Given by Rev. Madison Shockley March 13, 2022

We begin this Lenten season with the story of Jesus’s baptism and journey into the wilderness. It is there that Jesus confronts the “devil”. The devil represents the power that always opposes humanity’s desire to please the Divine. Humans have been dealing with the devil since the Garden of Eden. Jesus was showing us how to deal with the devil. It was the remaking of humanity so that we can be the humans that God intended us to be. Jesus turns the curse from the Garden of Eden into a blessing. The devil tries to use Jesus’s relationship with God to trick him. The devil wants us to doubt our relationship with the Divine. If we use our relationships for personal gain, that is corruption. We may have full stomachs but our soul would be empty. It is connection to the Divine that gives us a full life. The second lesson is replacing the worship of what is truly Divine with idolatry. If we worship a worldly power (whatever is not God), we may gain earthly power but lose our soul. The third lesson is to understand that the promise of safety and security is a lie. The life committed to the Divine is a life of risk and sacrifice. Jesus dies even though he is a child of God. We need to do what we can to live a life worthy of the Divine. We need to be clear about what we believe so we answer whatever objections are given to prevent us from living our life of faith.
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