Led by the Spirit

“Led by the Spirit”

First Sunday in Lent, Year C, March 6, 2022

Deuteronomy 26:1-11, Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16, Luke 4:1-13

First Presbyterian Church of Sandpoint, Idaho

Pastor Andy Kennaly

Jesus is full of the Holy Spirit and is led by the Holy Spirit.  God’s action and activity is the driving creative power in this story.  The focus often gets deflected toward the devil’s offers of temptations.  But as Jesus participates in this struggle, which is not only in the desert but ongoing throughout his life and ministry, what he continues to rely on is a deep trust that God is always there, the Spirit is constant as Advocate, and even in death God is a trusted refuge.  This is the shape not only of this story, but the Passion of Christ embodies this as Jesus journeys to the cross.

Make no mistake, although the Holy Spirit is the driver, the struggle can be agonizing and the stakes are as high as life itself, which hangs in the balance on a razor’s edge.  Jesus is fasting, he ate nothing at all.  His entire body is focused on this spiritual birthing in the wilderness.

Do you remember when you were born?  The cramps, the shifting, the pressures, the dark birth canal, the cold air that hit you?  We only remember this subconsciously because it’s a traumatic event.  The entire skull of a newborn has plates that shift and contort so the human head can fit through the birth canal.  There is so much that can go wrong in the process of birth and it’s messy, with water, blood, muscle, and bone all doing things they don’t usually do on any other given day.  Getting born is hard work, yet birth is miraculous, a moment unlike any other.  Why should we assume spiritual transformation or the emergence of higher levels of consciousness should be any different?

Growing in the depths of faith takes effort, and these scriptures show one of the most important patterns involved in this, which is illustrated by the Season of Lent.  Did you notice on Facebook I posted some photos from the church kitchen?  Last Wednesday morning.  For months and months, I’ve had a bundle of palm branches sitting on top of my cabinet in my church office.  They were green and amazing and helped us celebrate living faith on Palms Sunday.  But it didn’t take long for them to get dried out and become brittle and rigid.  The more they got touched, the more mess there was so it was better to just let them be.  Then Ash Wednesday came and I carefully picked them up, took them to the kitchen, and began clipping the leaves off the hard, stalky stems.  They got pruned.

I burnt those leaves into a fine ash and mixed it with olive oil.  The black sludge had a purpose: to mark foreheads with the sign of the cross as we remember we are stardust and to stardust we shall return.  This physical action of marking was a way to participate and usher in a spiritual invitation toward deeper awareness.  Claiming the cosmic Christ helps loosen the stranglehold of our own limited perspectives, helps us die to the false self our ego makes, which favors rigid mental structures we defend through our attitudes, actions, alliances, and schisms.

In burning, those leaves changed.  Their brittle form was not able to contain their new, larger purpose.  As ash, they took on the role of usher, transitioning from a season in the past to a journey right before us.  Like a threshold, people came forward to the liminal space, they bared the skin of their forehead, which was the first part revealed in their physical birth.  The black sludge of ash and oil anointed them by the mark of the cross.  This intentional action invites rebirth of the soul and spirit.

The devil was right.  His invitations to Jesus were accurate.  Jesus could have made stones into bread and had the angels bear him up from the cliffs.  Jesus could have worshiped the devil and gave his full devotion to something that has authority, power, and strength in this world.  The devil is attractive that way, and evil is usually disguised quite well.  Like my friend once said decades ago, “The spiritually proud are the devil’s foot soldiers.”

How do we live in ways that don’t give in to temptations?  How do we discern among things that seem attractive or right, even assumed to be the voice of God in our mind?  In a world filled with tension, anxiety, and stressors at high levels from the personal to the social, from individual to international, how do we invite authentic transformation of our mind, heart, and soul in ways that honor the Most High, the Almighty, “my God, in whom I trust?”  How do we accept Reality as its presented, without the judgment or added drama?

Jesus going to the wilderness was a marked man.  Don’t let the little detail slip by unnoticed.  He’s in the wilderness was a marked man.  Luke writes, “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness.”  Jesus is filled with the Holy Spirit and returned.  He returned to the wilderness.  That’s where we live most of the time, in the unpredictable, the uncontrollable, and the insanely beautiful wilderness.  “From the Jordan” is the anchor point, the only non-wilderness reference.  What happened at the Jordan?  That’s the river where Jesus and all the people were baptized.  That’s where the community came together in the humble act of rebirth.  Going into the waters was a form of dying.  Rising from the waters, new life and the fullness of the Holy Spirit are confirmed.  This is how Jesus journeyed through the wilderness.  This is how Jesus moved from past into future as his ministry begins: as one led by the Holy Spirit.  This is the relational covenant of love in action: trusting God at every turn, even when that road leads to death.

The rubber hits the road in our daily lives, and we are bombarded by multiple, global crises and the fragmentation of society.  Humanity as a species is kind of like a baby in the womb.  We cause and experience lots of pressures, contortions, pain.  The Earth rides the razor’s edge of transformation.  Christians are called as ushers, ministers, and prophets, and like Jesus, the Holy Spirit will use us even amid temptations.  We cannot force this process, only bear with it as it unfolds.  With encouragement and love, our center is in Christ.  This is a wilderness experience and, like Jesus in the desert, learning to let everything go involves spiritual disciplines like prayer and fasting, worship, and inner wisdom.  We are called beyond ourselves to share God’s love.  As we’re led by the Spirit, in Christ, may God be glorified, now, here, always, and forever.  Amen.