Luke 4:1-13

William F. Schnell

February 21, 2010

 

Today is the first Sunday in the season of Lent.  While Lent means “spring” it actually shares a linguistic connection with the word lengthen, as in the lengthening of daylight.   During the Winter Solstice on December 21 daylight lasted 9 hours and 11 minutes.  Today we will be treated to 10 hours and 52 minutes of daylight.  Even the birds have gotten the message because this morning I heard them singing when I arrived at church, and that is a first since last fall.  Given the frigid snowstorms we have endured this winter, any indication that the days are lengthening and warmer spring weather is coming is fine with me. 

 

Theologically, the season of Lent is a time of spiritual preparation for Easter.  Lent begins 40 days before Easter on Ash Wednesday, and we had a service to commemorate that this past Wednesday including the imposition of ashes upon people’s foreheads.  Ashes signify our mortality, our fallen nature and our need for mercy and forgiveness.  Repentance is how we spiritually prepare ourselves to be forgiven.  Even the Almighty is powerless to forgive the unrepentant.

 

But if we do repent, God is faithful to forgive us our sins and to raise us up to new and better lives.  It is this resurrecting power of God that we celebrate at Easter with great joy and fanfare.  It is a power made known to us in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and into glory.  But just as important, it is a resurrection that we can share if we are properly prepared.  Lent is the season of spiritual preparation.  It is doing our small part so that God can do his saving part.

 

Because we are at the beginning of Lent, the Gospel lesson assigned for this Sunday takes place at the beginning of Christ’s ministry.  Luke’s Gospel begins with the nativity texts, and then there is one brief mention of Jesus’ boyhood.  Otherwise, the years from birth of Jesus to his 30th year of age are the silent years.  The Gospel writer jumps ahead to John the Baptist preparing the way for the Lord by baptizing the repentant in the Jordan River.  This is when a grown-up Jesus reappears on the scene to begin his ministry by being baptized.

 

This is also where our text picks up.  Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil (Verses 1-2).  One of the reasons the preparatory season of Lent is 40 days is because Jesus embarked upon 40 days of spiritual preparation for his ministry.  40 is a big number in the Bible.  Among other things, the People of Israel wandered in the wilderness 40 years before they were prepared to enter the Promised Land.

 

There are lots of literary cues used by Luke to link Jesus’ sojourn in the desert wilderness with that of the Israelites.  Obviously, there is the setting of the desert wilderness which is a barren land.  You have to wonder what God was thinking to send the faithful into such a setting.  What, for example, are they supposed to eat?  The Israelites got so concerned about this that they wanted to return to the land of bondage where at least they had something to eat. 

 

God said, “Have some faith.  I will feed you.  I will send you bread from heaven” (called manna).  But he told the Israelites to only gather what they needed for each day and to trust him for their daily bread from then on as a spiritual test.  But they preferred to trust themselves rather than God, and they gathered extra to store away.  It, of course, became rancid, and God became angry because his people had failed the testing of their faith.  As Moses reminded them, He gave you manna to eat in the desert, something your fathers had never known, to humble and to test you so that in the end it might go well with you (Deuteronomy 8:16).  God only tests his people so that it might go well with them.

 

Jesus has a similar test during his 40 day wilderness sojourn.  He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.  The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.”  Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread along’” (Verses 2-4).  Jesus is quoting from the 8^th chapter of Deuteronomy here, which is the same chapter we were quoting about the manna test.  I told you that there were literary links between the two stories. 

 

But where the Israelites failed the testing of their faith, Jesus passes.  He continues to fast, which is why fasting is a spiritual discipline associated with Lent.  I, for example, am fasting from sweets, deserts and fatty snack foods during this season of Lent.  I mention it here so that you will not tempt me with goodies as you did during Christmas.  But I digress.  All of Jesus’ wilderness tests are linked with those of the Israelites.  The Israelites failed them all and Jesus passed them all, each time responding to the tempter with a quotation from the book of Deuteronomy (which recounts the wilderness wandering).  Maybe this is why Jesus’ time of testing only lasted 40 days instead of 40 years.  The sooner we face up to life’s tests the sooner we put them behind us.

 

One thing we can be certain of: if the Son of God had his time of testing, and if the people of God had their time of testing, we will certainly have our time of testing too.  We do not hand out A’s in school if somebody says they have done their homework and learned their lessons.  Heavens, anyone can say anything.  No, we test their knowledge with examinations and quizzes and assignments and papers and projects.  We test them hard for the same reason God tests us hard, so that it will go well with them in the end—so they will make the grade, progress in their educational pursuits and make something of themselves.  And one day they will actually thank us for it.

 

So it is with the time of testing we must go through to prove our faith.  Anyone can say they have faith.  But God is going to put our faith to the test because he requires a vital faith to save us by his grace.  Therefore God is going to put us in situations which require us to put our faith, hope and trust in him.  So long as we neglect to do so, the time of testing will continue—40 years if need be.  But once we do, we will have passed the test and put it behind us—and it always feels great to make the grade.

 

The day before yesterday I was sitting with a fellow at the Cleveland Clinic.  He is a fellow about my age and strikes me as a faithful husband and a loving father (and for what it is worth, he is a devout Roman Catholic).  We were sitting in a waiting room while his beloved son—a fine son who has been a credit to his parents in every way—was struggling to return from two heart attacks in quick succession which had cut off blood circulation to his now swollen brain.

 

Would full cognitive functioning of this Harvard graduate be restored as he came out of his coma?  Could the damage to his heart be repaired?  Was the rare syndrome he had treatable, and did his sister share the same genetic predisposition?   With both of his children admitted to the same hospital and with no definitive answers to these critical questions, this dear loving father looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, “I think God is testing us.”

 

There was no anger in this statement and certainly no loss of faith.  Indeed this man asked me to pray with him, just as his wife asked me to be present when a Catholic Priest marked his brow with ashes two days before in the Intensive Care Unit.  If saving their beloved children was beyond their control and if the only thing they could do for them was to pray and to keep the faith, then they would do that.  In their time of testing, they would pass the test come what may (in this case what came two days later were signs of a full recovery).

 

There have been times when I thought I was being sorely tested, but I have never been tested like that.  Maybe I am spiritually just in third grade and not ready for post-graduate work like that.  I guarantee you that I am not ready to have one of my children’s lives hang in the balance like that.  But whatever our stage of spiritual development, we can be sure that our faith is going to be tested by trials—not trials meant to bring us down but to bring us up—to raise us up with Jesus by the resurrecting power of God.

 

What is a trial for me may be nothing for you, and vice versa, but there are going to be times of testing for all of us.  You may be going one right now.  You may feel like you are wandering through a barren wilderness of existence right now.  You may be out of work, out of a marriage, or out of luck in any number of ways.  Maybe you are struggling with a health concern or a demonic compulsion.  Maybe the advancing years are taking their toll, or maybe you are now on the receiving end of youthful rebellion.

 

We can choose to be in denial and do nothing or choose to be hopeless and quit on life.  Or we can choose to see our trials as a time of testing—a testing of our faith.  Some things are going to be beyond our control, but one thing that is always within our control is our faith.  We can step out in faith on the path of God’s choosing, and he will lead us through the wilderness to the Promised Land.  We can take up our crosses and win the crown. 

 

This is the season of Lent, a time of spiritual preparation and a time of testing.  May these 40 days bring us to Easter morning and the resurrecting power of God and the promise of new life.  In the meantime, remember this: “No matter what may be the test, God will take care of you.”