"Exam Time"    Judy Skaggs, UPC

Luke 4:1-13

In the three synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke describe all the things that must take place before Jesus begins his ministry. According to Luke, the story of Jesus being tested in the wilderness by the devil for forty days is the last thing to occur before Jesus began to teach and preach in Galilee.

This time of testing is in many ways a defining moment for Jesus. He has been baptized and been declared God’s beloved! The Spirit descends upon him. And, our text says that the Spirit leads him into this time of trail. We get to listen in on the conversation with the devil as Jesus defines who he is and who he is not - how he will be Messiah.

The devil hurls a challenge at Jesus – If you are the Son of God, then surely you will act in certain ways. But Jesus assures the devil and all of us who are listening that his life is meant for a greater purpose. Every time the devil offered him more – more bread, more power, more protection - Jesus turned him down. No to bread made for the wrong purpose, no to kingdoms which were not the devil’s to give, no to security promised by a scripture-quoting devil. Instead Jesus says that God is all he needs. He is filled completely with God’s Spirit. He will worship only God; he will trust only in God.

When it comes to exam time, Jesus passes with flying colors.

So this story begins our Lenten journey – the forty days of this season stretched out before us, reminding us of the forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness. During Lent, we are invited to a time of self-examination, of penitence, of exploring spiritual disciplines. Perhaps the Spirit is also leading us into a sort of wilderness.

Now the wilderness come in all shapes and sizes, and we usually try very hard to stay away from those times of uncertainty and chaos. But what I am wondering this morning is if some of our wilderness times are not some of the richest spiritual times that we have? When Jesus was in the wilderness, he was given the opportunity to define himself, to decide how he would enter into his ministry, how he would save us. He did not choose the glitzy or easy way offered by the devil. He choose the human way, the hard way, the wilderness way.

We have all been through the wilderness – perhaps it was in a doctor’s waiting room, or in the foyer of a funeral home; maybe walking to the parking lot after loosing a job or leaving the judge’s chambers after ending a marriage; receiving a rejection from a school, a job, even a person; many scenes come to mind. It could just be an emptiness in your own soul that cries out to be filled or the loss of a dream for how we thought our life would be. We have all been there in one form on another.

This might sound like bad news, but perhaps it is not. For the wilderness can be real and full of life, a place where true, honest change can take place. It is often in the wilderness that God seems closer and more real. Look at Jesus. After his meeting with the devil, he was free from all those things that would distract him from his purpose. Jesus learned to trust in the Spirit of God that filled him and led him to the wilderness in the first place.

So what will we do with our wilderness times? Can we step back from the pain or confusion or chaos and have a look at ourselves? Can we use wilderness times to define who we are? Perhaps there is a sort of test for each of us, when we pass through those wilderness times. How will I respond to my circumstances? Can I, like Jesus, rely completely on God for all my wants and needs? Is God enough?

As the staff was doing some planning about how we would observe Lent this year, we begin to think about all the means of grace that we have when we face a wilderness time – a loss, an illness, a death, and so on. And so we wanted to explore this idea together as a community of faith. And we will be exploring this topic more during our Wednesday evening programs.

But we also realized that during our times of worship, we are all offered many of the means of God’s grace. Just gathering as a community offers support for each other. In community, we can weep when others weep; we can laugh when others laugh. When some of us are in the midst of the wilderness, others are in a better place in their lives, and so there will be times when we hold each other up – with prayer, with our presence, or with a homemade chocolate cake! The community itself is God’s grace.

During worship we pray together, we sing together, we hear scripture read and preached together. Every element of worship is a means of grace.

We see the acolyte pour the water and we are grateful for our baptism, our entrance into the body of Christ. We are invited to the table where we are fed and renewed. And each Sunday in Lent we will offer anointing with oil as a sign of Christ’s presence and healing. All means of grace!

We have forty days to do some exploring, to find out more about who we are, to ask ourselves what we do when we are faced with wilderness times, and to learn more about all that God offers to us during those times.

And this season of Lent, let us remember Christ. Let us remember how Jesus defined himself for those forty days – with every fiber of his being, he declared that he belonged to God and God alone, that he would worship God alone, that he would trust in God alone.

Let us continue to pray for each other that we will come closer to defining ourselves as Christ did. Let us pray that we can learn to trust in the same Spirit that leads us both into the wilderness and out again, ready to worship God and serve no other all the days of our lives. Amen.