We find Jesus asking those wilderness questions this morning.  Still dripping wet from his own baptism in the Jordan, “Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” Wait a minute.  Led by the Spirit?  Jesus…tempted?  By the devil?  Matthew hasn’t even afforded us a moment to soak up the magnificent scene where the heavens open, the Spirit of God comes down as a dove, and God proclaims, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”  Matthew is not one for the dramatic pause.  His gospel clips along at a rapid pace.  Jesus is now in the wilderness.  Fasting.  Hungry.  The devil finds him there and poses to him three perplexing temptations.   

This story has intrigued the church for centuries.  Some of our greatest literature has found its inspiration in the temptation of Christ.  Poet John Milton’s Paradise Regained.  Russian novelist’s Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov.  Artists from the earliest years A.D. to the modern day have tried to capture this story on their canvases.  But despite all their efforts, no one knows quite what to do with it.  Every great preacher (Luther, Calvin, Spurgeon), they too want to add their interpretation to this perplexing text.  Now it is my turn (and by the way George is out of town on a skiing trip). 

The wilderness.  Jesus was not the first to find himself there.    Moses.  Elijah.  Each faced their own 40 days.  And how about the people of Israel?  They wandered 40 years in the wilderness.  No doubt Jesus knew the stories of the ones who had come before.  Now right before his public ministry begins, Jesus faces his own temptations.    

What are these temptations, these wilderness questions, all about?  Identity.  Identity?  I realize Matthew, more than any other gospel, makes clear who Jesus is from the beginning.  We know he has been conceived by the Holy Spirit.  He is to be called Emmanuel, God with us.  At his baptism, Jesus has just heard God’s own voice, saying this is my Son.  By this time, I believe Jesus knew his identity as Son of God and Messiah.  This story is not Jesus testing his powers, seeing what he can do with his newfound identity.  He is not Harry Potter realizing for the first time he can magically fling a book across the room. He’s not Superman learning he can fly. 

Jesus knows who he is.  And so does the devil.  Listen to the tempter’s first words… “If you are the Son of God.”  The “if” here really should be translated more like a “since” than an “if.”  Since you are the Son of God.  Both of them agree on Jesus’ title, but the identity question that remains is what kind of Son of God will Jesus be?  It is a vocation question.  Now, that’s a Wilshire word.  Even when we may have discovered our calling, we have to discern how we will live out that calling.  And many times that implementation process becomes the hardest part.

Make no mistake about it.  The idea of Son of God and Messiah was alive and well in Jesus’ time.  Potential Messiahs had come and gone.  Upstart saviors had gained popular support only to be squashed by the Romans.  A whole lot of people had an idea of what the Son of God would look like.  Young Jewish boys dreamed of the messiah as they played their imaginary games in the street.  Old men told stories about what might have been.  Priest.  Warrior.  The messiah could be any or all of these to the Jews.  In this climate, Jesus entered to envision his own identity.

Now don’t tune out just yet saying this identity talk is too abstract.  Too theological.  First, turn and look at yourself.  Many of us are going through our own identity crises.  We don’t know who we are.  Some of the people with the lowest self-esteem I have ever met have been committed Christians.  Many of them Christian teenagers.  Nobody seems to want to be who they are.  Woody Allen once said, “My only regret in life was that I wasn't somebody else.”  Television is plastered with extreme makeovers.  Lose that fat.  Fix that nose.  Surgically look like your favorite celebrity.  And if you don’t have the courage to become somebody different, you make sure you slip into the shadows as nobody special.  In the words of a Pink Floyd song, “you’re just another brick in the wall.”

Yet sometimes our identity crises are the exact opposite.  Sometimes our focus is directed so much on ourselves, that everything becomes customized to satisfy our primary concern: me.  Unfortunately, religion might be exhibit A of such a concern.  Many churches have tuned their voice to the people’s song.  We hope to get something out of the service.  The music makes us feel good.  The sermon gave us all the steps to fix our problems.  For many, our identity crisis is our preoccupation with our own identity.  [See Maggie Ross, “Writing the Icon of the Heart,” Weavings 20 no. 2 (March/April 2005)].

Stephen Prothero, professor at Boston University has written an insightful new book, American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon.  Prothero’s thesis is simply that we have made Christ in our own image.  Jesus begins to look like one of us.  The debate goes beyond whether Jesus really looked like the blonde-haired, blue-eyed white guy we grew up with on the posters in our Sunday school rooms as children.  Prothero makes his case by pointing to examples throughout our history.  For Thomas Jefferson, enlightened deist, Jesus was the great moral sage.  The social gospelers at the turn of the 20th century preferred a “manly Jesus.”  If you picked up a copy of the 1910 hymnal, Manly Songs for Christians, you could sing “The Manly Man of Galilee”.  Then there’s the ‘60s hippie, counter-cultural Jesus.  Signs around Berkeley read: “Wanted: Jesus for being a revolutionary.”  [John A. Coleman, review of American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon, by Stephen Prothero, America: The National Catholic Weekly 191 no. 2 (July 19, 2004)].

Even today, Jesus is a hot commodity.  I asked the religion reporter for the Washington Post one time why it seems we so often see Jesus on the cover of Time and Newsweek.  His answer was every time Jesus is on the cover, they see a spike in their sells.  Jesus is the ultimate coverboy. 

We have countless identities, and now it seems we have a Jesus for every one of them.  Jesus, our genie in a bottle.  

Putting all those identities aside, we must return to Scripture to remind ourselves who Jesus really claims to be.  The church claims Christ as fully human, fully divine – but that remains a tough balance for us to maintain.  I would wager that often we find ourselves leaning one way or the other.  For me, I err towards the divine over the human.  More often my pictures of Christ have a halo.  Sometimes I find myself second-guessing whether these temptations were real temptations.  Could Jesus have really said no to God? 

When he is approached by the devil, he is hungry and tired.  As hungry and tired as any of us would be after a six-week fast.  And the tempter says, “Since you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”  He could have done it.  He would turn water into wine and feed 5000 soon enough.  But for the sake of his own hunger, he knows he can trust God to be faithful.  He avoids the quick fix and obediently waits on God’s provision - living with the ache in the pit of his stomach.

The tempter tries again.  “Since you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from the top of the temple, for you know the angels will catch you.”  Jesus responds, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”  Jesus’ humanity realizes that he is not in charge.  He doesn’t make his plans first in his own self-interest, and then demand God to follow suit.  Jesus understood our temptations.  We want signs and wonders.  We want to see God in the spectacular.  We want to be shocked into belief.  Jesus realized God’s plan required another way. 

The devil cuts to the chase showing Jesus all the kingdoms of the world.  “You see this, all of it can be yours – RIGHT NOW- just worship me.”  I believe this was the toughest temptation for Jesus.  The prize was not the point.  As the Son of God, the kingdoms of the world were already his.  But the timing was the tempter’s carrot.  The devil offered a shortcut.  No suffering, no pain, no cross, no problem.  Why did God choose to save the world through Jesus’ death?  Jesus may not have fully understood the why of his mission, but in his humility and humanity he knew he had to do it God’s way.

Jesus passes through his identity crisis with his humanity intact.  His obedience, suffering, his unwavering fidelity to God defines his identity.  Compare that with Adam’s temptation in the garden.  He too was tempted by the chance to “play God.”  To become independent of God and know things for himself.  Ironically, Adam, the first man tried to be God while Jesus, the Son of God, was content to remain a human being.  Adam’s sin led to humanity’s curse.  Jesus’ fidelity made humanity a blessing. [See Barbara Brown Taylor, “Remaining Human,” The Christian Century (Feb 7, 1996).]

As we read in Philippians, Christ: “who though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.”

Jesus’ temptations did not cease after he left the wilderness.  They continued all through his life.  Even at the moment of his death, the people hurled the temptations at him.  “Since you are the Son of God, come down from the cross…. He saved others, he cannot save himself…. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he wants to, for he said, ‘I am God’s Son.”  The wilderness all over again.  Take the shortcut.  Forget obedience.  Skip the pain.  But Christ persevered.  His unwavering fidelity to God never waned.  He was obedient to death, even death on a cross.  And it is this Jesus, the serving, suffering, and dying Jesus whom God vindicated by raising him from the dead.

And with that cross ever in our minds, we begin our Lenten journey.  It seems to me that Lent is a double journey. On one hand, we contemplate the meaning and mystery of God’s redemption in Christ’ death and resurrection.  And on the other, we “dive into the depths of our own humanity.”  Lent begins on Ash Wednesday as we are reminded that we are mortal: nothing but dust, and to dust we shall return. 

You see, Lent too is about identity.  Our Lenten preparations, however, are not focused on striving to make us a better human being.  Instead we should focus just on what it means to be a human at all.  I regret the timing of Lent.  It’s too close to New Years, and too often our Lenten fasts become the convenient time to rededicate ourselves to our lapsed resolutions.  I’ll give up chocolate; I could stand to lose a few pounds.  I’ll lay off the red meat, doctor told me to watch the cholesterol.           

No.  See.  Lent is about learning what it means to be human.  That’s it.  It’s not self-improvement, but self-inspection.  We play God every day.  Trying to be in control.  Trying to have all the answers.  Lent affords us the opportunity to stop and recognize who we are.  Upon inspection, it’s not about who we are, but whose we are.  As Christians, our identity crisis is over, for we are simply a child of God.  So as we begin Lent, remember your identity.  Maybe this Lent you can begin a habit of prayer.  When you stop to pray, remember that in prayer you are professing that you are not God and that you wouldn’t want to be.  And in that prayer stretch out your hands, acknowledging that you must constantly wait again to receive the gift which gives new life.  Real prayer is hard.  Because it makes you vulnerable.  And we don’t like to be vulnerable.  [Henri Nouwen, With Open Hands, Excerpted in A Guide to Prayer for all God’s People, ed. Reuben P. Job and Norman Shawchuck. (Nashville: Upper Room Books, 1990), 117-118.]

But that is what God calls us to be as children of God.  Vulnerable.  Obedient.  We have tried to create our own identities for far too long.  We have tried to force our way through our own wildernesses.  It’s our time to be a follower.  And despite what you’ve heard, that’s not a bad thing.  As long as the one we are following is the crucified Christ, who was raised from the dead so we might live.   AMEN