Sermon 3/6/2022
Sermon Lent 1 2022
Series: Good Enough
Theme: “Ordinary Lives Can Be Holy”
Scripture: Luke 4:1-13 Jesus tempted in the wilderness
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My husband Clark and I went out on a date Friday night. We didn’t realize until we set aside that intentional time to be together - how disconnected we had felt from each other. It was rather alarming to realize how easy it had been to just keep going about our schedules and shared lives without making time to really sit down face to face and just be together. Don’t misunderstand me, we didn’t have any deep profound conversations over dinner, it was the same ordinary conversations we usually have about work and the kids, but what made it different was the intention behind it. The only “goal” for the evening was simply to be together.
Lent is the season in which we commit to being more intentional about deepening the primary relationship in our lives - our relationship with God. Lent gives us an opportunity to reorient our lives so that they are more centered in Christ.
Today I want to explore things that might be preventing us from finding this deeper connection with Christ and suggest some ways that we can find God in the ordinary moments of our lives.
One of the biggest obstacles to finding fulfillment in our lives - is that we are looking for it in the wrong places. Like the line from the popular country hit in the 1980’s by Johnny Lee, we are
“Lookin’ for love in all the wrong places”.
We live in a world that is constantly telling us what our longings are and then offering us ways to satisfy those longings.
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If we aren’t spending time figuring out how to live our best life we are scrolling through our social media feeds to check out the best lives of our family and friends and their friends, and the friends of those friends who are basically total strangers, plus celebrities, oh and don’t forget celebrity dogs.
And as we look at the fun places others are going, the smiling photos of couples and families, the beautiful homes, the celebrations of accomplishments of children and grandchildren the next thing we know we have succumbed to FOMO.
FOMO - or the fear of missing out, may be a term coined by GenZ but a recent study found that it affects people of all ages and it can be bad for our mental health. The study showed that when people of all ages are feeling lonely or down on themselves, spending time on social media comparing their lives with others can lead to increased anxiety and depression.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200826101624.htm
Fear of missing out - keeps us from finding joy and meaning in the present moment, and in the lives we are living right now.
To find ways to combat these false desires and the negative impact they have on our lives, let us turn to the example of Jesus. In today’s scripture from Luke we find Jesus alone in the wilderness. He has just been baptized and is about to embark on his public ministry, but before he does he is driven into the wilderness by the Spirit where he is tempted by the devil for 40 days.
The devil tempts him three times. The first temptation is to persuade Jesus to fulfill his hunger, his longing for food through his own power. We face the same temptation when we try to orchestrate our own success under our own steam rather than relying on God’s direction and power. The second temptation is for the promise of glory and to have authority over the kingdoms of the earth. To which Jesus replies, “worship the Lord your God and serve God only”.
The world wants to convince us that we will finally find happiness and fulfillment when we have gained power, notoriety, wealth. Jesus reminds us that true fulfillment comes when we give our lives over to God, so that they may be used in the service of God’s kingdom, not for our own personal gain. The third and final temptation is to prove that he is who he says he is. One of the hardest temptations to overcome is our need to justify and prove ourselves to others. Especially when we feel misunderstood, undervalued or even maligned. Yet in this moment of testing and throughout his time on earth, Jesus consistently refuses to justify himself.
What do we learn from Jesus and from his time in the wilderness?
What did Jesus accomplish during his first big test?
What were his concrete measurables?
What work product did he have to show for his 40 days in the wilderness?
He didn’t preach any sermons or perform any healings or feed any crowds
He fasted and prayed and resisted.
Jesus’ story invites us to examine - How are we measuring success or our lives?
Maybe success doesn’t always have to look like reaching, striving, gaining, accomplishing.
Sometimes success looks like spiritual resistance.
It looks like rejecting the siren song of cultural expectations to climb the ladder of success, to always strive for perfection. And to turn to God in the midst of our imperfect lives.
To take a break from social media when we find ourselves obsessing about what our lives could be or should be rather than focusing on what our lives are right now.
Lay claim to the holy that exists in our mundane, ordinary lives.
Spiritual Contentment
Kate Bowler has this great line in her devotional book “Good Enough”. “Desire can feel like an endless hunger, but there is a feeling we get when we feel full: contentment.” Spiritual contentment is not tied to our circumstances - but is rooted in God’s presence.
Example of Paul
Paul talks about how he grew in his faith until he found a place of contentment where he could find peace in plenty and in want because of his deep connection to Jesus Christ.
I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength. - Philippians 4:12
But it wasn’t always that way. Paul battled with the perfection paradigm in his spiritual life. Before his encounter with Christ he worked diligently to live a perfect and righteous life of faith. But he rejected that approach when he met Jesus. .
Philippians 3:1-19
as to righteousness under the law, [I was] blameless [perfect]. Yet whatever gains [success] I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ. and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ,
If Paul’s life feels like a lofty example, consider this story from a woman named Helen Blier.
https://www.pts.edu/devotional03-07-22
Dr. Helen Blier, Director of Continuing Education
A few years ago, grief hit me hard—and after enough months of trying to put one foot in front of the other, I knew I needed to do whatever it took to visit a friend in Denver so that we could hike the Rockies. As we made our way to the city from the airport, I lifted my eyes to the Front Range, pink and yellow with the mid-morning sun. Look at us, the mountains said, Look up. Look up from your troubles and grief, up from the immediacy of what seems all-consuming. Lift your eyes, says the psalmist—that’s where your help will come from. And then it hit me: it wasn’t about the hiking or even the mountains (although they are my happiest of places). It was about the looking up—and the letting go required to do it.
Then she quotes from a book entitled “The Solace of Fierce Landscapes”. “God can only be met in emptiness, by those who come in love, abandoning all effort to control, every need to astound.”
You see, the psalm isn’t about the hills, or even the fact that we need help. That’s only the first two lines. It’s about God—God who made heaven and earth, God who is sturdy enough to hold us steady and watch over our comings and goings. The God who is greater than our troubles and deeper than our grief. These fierce landscapes reorient us—away from distractions and toward the holy one, up from the overwhelm of what troubles us and out to a broader horizon—and in doing so, they reorient us to the stories of our lives. And isn’t that the task of Lent, to reorient us, to remind us to lift our eyes?
I encourage you this week to take a break from your schedule and take time to reflect:
Where is God showing up in your life right now?
How are you measuring success and fulfillment?
What does true contentment look like?