Who We Truly Are

Matthew 4:1-11

This sermon references two litanies; the Litany of Penitence beginning on page 267 of the Book of Common Prayer and the Great Litany on page 148 in the same book. Both are very appropriate devotional practices for personal use any time in the Lenten season.

In nearly every Episcopal Church, Lent begins with either the singing or saying of the Great Litany. It is a powerful beginning, as the petitions attempt to address every single thing anyone could possibly pray about, everything that needs prayer, and everything that God makes possible. The Great Litany is called great for this reason- it is long, and about as close to all-encompassing as communal prayer can be. It is usually used during Lent but is also a particularly appropriate response to times of war and strife. In the Great Litany, and in the entire season of Lent, we name sin explicitly in a way that might sometimes make us uncomfortable. Just this past Wednesday, as part of the Ash Wednesday liturgy, many of us prayed these words:

“We confess to you Lord.”

We confess our unfaithfulness, our pride, hypocrisy, and impatience. We confess our self-indulgent ways, our exploitation of others, our anger and our envy. We confess our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts, our dishonesty in daily life and work, our negligence in prayer and in worship, our failure to commend the faith that is in us. Indifference to injustice and cruelty; false judgments; uncharitable thoughts toward our neighbors; prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us; our waste and pollution of creation, our lack of concern for those who come after us. All this and more we confess, and still there is more to confess. Not because we are inherently sinful, but because in fact we are less ourselves whenever we fall into sin. Sin is not the natural state of humanity; sin is what happens when humanity chooses to act inhumane.

When God created us and called us good, called all of creation very good, that very goodness was the point. When God created us in God’s image with tender care, that image was not a caricature or a funhouse mirror image. Our truest selves, the selves that God calls beloved, can be occluded or eroded by sin, but they are never erased. The image of God in us is indelible, it cannot be taken from us by sin or death itself. Sin is the lie; our belovedness is the truth. And because of this truth, we can confess and repent of the lie.

It is immediately after his baptism, after the heavens opened and a voice named Jesus beloved, that Jesus enters a time of temptation and trial. No sooner does the bright light of the Holy Spirit dove fade than Jesus finds himself utterly alone and starving. The loving voice of our Father in heaven is replaced by the insidious voice of the Father of Lies. The devil’s purpose in the wilderness is simple: lead the son of God into sin. But to what end?

When human beings fall into sin, it is almost always for one of two reasons: we do not believe we are inherently beloved of God, or we do not believe or care that others are inherently beloved in the same way. Somehow, a lie has replaced the truth of who we are. When we harm ourselves, when we harm others, it is almost always because somewhere along the way we started believing the lie. And there are many forces in this world that benefit greatly from that lie. We work ourselves to death because we believe the lie that our worth comes from our earnings or what we can produce, and someone else almost always profits from that belief. We hit or yell at our children or our spouse because we believe the lie that love looks like control, not freedom, and if we believe this then it is so much easier for those in power to control us and claim they care. We abuse our bodies with fad diets and extreme workouts and harmful substances because we believe the lie that only certain bodies are worthy of love. We become so mired in apathy and overwhelm that we can barely put one foot in front of the other, let alone love and serve God in our neighbors. If we look to the places in our lives where we have turned away from God, where we feel guilt or shame or disgust or embarrassment, we see places where the truth has been obscured, where some lie is viciously trying to take the place of who we truly are.

But who is Jesus truly? Jesus is the Son of God, the beloved, with whom God the Father is well pleased. The lie the devil wants Jesus to believe is that his identity is anything less. Every temptation the devil offers him pokes at some aspect of his identity. “IF you are the Son of God, make these stones into bread.” “IF you are the Son of God, throw yourself from this roof.” “IF you want to be Lord of all, worship me.”

Jesus is fully human, and so we are to infer that there was some degree of actual temptation in these moments. Jesus was famished, and I’m sure a few loaves of bread sounded heavenly. Jesus is about to embark on a dangerous and difficult mission in beginning his public ministry, and I’d bet having some proof that God would always protect him probably sounded pretty good at that moment. Jesus was raised by a mother who conceived him outside of marriage, by a foster father who worked with his hands and probably died early in Jesus’s life, in a low-income family in a small town, and the only crown he had to look forward to was a crown of thorns. Having all the kingdoms of the earth and all the splendor therein is a far cry from hanging on a cross with “King of the Jews” as your only epitaph. I don’t think I could blame Jesus for being tempted by a smoother, safer path.

The difference between us and Jesus, the reason he was able to be tempted in every way as we are and yet did not sin, is that Jesus knows exactly who he is.
Jesus knows the truth of his belovedness.
Jesus knows the truth of the belovedness of every creature under heaven.
No amount of lying on the part of the devil can dissuade him from the truth.

In the Great Litany, we pray that God would finally beat down Satan under our feet. It is a vivid image, a little startling even. For much of Christian history, the conflict between good and evil, between God and the works of evil, has been framed in military terms. It is a battle between opposing forces, and it is sometimes very hard to believe that we are on the winning side. But notice what it looks like for Jesus to defeat the devil. Every time the Devil comes at him with a temptation to forget who he truly is, Jesus responds with a lesson from Scripture. Every time a demon tries to challenge Jesus, Jesus reaches out with love and care to the person being harmed. When his friend falls to temptation and trades Jesus’s life for a few pieces of silver, Jesus still shares a meal with him and accepts his kiss. When the grave tries to swallow him up, Jesus not only bursts forth like the dawn, but he brings with him all those languishing in death and carries them into everlasting life. Jesus stays true to the name that God has called him, beloved Son. He does not entertain the lie. He does not accept the devil’s premise that anyone is worth more or less than anyone else in the eyes of God. Jesus stays true to himself, and by doing so, the devil is beaten down.

This Lent, we might make a confession. We might use the time for self-examination and repentance. We might look carefully to see the places in our lives where we have listened to forces that would turn us against one another, against ourselves, and away from God. It may not feel like facing our shame, or guilt, or fear is winning a battle; yet Jesus shows us that it is. Jesus’ temptations give us hope – hope that as we grow into the fullness of the stature of Christ, we might see ourselves, and one another, as beloved.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Amen. (Psalm 51:11)