1st Sunday of Lent (C) – March 9, 2025

St. Paul – Lyons, KS

Deuteronomy 26:4-10; Psalm 91:1-2, 10-15; Romans 10:8-13; Luke 4:1-13

The Desert Temptations

This Gospel always makes me think of those little inspirational calendars you can get. You know the one’s where it’s a stack of 365 pieces of paper on a pad, and you tear off each day? And each day has a little inspirational quote? Well this one had a bible verse for each day: “For God so loved the world” (John 3:16); “Whatever you did for the least of these you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). But then on one day was this quote for the Gospel today: “If you worship me, all will be yours” (Luke 4:7). Little less inspirational when you know who said it, huh?

Every Lent, though, the first Sunday of Lent places this scene of Jesus’ spending forty days in the desert before our attention. Forty days of fasting, prayer. And then, after this time, the Devil comes and tempts Jesus, he tests Jesus. That word there in the Greek is peirazo. And a peirazo is more than a “temptation.” When we hear “temptation”—well, it has this connotation of doing something bad. But no one has ever told me, “Father, I was tempted to donate $100,000 to the parish today. But don’t you worry, I rejected that temptation!” No, “tempt” always has connotations of, “I was tempted to do this bad thing. I was tempted to steal that cookie.” But a peirazo is more than that, it’s a “test.” In other words, it a set of difficult circumstances that reveals the truth of who you are. Just like a test in school reveals the truth of who’s smart and who’s not, just like a game or competition reveals the truth of who is a better team or a better athlete—a peirazo is a situation that reveals who we are. And God doesn’t allow us to be tempted, tested so that he can find out who we are—He’s not dumb, He knows. A test allows us to recognize who we are. Or, as we’ll see, it reveals what we believe our identity to be.

Ok. So what we see in this scene in the Gospel is that Jesus is faced with three peirazo, three temptations, three tests. And if you pray with them, you notice that they are all “tests” of his identity: “If you are the Son of God… If you are the Son of God.” Well, duh he’s the Son of God! Yes, objectively. And then it’s a temptation to reject his dependence on the Father. And again, he passes that test. But the real temptation, the real “test,” what this reveals is this: Jesus lives and operates, 100% out of his identity as the Beloved Son of the Father? Jesus doesn’t succumb to temptation, he “passes the test,” because he is firmly and securely rooted in his identity as “son.” A peirazo, a test reveals who you are! And Jesus—he is Son.

But for us—well, things don’t go quite so well for us, huh? We face peirazo, these temptations, these tests all the time! And what happens? We fail, we sin—sure! But—but what’s going on at a deeper level? Last week we heard that image of the tree, and how you know a tree by its fruits. But what did my uncle, what did Bishop John teach us with his image? The sins, our failures—those are the “fruits,” the “leaves.” But the real issue is the roots. And this is what’s going on here! Yes, failing a test or giving into temptation means we commit a sin—fine, but that’s just the “leaves,” the “fruit.” But remember: a peirazo reveals who we are, or the beliefs about who we are.  So this is the point: while Jesus overcoming these peirazo reveals that he is rooted in his identity as Son (so of course he doesn’t fall into these temptations), our failure of these peirazo reveals that we are not, we are not truly rooted in our identity as sons and daughters of God.

We (as Scripture reveals) are born into the house of a bad father, an abusive father. We are born into this world as “children of darkness” (Eph 2:3)—that’s what’s revealed in Scripture. And so “yes,” baptism transfers us to the house of a good Father, we receive adoption as sons and daughters of God—praise God! But, but as Scripture also reveals—and just our every day experience—we still struggle living from this identity. It’s like a kind of PTSD: we continue to struggle to fully embrace our identity as sons and daughters of God.

And the question is why? Why (if we’ve been baptized, and confirmed, and receive the Eucharist)—why do we still struggle to live out of this identity? Why do we still struggle with sin? Why aren’t we perfect? And simply put, it’s because we are still in need of a healing at the “roots.” We are still wounded, still hurt. Baptism—baptism is like putting a cast on a broken leg: yeah, it’s “fixed”…but it still needs to heal. These wounds—these wounds are those bad “roots” that give rise to all of our problems. And it’s these wounds that are in need of God’s healing. It’s as simple as that.

The Wounds That Make Up Our Roots

And so the simple question is: where do these wounds come from? And of course, the correct answer is Original Sin: we are born into this condition. But on top of this, we are also surrounded by other people born into this condition. And what happens, then, is that throughout life, by our own fault and by the fault of others, we are continually wounded. Science even shows us that from the womb, experiences wound us and shape us. There is an amazing—amazing but terrifying—book called The Body Keeps the Score. And in it, this scientist just shows how experiences that we may not even remember—or have blocked out—these experiences are stored physically in our body and continue to affect us physiologically, emotionally, and behaviorally.

A simple way to define a “wound”—what I mean by a “wound”—in theological terms we would say that wounds are the result of love being withheld or the experience of un-loving actions. So for example, love is withheld when your parents had a favorite sibling and it wasn’t you, or your parents were controlling or manipulate, or they had no rules and no discipline—love was withheld, and that wounded you. We experience un-loving actions in a lot of ways: death, divorce, violence, emotional or physical abuse, un-loving sexual encounters or abuse, abandonment, fights, bullying. Small things to big things—every one of us, because we’re human—every one of us has been wounded. And these wounds are at the roots of our broken identity. We fail the peirazo, the tests and temptations thrown our way, because we are not firmly rooted in our identity as sons and daughters of God. Our identity itself has been wounded.

And this is how that works, three steps. 1) First, there is some experience, some event in life where love is withheld or we experience an un-loving action from others or ourselves—this experience or event leaves us wounded. This wound, then is like a “crack” in our heart, a place we are now vulnerable (and “vulnerable” comes from the Latin word vulnus which just means “wound”). And so that wound, that place of vulnerability then becomes the place where the Devil, the Enemy is going to attack us. Again, not to possess us, but to do what he does: to twist and distort our identity, to get us to self-protect and reject our rootedness in the Father’s love. So that’s the first thing. 2) Second, from that comes a new belief about our identity. The Enemy deceives us about who we truly are, and convinces us of a new identity. And based on this belief about our identity. (And just like there are 7 Deadly Sins, there are 7 Deadly Wounds, as well as the beliefs that flow from those wounds—I put them there on your sheet.) 3) But third—third and finally—we begin to live and act and operate out of this new identity. We make a sort of “vow” about how we will now live. (It’s kind of like marriage: in marriage, the “event” of a wedding leads to a new “identity” as a married person which leads to living and acting our this “vow” of love and fidelity.)

Back to the Pool

So what does this look like? Well, go back to the experience I shared last week about almost drowning in a pool. The peirazo I fail on the regular, the test that reveals who I truly am—it’s all of this sin around pride: I don’t trust others, I do things myself, I only rely on myself, my ideas are the best, on and on and on. But what the Lord revealed to me in prayer one day—as I was praying, “Lord, what are the roots of this? Where have I been wounded?”—the Lord brought a memory to the surface of my mind. I was five years old, jumped into the deep end of a pool, started drawing. And I was thrashing in the water, fighting for life, I see my older brothers standing there, not doing anything. And eventually I make it, I live. But then I remember telling myself, at five years old, “They don’t care about me. Nobody cared about me.” And clear as day I said, “I’ll just take care of myself.”

Ok, so just dissect that real quick, three things. 1) First, what is the event, the experience? I almost drowned. Ok, but what is the wound? Love was withheld, my brothers didn’t do anything. And it’s not like they were standing there laughing at me, they just didn’t do anything. The wound is a real abandonment, fear. All alone, sacred for my life. 2) Great, so second, what is the identity that came from that wound? The identity, the beliefs about my identity were things like, “No one cares,” and, “If I trust another, I could die.” 3) Ok, and then what is the vow I made? “I’ll just take care of myself.” So just think about that: this very simple event, almost drowning as a five year old—this is the wound where the Enemy deceived me into a false identity, the identity of an abandoned son, a fearful son. And then the subsequent tests to that identity confirmed it more and more. And the tree of pride grew more and more in my life.

Someone shared with me that they did this prayer—asked God to reveal the roots of what they were going through—and the Lord placed the memory of being picked last at recess in grade school. Three things: 1) The event: just being picked last in recess. But the wound? Rejection, powerlessness. 2) And what are the beliefs about your identity that stems from that? “I’m not wanted,” and, “I’m too small and weak.” 3) And what’s the vow, how did that shape your response? “I won’t let others close, so then they can’t reject me.” “I’ll prove my worth by being the best at everything I do, a perfectionism.”

Just think how simple and common those experiences are—and yet how much they affect life. And then think, what about the wounds that must come from bigger things, but common things, like: parents that obviously prefer your sibling to you, withhold love from you, are demanding of you; physical or sexual or emotional abuse; a house where parents fought incessantly and eventually divorced; a home where there was no discipline and you had no guidance in life. And yet, how common these and so, so many others experiences are. As Scripture and the Tradition and the Church and even neuroscience confirm: this is at roots. These wounds are at the root. These wounds are where we desperately need to be healed.

Healing: Being Rooted In Love

So go back to Jesus. Why doesn’t Jesus have any problems with sin? Why, how does he overcome temptation so easily? Well, to put it quite simply, he is “rooted” in his identity as Son, rooted in the love of the Father. When tempted to reject his dependence on God, he can’t! His very identity is “Son,” totally dependent on the Father.

And in that—that’s where we see the solution. (And we’ll talk about this more, dive in to what this looks like.) But the solution is being rooted in love, totally and radically depending on the Father. It is a belonging.

In Lent, though—Lent gives us a special time to discover all of those places in our lives where we find ourselves rooted in not-God, all of the things we rely on instead of God. Whatever that is: food, drink, social media, TV, movies, pornography, news, sports, gambling, smoking—Lent gives us the time to call ourselves out on these things. But then more importantly, Lent invites us to experience a healing at our roots, a healing of our woundedness—because that’s what leads to all of this in the first place! But that healing, that is the salvation Easter brings. Salvation, healing—that is the gift we receive from the risen Lord.