What You Want
The Spirit asks you, “What kind of a person do you want to be?” and fills you and gives you power to be Christ, if that’s what you want, for the blessing of the world.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The First Sunday in Lent, year C
Text: Luke 4:1-13 (plus v. 14)
Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
What kind of a person do you want to be?
A friend of mine and his husband have a really nice, loving, fifth grader. At his recent teacher conference, though, his teacher reported that when he gets into competitive situations he can be a little aggressive with his peers. But she said, then she asks him, “Is this the kind of person you want to be?” And he’s able to step back from that behavior.
That’s an amazing teacher. It’s a brilliant and beautiful way to guide a young person on the challenging path of maturity.
So it’s kind of surprising the devil is the one who asks this brilliant question of Jesus today.
“What kind of person do you want to be?” is the heart of Jesus’ testing.
With hair dripping wet from his baptism in the Jordan, Jesus goes into the wilderness for forty days, to learn what it will mean for him to be God’s Anointed, God’s Messiah.
But the devil focuses that learning. If you are the Son of God, the devil says, what kind of Messiah do you want to be? Will Jesus use his divine power to help himself when he’s in need, like making bread to feed his famished body? Will he use his divine power to dominate and control the world? Will he test the Father and this mission to see if he really is loved and protected?
It turns out the devil is doing Jesus a huge favor. Jesus will face these same questions on that terrible Thursday night to come, in the garden on the Mount of Olives. This testing in the wilderness not only sets Jesus up for his earthly ministry. It prepares him for the torture and execution he will face, and the testing question of whether he will use his power to stop it.
But the devil is also doing you and me a huge favor.
What kind of person do you want to be? the evangelists ask you.
Jesus isn’t the only child of God, or the only anointed one of God asked that question. Matthew and Luke relate this story because it’s your testing, too. And mine.
What will you do with your blessings and wealth? Use them to remove your own pain and suffering, turn those stones into your bread? Will your priority be making sure you’re comfortable and cared for?
What will you do with whatever privilege and power you have? Maybe you’re not literally kneeling on someone’s neck until they die, but where is your knee and is anyone under it? That question haunts me. Maybe you’re not an autocratic despot brutally attacking a peaceful neighbor, but how do you manipulate your world? Is your comfort and your opinion and your security a higher goal than that of your neighbors?
And what will you do with God’s promise that you are beloved? Will you try to force the Triune God to prove that by giving you all you want, answering all your prayers as you demand?
This story says your sufferings and struggles aren’t the test, any more than Jesus’ were.
The test as God’s child, anointed in baptismal water, is what you do with your struggles, your suffering. And what you do with whatever wealth, power, privilege, or ability to care for yourself you have.
This story says one question is vital for me and for you: What kind of person do you want to be?
Do you want to be a faithful servant of God, living as Christ in the world? Do you want to serve as you were baptized to serve, as God’s Anointed?
If you do, Jesus’ path is the faithful path. A path that doesn’t turn stones into bread for yourself, but uses your gifts and blessings to feed and nurture and care for others. A path that doesn’t seek to dominate or manipulate so you get what you want, but sets aside power, becomes vulnerable for the sake of others. A path that doesn’t need constant proof of God’s blessing and care, but trusts God even when it’s not easy to see or sense.
But I haven’t told you the wonder you need to hear.
Listen to what Luke says once more: “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness,” Luke begins today. And then, at the end: “Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country.”
Jesus’ whole testing, answering what kind of a person he wanted to be, the fasting, the prayer, the discernment, all happens within one unbreakable reality: he is filled with the power of the Holy Spirit from beginning to end, Spirit-led throughout.
And if you say, “well, that’s Jesus, the Son of God, one with the Father and the Spirit in the Trinity, so of course the Spirit filled him and led him throughout,” you’re missing Luke’s point, and his joy.
In fact, Luke wrote an entirely separate book from this Gospel to tell you and all who are baptized into Christ this truth. In Acts, Luke repeatedly says that whatever Jesus was able to do filled with the Spirit, the followers of Jesus can do filled with the Spirit. That’s your promise. It cannot be taken from you.
You are God’s child, without question. You are God’s anointed one, without question.
If you want to be like Jesus, walk as Christ, be a part of God’s healing and love in the world, even if it’s hard, even if that means you’re vulnerable, or hurt by others, or it costs you in difficult ways, then good news, Luke says.
Because you are also filled with the Holy Spirit, without question. The Spirit leads you in whatever wilderness you serve, without question. And you will endure and thrive in every test with the power of the Spirit helping you mature and grow as Christ in your world, to be God’s blessing to whomever you meet. Without question.
Just know that the Spirit will also be the One periodically asking in your heart and mind, “Is this the kind of person you want to be?” Listen when you hear that, be ready to answer. It will change your life.
In the name of Jesus. Amen
Worship, Sunday afternoon, March 6, 2022
Lent Procession liturgy, 4:00 p.m.
In song and prayer we gather at the doorway of Lent to be strengthened for the journey.
Download worship folder for Lent Procession, March 6, 2022, 4:00 p.m.
Leading: Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Vicar Andrea Bonneville DeNaples
Readings: Cynthia Prosek, Eric Manuel, David Hellerich, Al Bostelmann, Jim Bargmann
Choir: Mount Olive Cantorei
Organist: Cantor David Cherwien
Worship, March 6, 2022
The First Sunday in Lent, year C
Our Lenten journey begins in our baptismal identity and winds through the wilderness of this life, and the Holy Spirit is with us all the way.
Download worship folder for Sunday, March 6, 2022.
Presiding and Preaching: Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Readings and prayers: Judy Graves, lector; Kat Campbell Johnson, assisting minister
Organist: Cantor David Cherwien
Download the readings for next Sunday for this Tuesday’s noon Bible study.
“…You Shall Return”
It’s the Triune God who is the breath and heartbeat that gives life to our dusty bodies so that we may live, until we return.
Vicar Andrea Bonneville
Ash Wednesday, year C
Texts: Joel 2: 1-2, 12-17, Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-21
Beloved in Christ, grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
Today we remember our mortality, the very reality that we live in bodies that aren’t perfect, bodies that will hurt and be hurt, bodies that will one day die and return to the earth. We remember that our bodies were created with the love of the Triune God out of the dust of the earth and filled with the Spirit, the same Spirit that flows through our shared life with all of creation.
We don’t necessarily need to be gathered here today to be reminded about the realities of death and sin and suffering. The past two years have been a constant confrontation of disease, injustice, grief, loneliness, and death. Our hearts are fatigued and heavy from daily reminders of these realities.
We have had to be on high alert, changing the actions of our day to day lives to make sure that we and our neighbors stay safe. We’ve read books, consumed media, and learned how we can adapt and change our actions and attitudes to better love our neighbors and creation.
We’ve been doing our part step by step and living in this way exposed the treasures of our hearts and the gift of our shared humanity. It opened our eyes to see the world in a different way. It opened our hands to want to act and serve and our minds to learn. We’ve been forced to act in the present and long for a hope filled future for all of God’s creation.
Living with the realities of sin and mortality taught us a lot about suffering and death, but even more so it taught us about our humanity—what in life gives our dusty bodies the breath, passion, love, and joy we needed to sustain us and give us hope.
In Lent, we journey with Jesus as he goes to the cross and the grave. And as we do this, we encounter his humanity, his dusty body that held the same Spirit that gives us life. The Triune God dwelled in our world radiating love, peace, forgiveness, and justice so that even in the cloudiness of our world our lives can reflect light and love.
Jesus reminds us that our bodies aren’t the empty vessels of sin and shame as the world tries to make us believe. Our bodies are treasure chests of grace and love, filled with the Spirit who dwells in each of us as we bear the image of God for all to see.
But what do we do on the days when we are feeling extra dusty, on days when the shadows of the world prevent us from seeing the Triune God active in our bodies and our world?
What happens when we sin against our neighbors and creation or when our bodies and spirits become ill and burdened?
What do we do when our hearts are saddened and grieved when the bodies we love experience pain or return to dust?
Where do we go when we can’t escape the pain, violence, injustice, and destruction in our world?
“Yet even now,” says the LORD, “return to me with all your heart.”
“Restore to me the joy,” sings the Psalmist.
“Be reconciled to God,” says Paul on behalf of Christ.
“Return,” says the prophet Joel, because “God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.”
The promise of this return, returning to God and the fullness of who God has created us to be, is why we need to be gathered here today, why we need to be in community praying, singing, and feasting together.
So that we, together, can come before God in worship and praise with fasting, and weeping, and mourning. We can join our hearts together in prayer and voices together in song to lament the brokenness of our world and hope for God’s mercy and justice to rise. We come to know the love and peace that surpasses our understanding and cling to God who is love and peace.
Returning again and again to God with our full humanity asking God to transform our lives so that we can experience comfort, healing, and love. And so we can reflect God’s love, justice, and mercy into our world.
As ashes are marked on your forehead today, remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. And also remember that you are love and to love you shall return. That you are hope and to hope you shall return. That you are grace and to grace you shall return. That you are God’s beloved and to God you shall return.
In the returning to God, in remembering of our humanity among others and alongside all of creation, the love and grace of God dwells in our hearts, it flows through in our veins, it returns us to who we are and whose we are, called to follow Jesus in the midst of the pain and suffering, death and destruction so all know the power of the Triune God who gives life and hope to our lives and our world.
It’s the Triune God who is the breath and heartbeat that gives life to these dusty bodies so that we may live, until we return.
Amen.
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