Matthew tells us that immediately after Jesus’ baptism, immediately after the heavens open and the voice of God says, “This is my Son, the Beloved”, the Spirit leads him into the wilderness.

Not away from God.

Not into punishment.

Not because he has failed.

The Spirit leads him there.

And that matters.

Every one of us knows what it is to live with uncertainty, uncertainty about livelihoods, about housing, about health, about what kind of world we are handing to our children.

And we know, too, the inward wilderness: grief, loneliness, fear, fatigue, the private questions we do not always name.

So, it matters that Jesus is led there by the Spirit.

Wilderness is not always a sign that something has gone wrong.

Sometimes it is where truth gets clarified.

Sometimes it is where identity gets tested.

Sometimes it is where we learn again whose we are.

And that, I think, is the heart of this Gospel.

This story is so familiar that it is easy to flatten it into a morality tale: when tempted, quote Bible verses and try harder.

But Matthew is doing something much deeper than giving us tips for resisting temptation.

This is not a story about Jesus proving that he is spiritually tougher than the devil.

It is a story about the shape of his vocation.

It is a story about what kind of Messiah he will be.

It is a story about what it means to be God’s beloved in a world full of shortcuts.

The tempter begins, twice, with the same phrase: “If you are the Son of God…”

But Jesus has just heard that he is the Son of God.

So, the temptation is not, “Are you really beloved?”

The temptation is, “What kind of belovedness is this? And how will you live it?”

Will he use power to secure himself?

Will he use God for spectacle?

Will he take the fast road to influence by bowing to the powers that rule the world as it is?

In other words: Will he live as God’s beloved for the sake of God’s reign, or will he live as if belovedness is a private asset to be exploited?

That is Jesus’ temptation.

And it is ours, too.

Notice what the tempter offers him.

None of it is ridiculous.

In fact, all of it is plausible.

All of it is useful.

All of it is, in some sense, efficient.

Turn stones into bread.

You’re hungry.

And people are hungry.

Why not begin there?

Throw yourself down from the temple.

Give people a dazzling sign.

Certainty sells.

Take the kingdoms of the world.

Imagine all the good you could do if only you had power.

These are not cartoon temptations.

They are the temptations of every leader, every institution, every church, every one of us: the temptation to confuse urgency with faithfulness, visibility with truth, domination with effectiveness.

And Jesus says no, not because bread is bad, or public witness is bad, or authority is bad.

Matthew’s Gospel will go on to show Jesus feeding crowds, healing in public, and announcing the reign of God with unmistakable authority.

The issue is not whether these things matter.

The issue is whose purposes they serve, and by what spirit they are done.

Jesus refuses to turn stones to bread for himself in the wilderness, but later he feeds the hungry out of compassion.

Jesus refuses to leap from the temple to force a spectacle, but later he heals openly so that people may be restored.

Jesus refuses the devil’s offer of the kingdoms, but after resurrection he says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”

Same categories, bread, power, public action.

Different source.

Different allegiance.

Different end.

That is why this Gospel is so important at the start of Lent.

Lent is not mainly about proving that we can give up chocolate or wine or social media for forty days, though those practices can be helpful.

Lent is about clarifying allegiance.

It is about telling the truth about the voices that try to define us.

It is about learning to recognize the difference between God’s way and the world’s shortcuts, even when the shortcuts are dressed up as good ideas.

And if we are honest, that is not easy.

Because the temptations in this text are alive and well among us.

“Turn stones to bread” is the temptation to make security our god.

And let me be clear: there is nothing wrong with bread.

People need food.

People need housing.

People need health care.

People need enough.

The church should care passionately about all of that, and Jesus certainly does.

But the temptation comes when we begin to believe that our lives are secured only by what we can accumulate, manage, or control.

When anxiety begins to run the show.

When scarcity becomes not just a condition but an identity.

When we imagine that if we can just get enough money, enough insulation, enough backup plans, enough reputation, enough stored-up provision, then we will finally be safe.

Jesus says, in effect: your life is more than the sum of your strategies.

You are sustained by God, not abandoned to your own devices.

“Throw yourself down” is the temptation to demand proof.

To make God perform on cue.

To confuse trust with a kind of spiritual dare.

This temptation is everywhere, too.

It can sound religious, “If God is real, then let God fix this now.”

But it can also sound like our secular habits of mind: “If it can’t be measured, guaranteed, optimized, or made instantly visible, then it cannot be trusted.”

And yet most of what matters most in life cannot be lived that way.

Love cannot be forced into a lab result.

Fidelity is not spectacle.

Hope is not a stunt.

A life of prayer, a life of justice, a life of mercy, these are not built on dramatic demonstrations.

They are built on daily trust.

On long obedience. On showing up.

And then there is the third temptation, the most naked of all: power over the kingdoms of the world.

For Matthew, this is not abstract.

Empire is in view.

Domination is in view.

The arrangement of society in which the many are used for the comfort of the few is in view.

The temptation is to bow to the logic of the world as it is, coercion, hierarchy, exploitation, scapegoating, and then tell yourself you are doing it for a good cause.

This is a real temptation for nations.

It is a real temptation for institutions.

It is a real temptation for churches.

It is a real temptation for people who care deeply about justice: to think that if our ends are righteous enough, then any means will do.

But Jesus says no.

He will not build God’s reign with the devil’s tools.

And that is a word we need.

Because Lent invites us not only to examine our private habits, but to examine our public loyalties.

What do we normalize because “that’s just how the world works”?

What do we excuse because it benefits us?

Where do we settle for respectability instead of holiness, niceness instead of courage, comfort instead of solidarity?

Those are Lenten questions.

And here is the grace in this text: Jesus enters this struggle before us and for us.

He goes into the wilderness as Emmanuel, God with us.

Not God watching us from a distance while we fail our self-improvement plans.

God with us in hunger, in testing, in ambiguity, in pressure, in the long work of choosing faithfulness again and again.

This means Lent is not a season for spiritual grandstanding.

It is not a season for earning God’s love.

It is not a season for proving how disciplined we are.

It is a season for remembering our baptism.

Before Jesus does anything, before he preaches, heals, feeds, or confronts empire, he is named Beloved.

Then the testing comes.

That order matters for us, too.

You do not take on a Lenten discipline so that God will finally love you.

You take on a Lenten discipline because God already does.

You do not fast in order to become worthy.

You fast, or pray, or give, or serve, or simplify, so that you can become more available to the truth of who you already are in Christ.

So, if you are deciding what to do this Lent, perhaps the question is not, “What will make me feel virtuous?” but “What helps me notice where my allegiance is drifting?”

What habit numbs me rather than nourishes me?

What fear is making my decisions?

What version of power am I tempted to trust?

Where am I asking for spectacle when God is offering companionship?

Where am I settling for the world’s shortcuts instead of the slow work of love, justice, and mercy?

And just as important: what practice might help me return?

Silence?

Prayer?

Generosity?

Sabbath?

Truth-telling?

Showing up for a neighbor?

Letting go of one small thing so I can pay attention to the deeper hunger underneath it?

Lent is not about despising the material world.

Bread matters.

Bodies matter.

Politics matter.

Communities matter.

Jesus will spend the rest of Matthew’s Gospel tending to exactly those things.

Lent is about refusing to let those good things be claimed by fear, vanity, or domination.

It is about learning to receive them and use them in service of God’s reign.

The wilderness, in the end, is not the place where Jesus loses himself.

It is the place where his vocation is clarified.

And when the testing is over, the devil departs, and angels come and minister to him.

That detail is so tender.

After the struggle, there is care.



So, if this Lent feels like wilderness to you, if you are tired, or tested, or unsure, or carrying more than you can name, hear this: the wilderness is not outside the reach of God.

Christ has already been there.

And the Spirit who led him there does not abandon him there.

The same is true for you.

The same is true for us.

May this Lent be, for all of us, not a performance of piety, but a return to allegiance.

A return to the God who names us beloved.

A return to the way of Christ, who rejects the world’s shortcuts and chooses the path of faithful love.

A return to the holy work of becoming a community that lives, not for spectacle, not for domination, not for self-protection alone, but for the reign of God: for justice, mercy, and abundance for all. Amen.