He comes quoting the bible. He comes offering wealth, protection, and power. He comes with what we think we want, but not what we need.

Jesus is led into the wilderness after his baptism. In this story we see the futility of looking for love in things that only provide temporary satisfaction, in seeking empty highs, tempting fate and in mindless adoration. Jesus resists. He demonstrates that in our resistance to evil we find true communion with God.

Jesus was famished. The tempter came and said, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to be loaves of bread.”

This is a classic move. Prove yourself. If you are who you say you are… Prove it and you’ll get the bread. I don’t know about you, but I don’t do my best thinking when I’m hungry. It’s like how you should never shop when you’re hungry because your bill is $40 more than it should be. But bread has another meaning. It could mean wealth/money.

The tempter hits us that way. Prove yourself. Get that bread! In my career as a sales rep, I was measured this way. I didn’t like who I was becoming. I was becoming very greedy and not acting on the best interest of my customer but for my own bottom line. The best sales folk say this is the best way to lose business and ruin your bottom line.

Greed is one of the seven deadly sins, and it must be resisted. Gandhi put it well when he said, “There is enough for everyone’s need, but there is not enough for everyone’s greed.” Our culture often falls to this temptation. There are also churches that think this too. The prosperity gospel has fallen to this temptation of “if you believe then you’ll get the bread. If you’re a true Christian you’ll be healthy, wealthy, and wise. You’ll get the bread.” Preachers like Creflo Dollar launch campaigns for their next private jet. It’s a distorted understanding of the gospel. We can look to Jesus to see how the health and wealth gospel isn’t followed by a homeless rabbi who ends up not healthy or wealthy, but on a cross.

The next temptation is one of God’s protection. If God really loves you, then you’ll have protection. No suffering. You’ll be at the top of the temple, top of the church! The temple was the center of society, and its way of life was highly prescribed. Lots of folks love routine. I love routine. I love knowing that we’re in Lent, and there’s a routine to follow. There’s protection in a sense, as we know what’s coming. We know what to expect. Jesus sees right through this temptation, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

The phrase, “No good deed goes unpunished” springs to mind. Sometimes the right thing to do is disruptive to routine. Doing the right thing brings risk. We see this in the past. The Civil Rights Era with the marches for equal rights, voting equality, the end of Jim Crow and a segregated society. It was disruptive to the routine folks were used to. We see this in each and every age–people being persecuted for doing the right thing because the right thing is inconvenient.

We saw this when the Recovery Center was being planned. People said, “Not in my backyard! Don’t bring those addicts here!” We who resisted weren’t malicious, but we also didn’t know the full story. The center wasn’t going to bring the addicts here, they were already here. We just didn’t know. But now we do. It was disruptive to our routine, but now we have a new routine, one that’s better. One that involves some risk of learning the stories and developing relationships with addictions in recovery. There’s risk. But the reward is much more.

Glennon Doyle points out, “We all wonder how we’d have responded during the Civil Rights Era, but we really don’t have to wonder. The answer to whether we’d have marched in the Civil Rights Era is whether we’re marching in THIS Civil Rights Era.”[1] I will step out to say that all are children of God. LGBTQ folk and all. God’s grace is for everybody. Everybody needs Jesus. The Holy Spirit is in all of us. That’s what I’ll march for. What will you march for? Are you risking with your faith? Maybe you’re marching for feeding the hungry by showing up with Garfield. Maybe you’re marching for community by showing up here on a Sunday and staying for coffee hour. There are a million small ways to make a positive impact. What are you stepping out in faith for?

The last temptation is one we all get hit with. Like the song says, “Everybody wants to rule the world.” Power. Fame. In our culture, this is what everyone wants. In reading what some Sam and Eve’s peers want to be when they grow up, they want to be YouTubers, rock stars, famous. Many of us might think we want that too.

Jesus doesn’t. The whole of Jesus’ life had nothing to do with being famous. He is unimpressed with crowds. And the type of power he has is counter to how we think of power. Jesus came to us with no worldly power; born to a poor, unwed couple. He was not simply a missionary to the poor, he WAS poor. He wandered the world a homeless rabbi, executed by an oppressive empire in the rotten way of an enemy of the state, and was buried in a borrowed tomb. Shane Claiborne points out that, “Jesus was crucified not for helping poor people but for joining them. This is the Jesus we follow.”[2]

We look for love in all the wrong places. We are tempted to prove ourselves and showour worth by how much bread we get. We are tempted to go along with the routine and keep our heads down. We are tempted by power and fame.

Jesus resists these temptations. He sees that his help comes from God. His identity is rooted in God. Jesus chooses good over evil time after time–even when it’s not the popular thing to do.

We need more of this prophetic imagination. It is the prophetic imagination that Walter Wink writes that teaches us that “evil can be opposed without being mirrored… oppressors can be resisted without being emulated… enemies can be neutralized without being destroyed.”[3] We can look into the eyes of a centurion and not see a beast but a child of God, then walk with that child a couple of miles.

Contrary to my reputation, I love rules. Resisters make me nervous. I love staying home. I have so many night meetings, that staying in is a treat. I love staying in. Kate and I are doing a nightly tea time with sleepy tea from the Coffee Colony. Y’all know about the Coffee Colony?! This little house with amazing things in it that’s been around for 35 years?! I love it. If I’m having a bad morning, the staff will ask, “You didn’t get your tea last night, did you?” Then I see folks like Martin Luther King Jr. How they risked. How they did the right thing, not for wealth, fame, or any other reason other than it’s the right thing to do. I see that sometimes you have to break routine and get off your couch if you want the world to change.

I see this in the lives of our modern-day prophets. Prophets like the Rev. William J. Barber II who has resurrected King’s Poor People’s campaign. He tells the story of the poor and how many hard-working folks are being left behind. Or Father Greg Boyle and his work with gang members in Los Angeles. Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber and her work humanizing the radical teachings of love and hanging out with our modern day “sinners” like addicts, agnostics, and prostitutes.

Look for the resisters. Look for those who are trying to humanize others to us.

Look for the parents who take the phones away from their children at night. Those who talk with their children about their use of social media. Look for the seniors who are trying to get out of their houses and resist loneliness. Look for those 20-something folk who are resisting the culture and actually going to church. They should be celebrated.

Look for the librarians offering snacks and programs to the youth who show up each and every day at the library. The social worker providing laundry vouchers and hygiene products to students. Look for them, for they are doing it because it’s the right thing, not for fame or wealth or any other reason. In fact, they’ll be persecuted for it.

Nicole Harris, the social worker at Garfield Elementary, recently told me of a group who was going to offer her a lot of money to help out with a few after-school projects. Then they started making all sorts of demands and making sure that these students were truly “deserving.” That these students would be told to “pull themselves up by the bootstraps and be measured by what they produce.” This is the first temptation, prove yourself. Get that bread. Nicole rightly said, “We don’t need your money.”

She resisted. For we are not what we produce or how much bread we have. We are not our reputations or the fame we have amassed. We are not our routine. We are not our religious or political affiliations. What we are… Who we are… is founded in the Love of God. We are children of God beloved from the start. Created in love.

Get away from us, temptation! Worship the Lord your God, and serve only God. And what does God require of us? To act justly, which means to resist acting only in self-interest. To love kindness, which means to resist hatred. To walk humbly, which means to resist strutting proudly. It’s that simple. Thanks be to God!

Works Cited

^[1][1] Glennon Doyle’s Facebook post from January 12, 2017

^[2][2] The Irresistible Revolution: living as an ordinary radical, page 134.

^[3][3] The Powers that Be, page 111.