Decisions Decisions

I’ve titled today’s sermon “Decisions, Decisions,” which does not refer to the multitude of options at the buffet on a cruise ship. Rather, I’d like to draw your attention the kind of life-defining choices Jesus makes in today’s Gospel from Matthew, the famous story of his temptation in the wilderness. I’m indebted to Pastor Robin Meyers for these ideas, and as promised, I’ll share with you a reflection from his book, Saving God from Religion: A Minister’s Search for Faith in a Skeptical Age.

You’re invited to read along as a Lenten spiritual practice, by the way, and if you are in fact reading the book, forgive me for jumping ahead to a section you probably haven’t read yet. Stick with it, and hopefully my messages on Sunday morning will begin to weave together with your reading in a meaningful way!

But first, a caveat: today’s message is not about making a “decision for Christ.” We Lutherans are wary of any theology that lays the burden of responsibility for faith on the individual. “For by grace you have been saved through faith,” as the author of Ephesians puts it, “and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God not the result of works, so that no one may boast.”[1] That is to say, we do not make a choice for God, rather God makes a choice for us; faith is a gift. Notice that God calls Jesus Beloved and anoints him with the Spirit at his baptism before, and not after, his forty-day stint in the wilderness. Love is not the reward for faithfulness, in other words, but the precondition. Jesus’ resistance to temptation rests on his secure attachment to God; the devil’s treachery can’t undermine the divine favor he already enjoys.

Nevertheless, he is confronted with the question of how to proceed. What does it mean in practice to be God’s Beloved, and what impact will his choices have on his movement down through the ages?

Hear how Pastor Meyers unpacks these questions:

[Excerpt from pp. 166-9]

[1]2:8-9.