tell us, Jesus was like us in every way except one: He was without sin. He chose obedience and although he is God’s power here on earth, he voluntarily chose to not use his power so that God could work through him. Of course, the evil one knows his power and tempts him to use it. But Jesus shows us today how God’s power works in our human weakness and humility.

I realize how many times in a day, an hour, even a minute, I fall prey to the enemy: pride, jealousy, fear, judgment. Realization of my failure is a ruse the evil one uses immediately to accuse me of not living up to my own standards of righteousness. I ought to be able to will the good and do it but I fail, and it is then that I have come to realize my own spiritual poverty and my need to rely on God’s mercy and help. In my poverty, what I have come to know is how to more and more rely on God’s grace and that I don’t have to “get it all together” on my own. That’s the mystery of God’s love and forgiveness. In Lent, our penitence brings us face to face with the dark places in our lives, to face them, name them, understand them and seek forgiveness for them. It is not about guilt. It is about freedom from the control our fears and insecurities have over us all.

We are given the freedom to choose obedience to God’s truth out of love, or we can choose anxiety out of pride and fear. Making choices is essential to using our freedom, but we all too easily buy in to the message that we should use our freedom of choice to consume more and more things and demand more and more options. While having some options is essential for being healthy psychologically, having too many can be a problem. For instance, several psychological studies since the 1970’s have tracked how an increase in consumer options among the people in the US also show a decrease in our general happiness. We are not able to handle such a wide range of options. Not too many years ago, we only had 5 or 6 TV channels to choose from and now we have so many that when I flip through sometimes I can’t see anything I want to watch. Too much freedom can be debilitating.

The challenge of freedom is not new. It was an important theme in Paul’s writings, for example, in his letter to the Galatians he argues that Christian freedom is to be founded in Christ and rather than a freedom for consumption, freedom in Christ turns us in love towards others. The traditional Lenten practices of simplicity, service, and devotion to God and to the needs of others are guides for exercising our freedom, our choices in response to God’s grace. Instead of choosing a lifestyle that demands more and more for ourselves, living more for the other is imitating Christ’s willingness to use his freedom for the salvation of humanity, rather than for his own comfort or sense of control.

Jesus is driven into the wilderness alone for the necessary battle between the good and evil spirits, a severe test of Jesus’ self-emptying humility and willingness to rely wholly on God. Jesus shows us how we live by trust. For forty days he prays and fasts and it is a time of strengthening his bond of unity, love and trust in God through the help of the Holy Spirit. Through his temptations, Jesus shows us that it is when our lives are difficult that we choose who we will be. Like Jesus, we will be hungry. We will have times when we are tempted to doubt God’s faithfulness. We will be tempted to reach for power, rather than to live the life of a servant. To live as a child of God even when our circumstances are hard; this is when we choose just what it means to be a child of God. Now is the time for the spring cleaning of our souls. To once again turn to the God of our salvation, to the God we put our trust in because not matter what the temptation comes to us, God will give us what we need when we follow.