The First Sunday in Lent Sermon
Jesus had been in the desert for forty days without food. Worn out, famished, haggard, his resources were depleted. But he wasn’t alone. He had an unfortunate companion with him: the devil.
And the devil kept hammering him, taunting him, tempting him – trying to force Jesus’ hand, to grasp control of his own circumstances:
You lousy excuse for the Son of God. Look at you. Why don’t you do something about it?
C’mon. Let me see what’ve got.
Turn that stone to bread. Eat, for God’s sake. You look pathetic.
Out here, all alone. No friends. Abandoned by God. Feeling sorry for yourself, aren’t you? It doesn’t need to be that way. I’ll give you control of the entire world.
Son of God? Prove it. Jump off this temple and let your daddy send his angels to swoop you up. C’mon. Let me see it.
After forty days of this, Jesus is weak and tired and depleted.
And, just like you and I would be, it puts him in a place of utter vulnerability. And in each of the temptations, Satan is luring him into taking control and manipulating the circumstances to his own advantage.
Turn that stone to bread.
Take control of the kingdoms of the world.
Let God miraculously save you at the temple.
Just think for a minute, what power this would give him:
Anyone who can turn stones to bread – who can feed the masses – has just seized total control of the economy.
And if anyone been given all the glory and authority of the kingdoms of the world, they now control the government – its laws, its military … its everything.
And anyone who flings himself off the pinnacle of the temple to be rescued by angels, well, his religious authority is now his for the taking.
Jesus’ temptations were all temptations of power: the economy, the government, religion.
And make no mistake, the temptation was real. As much as Christ is “fully God,” so is he “fully human.” He could well have given in. And at his weakest point, it was this temptation for power that was his greatest vulnerability.
But he overcame it all. And so his ministry was launched – not just by “passing the test,” by resisting temptation – but by living fully into its reversal. He chose God. He chose obedience to God and the way of God. Which meant: he chose to reject worldly power, in all its forms, completely – both during those forty days in the wilderness and throughout his ministry to come: day after day, until that day, when he gave his life away at the cross.
In every way, he lived and died, as God’s true messiah, his suffering servant – turning the world upside down, and all its powers with it: The first were last and the last were first. The prostitute was shown mercy and the religious authorities threatened with hell. The hungry were fed and the outcast brought close. And, at the end, when tempted again to save his own life, he submits instead to God’s costly way: “Not my will, but yours be done.” He gave himself away to suffering and death – his life now a ransom for many. And it is this faith, this costly, self-sacrificing faith, that is the face of God’s true power…the power of mercy and compassion and forgiveness. This is the ultimate power – the power that triumphs, even over sin and death.
Jesus survived the temptation…and gave himself away.
Unfortunately, the same cannot often be said of his followers. Now to be clear: every generation has birthed its saints. In every generation, the true light of Christ has shone in the darkness wherever the way of Christ has flourished – most often in the margins, apart from power or prominence. But that has been the exception. From the 4th century onward, when the Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity as the faith of the empire, the corporate witness of the church has more often resembled the power of the empire, to whom it prostitutes itself – again and again.
The temptation has been too great. And the faith too small.
Too often has the lure of power been dangled before us, and we’ve snapped at the bait – convinced we could keep the faith, even in that vulnerable, tempting place. But it’s too late. Too late, frankly, because it was no faith at all that was lured by that bait. For a faith that wants power – that wants control to manipulate others towards “your way” of God – is already a false faith. A Christianity that does not resemble (or honestly seek to resemble) Christ, cannot rightly be called Christianity.
This isn’t to say that professing Christians cannot, in faith, be in positions of authority, and to use that position to help create a world that in some way resembles the Kingdom of God. In 1935, amidst the Great Depression, when President Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law, it was – in his words – to “give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.” It was a compassionate act, inspired (in fact) by the pension plan established two decades earlier by his own denomination – the Episcopal Church.
This isn’t to say FDR was a “perfect Christian.” He wasn’t. He had affairs. He signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the Japanese internment camps. And God knows what else. I think it quite impossible for anyone in authority to embody a faith without compromise – be they the president of the United States or the rector of a parish. The power itself – mingled with the institution’s structure and objectives, mingled with the maturity of the leader’s faith – will always result in a compromised faith. It’s inevitable. But – in its way – it’s no different than any of us, bumbling along this audacious quest to “be like Jesus…living no longer for ourselves alone, but joining God’s restoring work, that all people and creation might flourish.”
This is our quest, which we fail quite miserably. But its intent is quite different in spirit from a movement that’s been growing for the past few decades within some segments of the American church called the “7 Mountain Mandate” – a movement which has now gained significant traction. In a nutshell, it’s a strategy for evangelizing the modern world and enlarging God’s kingdom by explicitly gaining control of “the seven mountains” – the seven major spheres of influence in society: Education, Religion, Family, Business, Government and the Military, Arts and Entertainment, and the Media.
The 7 Mountain Mandate is conjoined with a religious movement called the New Apostolic Reformation, a charismatic expression of faith which – amongst other things – seeks and claims extraordinary power over the spiritual realm. The movement’s central ideas are: “the belief that God speaks through modern-day apostles and prophets.” (Their own, of course.) “That demonic forces can control not only individuals, but entire territories and institutions. That the Church … is an active ‘army of God’ … with a holy mission to claim the Earth for the Kingdom of God,”[1] dismantling whatever institutions stand in its way. And, as you well know through the long history of religious fanaticism, once you’ve claimed God on your side – with his angels behind and before you – there’s no limit to the fervor and violence you can now justify.
Lance Wallnau, the preacher who coined the term, “7 Mountain Mandate,” said on his podcast shortly after the election, “Buckle up, buttercup! Because you’re going to be watching a whole new redefinition of what the reformation looks like as Christians engage every sector of society. Christ is not quarantined any longer. We’re going into all the world.”[2]
Let me be clear: I believe proponents of this 7 Mountain Mandate and the New Apostolic Reformation (and those who unwittingly follow its tenants) can be sincere Christians. However, I believe the mandate itself and this so-called reformation to be sincerely antithetical to the spirit of Christianity. It is to seek worldly and spiritual power for the sake of control – forcing one’s ways upon others who, in no way, desire that which is being enforced. It is, in a word, to succumb to the devil’s temptation in the wilderness:
Turn the stone to bread.
I will give you the glory and authority of the kingdoms of the world.
God will command his angles to protect you.
This was a temptation to Christ because it was antithetical to the gospel he came to proclaim. And it is, all the more so, a temptation to us who claim his name.
For 2,000 years, we Christians keep stumbling upon the same stones, strewn upon the path Jesus chose not to follow. He sought no control of the Roman Empire or of the Temple itself. Rejected by the temple leaders, mocked by the Roman soldiers, he died alone outside the walls of the Antonia Fortress and the temple mount – those bastions of worldly and religious power. And yet … it was he who changed the world.
And it is he that we follow.
It is this Jesus whose way are just and true, whose upside-down kingdom is already ours. For we have been baptized with Christ, and we are free. We are free now to be risen with him from the way of sin and death, risen with him in the triumph of compassion, forgiveness, and love. We are free to step aside from all the wrangling for power and the enmity it breeds. We are free, to give ourselves away in mercy: loving the least, feeding the hungry, praying for the wellbeing of our enemies, seeking the good, in fact, of everyone.
This is the way of the God we worship. And this is the life that will sustain us … and (in the end) will save the world.
My prayer for us these forty days, as we return each week through the season of Lent, is that our worship here may be for us as an oasis in the wilderness – that we may be as that tree in the niche, sinking our roots deep into the banks of that gurgling stream, our Christ, the Living Water.
And it is no accident that this water we see and hear, is held in one of the bowls we give to each new member of the parish. It is a symbol of the foot washing, a sign that – in belonging to this parish – we are committing ourselves to becoming servants to one another, with tenderness compassion, and humility; we are committing ourselves to sharing our gifts with a spirit of love and forgiveness; we are committing ourselves to serving the community around us with Christ’s ministry of reconciliation and mercy.
God’s kingdom is ours today. Even in the wilderness. And we are free indeed.
[1] Stephanie McCrummen, “The Army of God Comes Out of the Shadows,” The Atlantic, Feb. 2025
[2] Ibid.