The First Sunday of Lent
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16; Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Romans 10:8b-13; Luke 4:1-13
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Jesus, the Holy Seed, restores us—dead branches—into His living vine, calling the church to a faith that is not just spiritual but political, public, and covenantal. Today, we explore what happens when that organic unity is threatened, particularly in the political realm, and how our worship must shape both our lives and the world.
I.
We continue this first Sunday in Lent with an examination of the Holy Seed and the Dead Branches.
You will recall from last week that we saw that Jesus is one fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy of the Holy Seed.
He proclaims in His hometown synagogue of Nazareth that “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind.”
We saw that included in this prophecy is hope for the dead branches, the old apostate church of Israel, which had become irredeemable by Jesus’ time, hence the need for His ministry to them.
The implication is that we are the dead branches too.
We are the deaf who cannot hear God’s good news, the blind who cannot see the error of our ways, and the dumb who twist and pervert the plain meaning of the words of the Bible.
And yet we are all Jesus has to work with when building, or, in the case of First Church Woodbury, rebuilding His church.
Of course, Jesus must heal us first, He must restore our fallen nature, before He can put us to good use.
You will recall that I pointed out that the disciples and apostles themselves were in various stages of their own restoration, of their own ability to see, hear, and speak the truth about Jesus.
Eventually, however, they all got to the place where they could be sent out to cast out demons, to proclaim the gospel, to teach the nations to obey God’s law, and to baptize the nations in the Name of the triune God.
Likewise, in any church today, there will be those at various stages of their own maturity in the faith.
There is the need then for charity and forbearance towards one another, gentleness and kindness in our dealings with each other, because, after all, each one of us was a dead branch once, good for nothing other than to be picked up and thrown into the fire of God’s judgment.
All of us have been grafted back into the living vine that is Jesus Christ. It’s just that while some of us are mature and bearing fruit, others of us are still saplings.
But we have Jesus’ promise to us in John 15:5, “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”
So, we saw that there is an organic unity between the Holy Seed and the restored branches, as there is in any ordinary tree, plant, or vine that has been grafted or replanted.
In today’s sermon, I’d like to begin to take a look at what happens when that organic unity is disturbed, perhaps threatened by some blight, particularly in the body politic, in the political realm.
Now, what do I mean by the “political realm”?
Well, I mean this: that the church exists in the world, is called to carry her mission to the world, and therefore must deal with the world.
I consider it a dereliction of duty when pastors say they won’t touch politics. I don’t mean a preacher has to endorse a particular candidate from the pulpit, but the shepherd who leaves his flock unaware of what the Bible has to say about civic life is only preaching half the book.
This can lead to a somewhat personal and pietistic view of salvation, as if God hasn’t moved in history to save entire groups of people.
Let me give you an example from our own history.
The seal of the State of Connecticut depicts three clusters of grapes on a vine. The motto of our state reads, in Latin, Qui Transtulit Sustinet, which means “He who transplanted sustains.”
The motto and the image of the cluster of grapes is biblical, and was purposely chosen for that reason by our forefathers.
In 1889, Charles J. Hoadly, the State Librarian, suggested it was a reference to Psalm 80:8, “Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt: thou hast cast out the heathen, and planted it.”
That certainly seems to me like the most direct source for the quote, but the motto, coupled with the image of the grapes, also brings to mind today’s reading from Deuteronomy 26:
“When you come into the land which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance, and have taken possession of it, and live in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from your land that the Lord your God gives you, and you shall put it in a basket, and you shall go to the place which the Lord your God will choose, to make his name to dwell there. And you shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, ‘I declare this day to the Lord your God that I have come into the land which the Lord swore to our fathers to give us.’”
I submit to you that this commandment is both liturgical and political, that it has something to say both about how God’s people are to worship Him, and equally how they are to govern the land He has given them.
In other words, our faith must find a political expression as well as a spiritual one.
This is something our forefathers knew, and it inspired them to cross an ocean, bringing the Holy Seed with them, so that new branches could be grafted into the vine.
With that framing, let’s turn to look at today’s reading from Luke 4:1-13.
II.
At first, it might seem that the temptation of Jesus by the devil in the wilderness is the story of an interior spiritual struggle only and could have nothing to do whatsoever with politics.
The temptation of Jesus in the wilderness in Luke 4 comes on the heels of Jesus’ baptism in Luke 3.
After Jesus is baptized, a voice is heard from heaven saying, “Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased.”
It’s no accident then, that the devil immediately tempts Jesus to second-guess this divine acclamation saying, “If you are the Son of God….”
Notice the conditional if, which is reminiscent of the devil’s temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden’?”
“If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.”
It is immediately after the wilderness temptation that Jesus goes to His hometown synagogue to announce that He is the Messiah, and so it is tempting to read this passage as a time of inner personal transformation that prepares Jesus to begin His ministry.
Wrestling with the devil after fasting for 40 days must be the quintessential “dark night of the soul” that mystics write about and that some of us have experienced.
One approach to Lent takes its cue from that mystical approach.
Lent, this season of penance, can become an attempt to reproduce in our own souls and bodies that “dark night,” so as to endure something of what Jesus endured — the hunger, the thirst, and the temptation to give in — through the self-imposed denial of things that we otherwise need, or, that we wish we didn’t need.
I saw someone put up a meme on Ash Wednesday that said, “Lent is the time of year I discover which addictions I think I can still control.”
The joke is, of course, that we have no control over our addictions.
III.
I have already touched on the fact that we are each at various stages of spiritual maturity.
It should not surprise us then that many Christians have a well-intentioned desire to “grow up” and to gain maturity.
In Luke 11:1, the disciples even ask Jesus for further instruction, for something that will help them mature. “Lord, teach us to pray, as John [the Baptist] taught his disciples,” they ask Him.
John the Baptist seems to have offered his disciples a more rigorous training. In Matthew 9:14, some of John’s disciples come to Jesus and ask Him, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?”
This approach to our faith treats religion like a training regime: “Tell me what to do, tell me how often I need to do it, so I can achieve my spiritual goals.”
Lent, and, by extension, the Christian religion (or what is often called “spirituality” these days) can easily be reduced to a method for achieving a set of spiritual goals.
Those goals may be very laudable. Last week, I read to you these words of Jesus from Luke, “A disciple is not above his teacher, but every one when he is fully taught will be like his teacher.”
Some of us want to be at the top of the class, and we’re willing to study hard and cram for the exams. What could be wrong with wanting to be like our teacher, especially when our teacher is Jesus?
I must tell you that I object to this kind of Christianity.
I think it defines the Christian faith as an interior spiritual struggle only, making it difficult to distinguish the true faith from other religions.
After all, what is the real difference between Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, and Lent, both of which began last week?
If you heard what Cardinal Dolan or King Charles (or the Prime Minister) had to say about it, you’d be forgiven for answering, “Not much.”
Both men, the Christian archbishop and the Christian king, show themselves to be equally comfortable with both, because to them, fasting is only a spiritual discipline that focuses the devotee’s attention inward.
Fasting is a spiritual technique, a tool if you will, that speeds up the process of spiritual maturation.
I suggest to you that the good Cardinal and King are mistaken, and that the Muslims see Ramadan very differently than we see Lent.
When you see large groups of Muslims assembling in Times Square at the start of their holy month or breaking their daily Ramadan fast in St. George’s Hall in Windsor Castle, you are seeing something political, however spiritual you are told it is.
Jesus says, “And when you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by men.”
He continues, “When you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by men.”
I ask you, how many Christians did you see posting pictures of themselves with the hashtag #ashtag to social media this past Ash Wednesday?
Christians are busy navel-gazing and showing off while the Muslims are using their religion to occupy the town square.
They understand that worship is political.
IV.
At the same time, there is something performative about what they are doing, staging public prayers in the heart of New York City, or in the home of a Christian king in an erstwhile Christian kingdom.
But I have to be careful now, because I am running the risk of simply telling you that Christians must do the same thing, if only to defend their right to do so in their own countries.
They don’t, because the message of Deuteronomy tells Christians to avoid such performative displays.
The message of today’s reading is that while liturgy, worship, is necessarily a performance:
“You shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground…” “You shall put it in a basket, and you shall go to the place which the Lord your God will choose…” “You shall go to the priest… and say to him…” “Then the priest shall take the basket from your hand, and set it down before the altar of the Lord your God….”
This is a worship script, a liturgical performance complete with both spoken lines and stage directions, and while worship is a performance, it must never become a show. It cannot be allowed to become performative.
That is because the kind of faith that is pleasing to God, the kind of worship which He accepts, makes no attempt to placate or appease Him.
Instead, the Christian faith I am trying to show you, the one that springs forth from the pages of Scripture, is the one that knows that we do not need to prove ourselves to God.
V.
Now, we’re ready to examine the lesson of Jesus’ encounter with the devil and apply it to our worship and our politics.
First, the temptation in the wilderness was not Jesus’ “dark night of the soul.”
This wasn’t some mystical or transformative experience that He had to undertake, a kind of initiation (like a college fraternity hazing ritual) before He could begin His ministry.
Jesus faced these temptations and saw in them an opportunity to remember, recite, and thereby renew the words of God’s covenant with Israel.
He did not need to prove Himself to earn God’s favor.
He already had God’s favor. Do you remember what the voice from heaven said at His baptism? “Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased.”
Salvation, according to the Bible, is not about having a mystical experience on the mountaintop, although there are plenty of those to be had.
It’s not even about personal transformation, like overcoming addiction, though God can and will deliver us from evil.
Salvation, according to the Bible, is about reconstituting and replanting the church, by sowing the Holy Seed.
You will recall the lesson of the parable of the Sower. When asked what the seed that sower sowed represented, Jesus answered, “Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God.”
Second, for every temptation of the devil, Jesus responded by sowing a word from God, specifically with a word from the Bible, and even more specifically, from one book of the Bible, the book of Deuteronomy.
When tempted to turn stones into bread, Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 8:3, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’”
When tempted to worship the devil, Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 6:13, “It is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.’”
Then, when tempted to commit suicide and throw Himself off the temple’s pinnacle, Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 6:16, “‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God.’”
It’s no accident that Jesus responded all three times from Deuteronomy.
Nothing in Scripture is an accident, and when something is repeated three times it’s best to find out why. This is where things get political.
Deuteronomy tells us “You shall rejoice in all the good which the Lord your God has given to you and to your house, you, and the Levite, and the sojourner who is among you.”
This commandment cannot be satisfied merely by spiritual feelings and discipline.
It is not enough for you to thank God in your private prayers. It is not enough to go to church. It is not enough to master your appetites and tame your lust.
There is a public, and, therefore, a political aspect to this commandment, because it does not just say “rejoice in all the good which the Lord your God has given to you,” it says, “rejoice in all the good which the Lord your God has given to you and to your house, you, and the Levite, and the sojourner who is among you.”
This is a command for the church to rejoice, not just individual Christians. This rejoicing spills out over and beyond the individual believer.
It extends to his house, the Levite, and the sojourner.
In other words, it is not enough to fill our churches with praise, our worship must spill out into the streets, into our homes, onto the town square, up to the state house, and out to the whole world.
Yet this will never become performative, because it is covenantal.
Finally, the Bible is emphatic: there is no private religion, only a public covenant between God and His people.
Government is therefore liturgical, an act of worship.
Like all worship, there is worship that is pleasing to God and worship that is not. There are governments that please God and governments that do not.
By refusing to take an active role in political life, Christians all but ensure that the government will not be pleasing to God.
They leave government to those who care enough to occupy the town square.
To summarize then: Deuteronomy was narrated by Moses as the Chosen People were about to enter the Promised Land. This was their constitution, their law book, their guide to good government.
Jesus invoked this guide three times when He resisted the devil.
He refused the devil’s offer to rule the world on the devil’s terms, but He did not throw off the mantle of government.
Isaiah tells us that “the government will be upon his shoulder.” This means that Jesus has every intention of fulfilling that prophecy through His church.
Jesus gathers the dead branches of the human race and grafts them into the Holy Seed, which is the church, not so the church can vanish from the world, or seek her own private mystical bliss, but because she stands to inherit the kingdom of God.
I suspect the ideas I’ve put forth today will need further development before you’ve really grasped them, and so I hope to return to them.
Meanwhile, next week, Lord willing, I plan to examine with you some threats to the Holy Seed, the forces at work in the world seeking to destroy it and keep the kingdom of God from being established.
Preached on March 9, 2025 at the First Congregational Church, Woodbury, Connecticut.
Reflection Questions:
How have you seen your faith as only personal? Where might God be calling you to make it public?
What “blights” threaten the church today, politically or otherwise?
How can our worship avoid being performative while still shaping our community?
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