Lent I - 2.22.26

SERMON, CHURCH OF THE ATONEMENT

1 LENT A

FEB. 22, 2026

The Rev. Anne Wrider

The Judean desert is a true wilderness. It is one of the hottest and most desolate places on earth. It isn’t a sand desert, but one of brown and gray rock. And it goes on for hundreds of square miles, a barren wilderness with no relief. It is also one of the driest places on earth. If you get lost in that desert without water, you will be dead in a day. This is not a place that makes any allowances for human beings.  Life and death are separated by the thinnest of threads there.

Jesus’ journey into the wilderness is a choice to be in that wasteland. Leaving behind all that is comfortable and habitual, he is confronted with the questions he must answer in order to fulfill his ministry. And those questions challenge him at the most basic level. Satan confronts him with temptations that are rooted in the most basic human needs and motivations . The first is the need to eat. There are many people, then as now, who do not have this most fundamental thing. How wonderful it would be to have the power to fill every stomach.  And then there is the need to feel safe. This is a world filled with all kinds of dangers. We are always hoping for a superhero who will keep us safe. Jesus the invincible would certainly get lots of followers. And finally, there is the need for power. Every human being needs a sense of being able to walk in the world with strength, to feel a sense of personal power. But we so often feel powerless. We sometimes think the world would be so much better if Jesus could just run it.

Jesus’ response to those challenges is neither easy nor terribly comforting. Nourishment, safety and power are not evil in themselves. But Jesus says no to all three of those temptations. And I think he does that because what he understands that none of these things can be an end in themselves. To live a holy life, to live a life in God, demands that we go deeper than physical hunger and feel our hunger for God. We have to let go of feeling safe in order to take the risks of loving God and our neighbor. And power, real power, is the power of love and that power is manifested in vulnerability and weakness.

Lent invites us to go into the wilderness. We are invited to leave the comfortable routine of our day to day lives and explore what a deeper life in God might be like. That sounds a little overwhelming.  As we take on the disciplines of Lent, we have to encounter ourselves, and that is daunting. We have to look at the ways in which we settle for less than God. But we also are in a place where God’s love and grace can pour into our lives. The Gospel tells us that angels came and waited on Jesus. We tend to treat that closing verse as a throwaway, but it is key. If we do the deep work of Lent, we can expect that God’s love will bring us peace and deep joy. But a word of caution:  the work of Lent is not about effort. It is about consent.

The truth is, of course, that God is always in us and under and around us. But we are usually so busy being wrapped up in ourselves that we miss that holy presence. The infinite love that surrounds us sometimes only becomes apparent when we let go of our last defense against it. And that is the gift of the wilderness.  The secret is not to try harder, but to let go of the defenses we put up against God’s overwhelming love, Lent gives us a chance to examine those defenses and to let them go.

I want to suggest a way of approaching Lenten disciplines this year that is, perhaps, paradoxical. Normally, we think about giving things up for Lent. The trap is that we get caught up in the effort of those resolutions, working harder and harder, trying to force ourselves to do better. But that completely misses the ocean of love and grace that surrounds us, the loving God who wants our deepest happiness.

So let me suggest something else. What if, instead of giving up chocolate (for example), when we feel a craving for that chocolate, we were to ask ourselves, “What would God like for me that’s better than chocolate?” What gift is God waiting to give me? Can I let go and accept that gift? Chocolate is a fine thing, but what more is available to us?

Or what if we decided to spend twenty or thirty minutes in silence every day? I don’t’ mean saying Morning or Evening Prayer every day, but simply silence, listening for what God might have to say to us? Now don’t mistake me. Morning Prayer is a wonderful thing. I love our Atonement group that meets on Google Meet every morning, and I’m not about to give that up. But it’s very easy for me to fall into it as a task of the day, a chance to tell God what’s on my mind, then dust off my hands and move on to the other tasks on my list. It can protect me from being vulnerable to God, from hearing what loving, challenging word God might have for me.

We settle for so much less than we could have. We settle for satisfying our appetites, for safely, for personal power. Lent is a time to discover the rich gifts that God wants for us. We will probably have to disrupt our habits and comfortable patterns in order to discover them. And one safe prediction: we won’t do as well with this as we would wish. But I will share with you what a dear person once shared with me when I was fussing about how badly my Lenten intentions were going. She said to me, “Do you know what? No matter how badly you do during this Lent, Jesus will rise from the dead at Easter anyway.”

That is the promise. That is at the end of the road we travel. It is God’s road, not our own, and we can trust that however difficult it may be, God’ love has the last word. I wish you a holy Lent.

Amen.