1st Sunday in Lent, 3-5-2025

Today is Ash Wednesday. Since the Thomas Fire of 2017 in our bioregion, we have used ashes from our beloved Grandmother Oak to symbolize the invitation to personal and political repentance. Some friends in Pasadena are doing the same in the aftermath of the Eaton Fire two months ago. May our Lenten journey help us reflect deeply and gather strength for costly discipleship in the years ahead.

The gospel for the first Sunday in Lent is Luke 4:1-13. The church traditionally inaugurates this season by reflecting on the wilderness temptations of Jesus. In preparation for his mission, Jesus follows a mysterious yet compelling calling to desert solitude. He fasts, lives in the wild, and wrestles with spirits.

restore the lost or stolen or diseased souls…out of love for their community.” This is both a very real exterior adventure beyond the margins of society and an interior passage of cleansing. Yet the journey to/in the “spirit world” is also a sojourn through mythic time, in order to encounter the story and destiny of one’s self and one’s people.
That Jesus’ journey lasted “forty days” is clearly intended to invoke Israel’s forty-year Exodus wanderings in the wilderness after Egypt. But what exactly is the connection? Jesus is somehow interiorizing the historic experience of his people, mystically re-tracing the footsteps of his ancestors in order to discover where they went wrong. Jesus believes that his people have lost their bearings, and that course-correction can only come through a kind of “re-visioning” of the fateful choices that led liberated Israel back into captivity. This vision quest seeks a radical diagnosis that moves beyond symptoms to the root-causes of the historical crisis of Israel.
    That ought to resonate powerfully in our moment, as the experiment of American democracy continues to lose its way under Trump’s autocratic plutocracy.
    To begin this formidable task, Jesus must return to his people’s “myth of origins”: the Exodus wilderness. Israel’s distinctive identity commenced when they were sprung by Yahweh from Pharaoh’s imperial straight jacket: “I will bring My people out of Egypt” (Ex 3:10). Similarly, in the gospel story Jesus’ distinctive identity has just been confirmed at his wilderness baptism by John: “You are My child, the Beloved” (Lk 3:22/Mt 3:17). Jesus is then driven by the Spirit deeper “into the wilderness” where he, like his ancestors, must struggle to discover what this vocation means.

   The three temptations in this tale represent a fundamental test of this primal identity. “If you are the child of God…” taunts the Devil in refrain (Lk 4:3,9). This is the question Jesus—and the Church that is invited to follow in his footsteps in Lent—must answer: Are we as a people still defined by the Exodus journey, or have we abandoned it? Literally hundreds of times in the Hebrew Bible the community is exhorted to remember their liberation from slavery; indeed, their God is known as the One “who brought you up out of Egypt” (some 25 times in Deuteronomy alone). This memory is meant to function as a warning to the people not to practice the former lifeways of imperial captivity (Lev 18:2-3), or what Walter Wink calls the “Domination System.” Israel must “never return that way again” (Dt 17:16).

The wilderness is the indeed the best place to examine the many ways we have internalized the pathologies of empire. The undomesticated space of nature reveals how domesticated we have become. In this wilderness mirror we can see more clearly how Satan has lured us into the other narratives that constantly compete with the biblical one for our allegiance. And the myths of Pharaoh and Caesar, of the National Security Council and the television news, of Wall Street and Hollywood, are seductive indeed. They promise prosperity, power, and prestige — but deliver only captivity. Jesus knows he can resist these imperial delusions only by staying grounded in the old Story. Hence his counter-refrain: “It is written…” (Lk 4:4,8,12).

ancestors did (Lk 4:3/Mt 4:3). The realities of the Exodus wilderness, outside of the “imperial incubator,” are harsh for domesticated people. Anxiety about bread was also Israel’s first temptation:
The whole Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron…”Would that we had died at the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, as we sat by our fleshpots and ate our fill of bread! But you have led us into this desert to die of famine!” (Ex 16:2-3)
Having internalized imperial appetites and desires, the people cannot imagine life apart from their dependence upon the very system that enslaved them. This is even truer for us today. As Wendell Berry puts it: “The great obstacle is simply this: the conviction that we cannot change because we are dependent upon what is wrong. But that is the addict’s excuse, and we know that it will not do.”
   HARP Section 3B (pp 59-62) explores this primal Temptation as part of Luke’s “prelude” to his Sabbath Economics narrative. (If you don’t yet have the book yet, find an earlier summary piece here).      

Note: HARP is off backorder at Bookshop.org, as stock is finally flowing again. We encourage you to order your copies through this independent bookstore consolidator, using the discount code SOJO20 you can get the book for under $40!