Hi everyone,
Welcome to worship for this 1st Sunday in Lent, landing on March 9, 2025!
The bulletin for this service can be found here. You can use it to follow along with the service and sermon, or you can use the words that will appear on your screen. The sermon can also be found on this page below the worship video.
If you’d like to enhance your worship experience online, you are invited to have a candle in your space, lit at the beginning of the service and extinguished near the end at the same time the altar candles are extinguished after the sending hymn. You are also welcome to participate in communion if you are comfortable, by having something small to eat and drink prepared for the appropriate time of the service. Further instruction will be given then.
May your identity as a beloved child of God be apparent to you, this day and always!
May your Word, O God, be near to us this day. May it rest on our lips, reside in our hearts, and fill our whole lives with your gracious Spirit, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Today, believe it or not, our second son turns 13 years old. Wow right? 13. The first thing I thought of when I realised that his birthday was coming up today was, “haha, enjoy your 23 hour long birthday, sucker”. And then my second thought was, “wow right? 13.”
I don’t know if you all remember turning 13, when you bridged that gap between adolescence and your teen years, when you fully realised how much things are changing and they aren’t going back, when your brain develops a bit more and you start questioning things and wonder where it is that you belong. I sure do. And it wasn’t easy.
Not that it wasn’t easy to remember way back when, I mean I’m not that old yet. But I very easily can recall how that time for me wasn’t easy. With all the growing up I was doing and changes happening to my physical and mental self, life was just difficult. Like my clothes fit differently, my voice was unrecognisable over the phone, and I had to be more aware of my personal hygiene and grooming. I remembering being really concerned that my group of friends wouldn’t be my group of friends anymore since we were splitting up and going to different schools and classes. I was worried that the girl I liked wouldn’t like me anymore because I had to wear glasses and my unusually large growth spurt left me really awkward. I was worried about what everyone would think of me because my complexion wasn’t the smooth baby’s bottom that it always had been for those first 12 years of life.
And to top it off, as the youngest of 4, I always had to live up to certain expectations with my parents. Much of them were unspoken, except for the ones that were very spoken. Like I remember hearing a lot, “why can’t you? Your sister can” or “you didn’t? Your brother did” and stuff like that. It’s almost like I was my mom and dad’s last chance to not end up as a huge disappointment like those other 3 nerds.
And if it wasn’t the expectations from my parents, it was those from our extended family and community. While my siblings and I don’t really look alike, thank goodness, we still share the somewhat uncommon last name. So there were many times that I’ve been ID’ed as my sibling’s little brother, even if I wanted to just stay anonymous. And so of course I would be compared to them and their accomplishments (which were very few, but still).
So yeah, that period of life was difficult for me. This beginning of the transition into adulthood was stressful. This growing need to carve out a name for myself out from under the shadow of my over-achieving family was consuming.
The truth is though, I just wanted to know who I am. I was growing into a personality and persona. I needed to have an identity and a place to belong.
This isn’t just at age 13, mind you, but that is roughly when all these thoughts begin for many people. It is just at 13 when that natural transition seems to start. And to be honest, I don’t know if these thoughts ever really end. We are constantly, to some degree at least, wanting to know ourselves, figuring out our identities, and searching for a place to belong.
And this brings me to today, this beginning of season of Lent, which is a transition in itself. While all the changing seasons is a transition per se, Lent in particular moves us from being lost to being found, from sin to forgiveness, from death into life.
And this season starts always, regardless of what Lectionary year, with this temptation story of Jesus. Or at least, that is what it has always traditionally been called. Now that our official translation, the New Revised Standard Version, has an updated edition aptly named the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, it doesn’t say that Jesus is tempted in the wilderness… but he is tested.
Uh ok, we might think. That’s basically the same thing, theologically speaking. While you wouldn’t exactly be wrong, but there is a nuance between tempt and test that gives a new glimpse to this story, at least it does for me.
See, when we say Jesus is tempted, we might think of a little red devil on his left shoulder with paws rubbing together and eyebrows going up and down real fast, prodding Jesus to do something that is so obviously and blatantly wrong that anyone would know what the right choice would be. And so when we talk about us being tempted, we might have a similar picture. Like, we know we are tempted to do certain things, but we also think that we wouldn’t fall for them very much because again, they’re the obvious ones to avoid.
But when the language is changed or update to test, it’s a little different. Like when we take tests in school our knowledge is being proven. When we take our driving road test, our skills are being examined. When we take a blood test, our health and thus treatment is being determined.
See tempt is more of a “what if” situation, while test is more like “because of”. Tempt is deciding on an outcome while test is determining what is already there. Tempt is more choosing what you can do while test is more proving who you already are.
The adversary in today’s gospel story is testing Jesus, seeing if he believes himself that he is who they say he is. Because you’re the promised Messiah, change this rock into bread. Because you are to save the world anyway, you might as well save it in the most efficient way possible. Because you are the glorious Son of God, prove it by exerting your power over both the physical and spiritual realms.
Essentially, Jesus is being tested on the claim that he just heard in his baptism, that he is God’s Son, the beloved, with whom God is well pleased. Talk about living in the shadow of your family.
But with each test, Jesus finds his identity in scripture. Not by cherry picking and using random verses out of context to justify his actions, like how some politicians and entire political parties like to do these days, but by seeing how his place is solidified in God’s will, in God’s family, in God’s name. He reminds the adversary, us, and maybe even himself that even though these kinds of self-doubting thoughts and wonderings might creep up in our heads, that God continues to love us, God still fills us with God’s Spirit, and God will never leave us alone or abandoned without a name or identity.
Essentially, we will always be identified as God’s people, brought into community and worthy of God’s love and salvation.
We probably won’t ever have to face the same situation that Jesus did, as much as we might want to change rocks into bread considering where grocery prices are at now. But we are likely tested like this, where we might question how we fit in to God’s great plan for the world. We might wonder about our identity in God’s family. We might even doubt God’s calling for us to live in God’s community and righteousness.
But in those temptations, in those tests, in those times of trial, we mustn’t forget that it isn’t our future actions that determine who we are. It isn’t our good or bad decisions that decide how we belong. It isn’t even how well we might be able to quote bible verses or not that declares our identity.
Rather, it is solely by God’s gracious design of life, community, and relationship that remind us that through it all, through the thick and thin, through the ups and downs, through the transitions and tests, that we are and always will be God’s beloved people, welcomed into God’s eternal kingdom, and saved from our sin to live with each other and all the saints as the one body of Christ.
Truth is, we might always have questions. We might always have doubts. We might always wonder what is actually true or not as we transition from one stage of life to another. But we mustn’t forget that God will always remain God: unchanging, eternally forgiving, and forever loving each and every one of us and giving us divine value and worth.
This is God’s promise to us, that we will not be left alone but will always be invited and welcomed into God’s kingdom and find identity and belonging in God’s family. This is who we are created to be and this truth will survive any test.
So in this season of Lent, as we examine and reflect on ourselves and our identity, may we find confidence in our faith that God is, was, and always will be our living truth. Thanks be to God. Amen.