Today is March 5, 2025, Ash Wednesday, a holy day that marks the beginning of Lent for most Christians. Ashes symbolize repentance, humility, death and sacrifice, core themes for the forty-day and forty-night Lenten period of preparation for Easter. Forty days is no brief period, especially when they are the days spent by Jesus in the hostile desert, fasting and having a ‘face to face’ with the demonic seductions of Satan.
Scripture provides accounts of these confrontations. Both Matthew and Luke report on the experience and the encounter. I am using the Matthean account here:
4 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the devil. 2 He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was famished. 3 The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4 But he answered, “It is written,
‘One does not live by bread alone,
but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’
5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6 saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written,
‘He will command his angels concerning you,’
and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”
7 Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’
8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, 9 and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” 10 Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,
‘Worship the Lord your God,
and serve only him.’
11 Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him. (Matthew 4:1-11, NRSVU)
Jesus spurned each of these temptations without hesitation. A common and useful explanation of them is:
First, Satan tempted Jesus to turn stones into bread to relieve his hunger, emphasizing the physical aspect of his humanity. Jesus responded by asserting the importance of spiritual nourishment over physical need.
In the second temptation, Satan urged Jesus to jump from the pinnacle of the temple, testing God's protection by relying on miraculous intervention. Jesus rejected this, emphasizing the need to trust in God without putting Him/Her to the test.
Finally, Satan offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and their glory in exchange for worship. Jesus rebuffed the offer, emphasizing the exclusive worship of God and rejecting the pursuit of worldly power. Throughout these temptations, Jesus relied on scripture and a resolute commitment to His divine mission, setting an example of resistance against the temptation of physical appetites, sensationalism, and earthly power. (Christianity.com)
The relevancy of each of these three temptations is unmistakable but given the horrifying behavior of those in power today in our country, this with the support of Maga Christians, the evil seduction of power indites us more than the other two. Gregory Sterling, Dean of Yale Divinity School, recently wrote an op-ed piece for MSNBC. He first announced it to the Yale community saying:
Greetings. I am writing today to share a new commentary piece I have published at MSNBC. The article represents my effort to call attention to the anti-Christian nature of efforts by our government to eliminate or drastically reduce humanitarian work domestically and abroad, and to reach the broad public with the message that Christianity is more than the picture they are probably forming from politics and media.
…I worry that the younger generation will either come to dismiss Christianity as amoral or identify with it for its relationship to political power rather than its moral and spiritual principles.
At a recent discussion of my colleague Phil Gorski’s work “The Flag and the Cross,” which explores the rise of Christian nationalism, I asked Gorski whether Christianity had become a dirty word. He responded, “You are right as dean of the divinity school to be worried about this.” When I asked a good friend who was the senior pastor of a large church in Manhattan what he thought of this, he said he had quit using the word Christian to describe himself and preferred to use “follower of Jesus Christ.”
One of the most significant Lenten questions for each of us is how seriously will we follow Jesus into the hostile, spiritual desert of self-examination and confront the demonic impulses and seductions of our lives? The journey is both individual and societal. Much about our way of living is un-Christian and convincingly, a betrayal of any claim we may make about being ‘followers of Jesus.” Followers of Jesus would never say and do what we hear and see these days in our society. At the heart of our national sin is the power grab made by the individuals who are believers and supporters of this abusive President. Satan yet again offered it, and we know who took it and how they are exploiting it. The truly existential challenge of Lent this year is to show in our words and way of life and witness that we are “followers of Jesus” and are uncompromisingly committed to living out our rejection of ‘sin’ within and without, no matter how difficult that may be. I am reminded of the abrupt but compelling opening to Mark’s gospel:
14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near;k repent, and believe in the Gospel” (NRSVU)
The time is still fulfilled but the Kingdom is not just near. It is here whenever and wherever people are enlisted by Jesus’ teachings and decide to follow Him and care for those He treasured.
Lois and I traveled to Gainesville on Friday evening for Hailey’s high school softball game. On the way up, we saw a brightly colored sign stapled to the powerline, warning all travelers: “Jesus in Coming! REPENT!” Well, I have never been much of a proponent of these apocalyptic pronouncements. I am more of an incarnational guy, preferring to say: “Jesus Came! Repent!”
I once read that Mother Teresa believed that repentance is an act of love, and that it involves confessing sins and turning away from indifference and hardness of heart. How right she is.
Today, there are a couple of marches being conducted in Washington. One is heading toward the Supreme Court and the other to the U.S. House and Senate. They are being called “sacred acts of witness and truth-telling, a national call to repentance. The Reverend William Barber Jr. extended this invitation to us all on behalf of his organization, “Repairers of the Breach” (Isaiah 58: 12):
Stand in prayer, lament, and moral resistance to call the nation to repentance from the sins of injustice, apathy, corruption, and oppression. Our nation must turn away from lies, extremism, and unchecked power and commit to the work of righteousness, truth, justice, and love.
Confessing our sin and turning away from the lies, the extremism, and the unchecked power and toward righteousness, truth, justice, and love is what repentance is all about.
Do you remember Bill Moyers, a graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary with a Master of Divinity degree, but who spent most of his career in politics and public broadcasting? Upon the death of Reverend Bill Coffin in 2006, he wrote a very moving tribute to his friend and pastor. The piece was published in the YDS Magazine, Reflection, and in it, he shares this poignant and powerful observation:
So, he had the pastor’s heart, but he heeded the prophet’s calling. There burned in his soul a sacred rage – that volatile mix of grief and anger and love that produced what his friend, the artist and writer Robert Shetterly, described as “a holy flame.” During my interview with him he said, “When you see uncaring people in high places, everybody should be mad as hell.” If you lessen your anger at the structures of power, he said, you lower your love for the victims of power.
With so many uncaring people in high places, is this the season for a sacred rage in the soul of a nation? Is this the nation that has been called to hold the structures of power accountable and to give the full measure of its love to the victims of power? Are we the people of faith, followers of Jesus, who will issue the prophetic call to repentance and reject the satanic seduction of power. Instead, will we boldly choose the life of honesty, justice, compassion and righteousness?
I hope so.