“Command This Stone”
“Command This Stone”
First Sunday in Lent, Year C, March 9, 2025 rm
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, and led by, the Holy Spirit. God’s action and activity is the driving, creative power in this story. The focus is often on 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. Jesus embodies the reality 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 season of Lent emphasizes that the Passion of Christ embodies this archetypal narrative 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. Earthly expressions of life hang in the balance on a razor’s edge. In this story, Jesus is fasting, he ate nothing at all. His entire body is focused on this spiritual birthing in the wilderness.
If we step back for a big picture description of this story, the temptation in the wilderness, we see it as an illustration of what humanity experiences as we are on the cusp of a new epoch, a new era. The temptations represent status quo thinking, the what and how of Mythic and Mental Structures that perpetuate dualistic thinking, the illusion of separation from others and the Earth, and cycles of destruction in the quest for power and control through domination. Jesus introduces us to the Integral Structure of consciousness, a new mind and renewed heart engaged in spiritual transformation, a conversion through humility, relationship, and love into the fullness of human participation in planetary connection. In this, old models and patterns don’t fit with their deficiencies, and they break down. But as they are set aside, or healed to reveal their efficiencies, new archetypes emerge to nourish in new ways.
Do you remember when you were born? More than just the date, but the actual experience? The cramps, the shifting, the pressure, the dark birth canal, the cold air that hit you. It’s a traumatic event. The entire skull of a newborn has plates that are intended to shift and contort so the human head can fit through the narrow birth canal. We only remember our own birth through our subconsciousness. The memory of it has been filed away deep within the recesses of our larger psyche.
There is so much that happens 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. Things can go bad, or things can go well. Either way, getting born is hard work, yet birth is miraculous, a moment unlike any other.
Why should we assume spiritual transformation should be any different? The emergence of more intense forms of consciousness is likely tied to traumatic events, struggle, and the cycle of death and rebirth.
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 one of the traditional practices of the Season of Lent. Simply put, the palm branches from previous years are burned and the ashes are used for Ash Wednesday.
It doesn’t take long for the lovely green palm branches waved with celebration to dry out and become brittle and rigid. The more they get touched, the more mess there is, so it is better to just store them clumped in a pile like dead leaves on branches. But then Ash Wednesday arrives, and they are picked up, taken to the kitchen, clipped so the leaves are off the hard, stalky stems. They get posthumously pruned, then burned with a flash of fire into fine ash. I then mix this with just a dash of 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 is a way to participate and usher in a spiritual invitation toward deeper awareness. Claiming the cosmic Christ and our part in the larger universe as created beings 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 change. Their brittle form is not able to contain their new, larger purpose. As ash, they take on the role of usher, transitioning from a season in the past to a journey right before us. Like a threshold, people come forward to the liminal space, they bare the skin of their forehead, which, we notice, is the first part revealed in their physical birth as the head emerges. The black sludge of ash and oil anoints them by the mark of the cross. This intentional action invites rebirth of the soul and spirit.
The devil is right. The devil’s invitations to Jesus are 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, hidden in plain sight as something of value or attraction, something that appears to get things done. 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 not deceive ourselves through spiritual pride? How do we discern among things that seem attractive or right, even assumed to be the very voice of God revealed in our mind or in our experience? 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 of dualistic thinking?
Jesus goes to the wilderness as a marked man. Don’t let the little detail slip by unnoticed. He’s in the wilderness as 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. But what Jesus “returned” from is more than geography. 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 is a form of dying. To rise from the waters, new life and the fullness of the Holy Spirit are confirmed. This is how Jesus journeys through the wilderness. This is how Jesus moves from past into future as his ministry begins: as a person marked by baptism, one who dies and rises again, one led by spiritual conversion, filled with the Holy Spirit. This is the relational covenant of love in action: to trust God at every turn, even when that road leads to what appears as an end, to death.
The rubber hits the road in our daily lives, and we are bombarded by multiple, global crises and the fragmentation of society. The entire planet is in a phase, the sixth great extinction. Global warming with climate change has made permanent impacts that only increase with denial and controversy. Humanity as a species is kind of like a baby in the womb. We cause and experience lots of pressures, contortions, pain. Mother Earth rides the razor’s edge of transformation. However, there are Christians who refuse to use a term like Mother when referring to Earth. There are Christians who don’t like phrases like The Big Bang to describe another word they take as superstitious: evolution. But even this mix of religious understandings in the larger cosmology and phenomenology and ontology of a species gone viral, even this mix is part of the process.
Did you notice all those big words? Good thing fasting in the desert takes Jesus down to the bare essentials. This is the invitation to religion of our day as Christians are called to be midwives and ushers. By virtue of our baptisms, we are all ministers, and prophets, and like Jesus, the Holy Spirit uses us even amid temptations that seem very real. We cannot force this process, only bear with it as it unfolds. With encouragement and love, our center is in Christ.
Jesus shows us that the temptation to command stones to turn to bread is an invitation to give up the desire to command; to move from one paradigm to another. This shift is a humble action, a step on the path of kenosis, of learning the art of letting go. The Warrior Mentality of so many people in positions of power do not understand this type of journey. But their argument that ‘might makes right’ is hollowed out, gutted by this 2,000-year-old biblical narrative as Jesus faces the old temptations and exudes emerging grace.
This is a wilderness experience that continues as we, like Jesus in the desert, learn to let everything go, to focus less on what is going away and more on what is getting born. This involves spiritual disciplines like prayer and fasting, worship, and inner wisdom. We are called beyond ourselves to discern and share God’s love with a larger creation, one that does not fit our desire for theories and systems and predictability.
Wilderness is wild. It is good to have a guide who knows and shows the way.
As we’re led by the Spirit, in Christ, may we journey the Jesus way, and through humble trust, may God be glorified, now, here, always, everywhere, and forever. Amen.