Hi everyone,
Welcome to worship for this 1st Sunday in Lent, which lands on February 22, 2026!
The bulletin for this service can be found here. You can use it to follow along with the service, or the word that you need to know will appear on your screen. The sermon can be found both in the bulletin and this page below the video.
If you’d like a fuller worship experience online, you are invited to have a lit candle in your space for the duration of the service, and extinguish it near the end when the altar candles are extinguished. 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 in the service. Further instruction will be given then.
May the leading and guiding of the Spirit be with you this day and always!
O God, lead us with your Spirit, feed us with your Word, and empower us with your grace, through Jesus our Lord. Amen.
I’m not sure if I’ve ever told you this before, but my dad is one of the strongest humans I have ever personally known. I mean, he’s not going to be winning any World’s Strongest Man competitions any time soon, mostly because he’s been dead for almost 9 years, but when he was alive, he would time and again surprise me with just how physically strong he was. I have experience after experience and story after story and example after example to prove this to you, but I don’t have that kind of time so you’ll just have to take my word for it. Let’s just say that I’ve often wondered if my dad had Mongolian blood in him or something, because to me, he seemed like a mythical warrior for how strong he was.
But even after all that, after everything I’ve witnessed and experienced, after being convinced of how truly and insanely strong he is, I had never once in my life, in any seriousness, used the line, “my dad is tougher than your dad.” Not to my friends, not to the kids that I wouldn’t really consider my friends, not even to my worst enemy, but mostly because he had the same dad as me.
Seriously though, even when claiming that “my dad is tougher than your dad” would have been very likely true regardless of who I would say it to (with the possible exception of my own kids of course), I never thought it would work to fend any one off, strike any fear in any hearts, or get me out of any dillies of any pickles whatsoever. Because the fact of the matter is, if anyone ever saw my dad after I told them that they should be afraid of him, they would have probably just busted out laughing. I mean, he wasn’t exactly strong looking. He was like this unassuming, just over 5-foot Asian guy with glasses and a pseudo comb-over, who wore the same polo shirt for like 17 or 18 years straight, and didn’t have any real definite shape to his body. I wasn’t lying about him being super strong though, it’s just that no one would ever believe it by looking at him, so actually using that line for my benefit would almost seem comical.
So I knew I couldn’t rely on my dad to intimidate the other kids. I knew he didn’t have the image of a tough dad who would protect me from the schoolyard bullies. I knew my dad could never be weaponized to up my own street cred, to feed my own ego, to carter to my own… selfish benefit. I was often tempted to, but I never did because I knew it wouldn’t work.
Maybe you know what I mean. Not that your dad was as tough as mine, as he probably wasn’t, but wanting to have that back up when the going gets tough, that protection whenever things got scary, that bail-out whenever we find ourselves in a little hot water.
And I wonder if this is what, at its very core, Jesus was tempted with today. I know, there has been like a bajillion different interpretations and commentaries that break down each of these temptations of Jesus and how we can follow Jesus’ example of leaning on scripture to resist them, and not one of them ever talks about how tough our dads are. Not that I’ve seen, at least. No, often they’d say that these temptations are around power, identity, and even loyalty to mission and call.
But be that as it may, I wonder if there is more to it than that. We know these temptations really well because we get them in some shape or form every 1st Sunday in Lent, but I wonder if peeling back the layers might give us different insights on what we might be facing, where we might need to reflect on, how we might be tempted in our own lives.
I mean, I can only speak for myself, but I’ve never been tempted to turn a rock into bread. But I have prayed for security, wealth, and maybe even the winning lottery numbers. I would think that maybe God would give it to me because, I don’t know, I deserve it?
I never wanted to jump off a building to see if angels will catch me from falling. But I have hoped that God would send guardian angels to get me out of whatever mess that I might have put myself in, which may or may not have happened more than once in the past. I mean, God says that we’re watched over and protected, right? So shouldn’t I be?
And I’ve never once felt the need to sell my soul to the devil to gain ultimate power and authority over the world. But I have tried to weaponize my education, training, and knowledge of scripture to not just prove myself right, but to also prove others wrong and hopefully put them in their place. I have wanted to throw my theological weight around and earn that respect. I’ve attempted to idolize my accomplishments and accolades for my own personal power gain.
And I think that is where the true temptations lie.
Not in the obvious things like gluttony, wrath, and envy, but in more subtle ways that we might feel justified in. Like, we sometimes think that God could be our personal body guard. We sometimes confuse our selfishness with faithful living. We sometimes are tempted to be God in God’s place. So we might name drop a couple of verses here and there and say that we know God’s ways and teaching better than our opponent. We might claim God’s anointing and empowering and say that God hates the same people we hate. We might shape and form and recreate God to look more like us, in hopes that we’d gain more clout, more respect, more power.
And the biggest problem with all that is that we all know someone else who fits this bill to a tee. And we might even be thankful that we’re not like them because we have God on our side, and we can’t be wrong, can we?
Honestly? We can, and we probably are a lot more than we know or recognise in ourselves.
This season of Lent that we’ve just entered into encourages us to look in ourselves and see where we are falling for this, where we are believing the lies that we’re better than we are and deserve more than we have, where we are tempted to be God in God’s place. This season gives us space for that reflection and repentance. And Lent calls us, to loosely quote the prophet Joel that we get on Ash Wednesday, to return to the Lord our God, who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.
And this return to God isn’t so God can give us power for our own gain, but to empower us to stand up for the marginalized, the outcast, and the forgotten. We don’t reflect on where we face and fall for temptations so we can use our good deeds and discipline to shame others, but so we can recognise how big and wide God’s grace and mercy for us and all people is. We don’t repent from sin so God can smite those we want smote for not doing the same, but to humble us to see us how others are just as sinful as we are, but also just as forgiven and just as saved.
See the temptations that we face aren’t around doing bad things, breaking rules and laws, or whether or not we should eat that last piece of cake, but they are much more subtle than that. They are more around our self-importance, the notion that our knowledge and understanding of good and evil supersedes all, and our thinking that we know how God should act instead of reflecting on how God acts and weaponizing God for our own advantage, gain, and power.
So I again invite us all into this season of Lent, where we aren’t shamed by our sin, but forgiven in them. Where we aren’t compared to others, but humbled to reflect on where we are and what we’ve been given. Where we aren’t made to feel bad for the things we’ve done or left undone, but empowered to be God’s people in the world, not as perfect or insanely strong humans but as reflections of grace, mercy, and steadfast love.
And then when this season culminates in Holy Week and the death and glorious resurrection of Jesus, we can be more prepared to see how God is strong not for the benefit of our egos, but for our salvation. How God welcomes us not because we have earned it, but because God is gracious and kind. How God empowers us not to be better than others so we can shame them and uplift ourselves, but to recognise, accept, and be thankful that it is God in God’s place and God chooses to bring us along for the ride anyway.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
