Sermon by Rev Sydney Maitland for Sunday 9 March 2025.
Temptations of Christ, 12th-century mosaic in St Mark’s Basilica, Venice (Source and large image)
• First Reading: Deuteronomy 26: 1-11 (Offering of first fruits upon entering the Promised Land)
• Epistle: Romans 10: 8-13 (Everyone who calls on the Name of the Lord will be saved)
• Gospel: Luke 4: 1-11 (The temptation of Jesus)
It is amazing just how much of our life is based on faith. This is mainly faith in our institutions: our banks and bank accounts, the rule of law and the protection of the police, the institutions of the state in this city, in Scotland and in the UK.
For those looking at the daily news, we are already having to wonder about some of our international alliances and institutions. No names .. but you can all probably guess and come to your own conclusions.
When confidence in any of these institutions and the assumptions that underlie them is shaken then we really are troubled and confused.
But then our lessons are all about tests of various kinds concerning our faith and especially our confidence in God.
In the Old Testament, the lesson is about the enduring faith of the Jews from the time of Abraham onwards. It covers the early patriarchs, their journey into Egypt and their experiences there.
And in coming into the Promised Land they were not only to dedicate their first fruits to God but they were also to make their declaration of how they came to be there.
It would express their understanding of who they were as Jews, how they came to be there and their deliverance by God from slavery in Egypt and their crossing of the deserts of Sinai.
All of this was part of their story as a people and especially as a people who worshipped the Lord and placed their trust in Him.
They had definitely been tested in this sense of being who they were and where their loyalties belonged. Their experiences and those of their forefathers had made them stronger, and they were that much more determined to defend that sense of loyalty and identity.
These were the people of God – not perfect but at least being schooled in the things of God, His holiness and righteousness in His dealings with them and their kinsfolk and neighbours.
And yes, it could be a hard and demanding school of faith.
For Jesus there was also a profoundly disturbing set of challenges to who He was and what His mission was as well.
He knew that He had a mission – to save the world: to restore it and its people to the place of favour in the sight of God and in their relationship with Him. It would restore the bond that had been there in the Garden of Eden and then lost.
If that was the overall aim then the means were still moot.
That was the point at issue and it was the centre of Jesus’ testing in the wilderness. Just what kind of Messiah was He? How would His mission be accomplished? Just what was at the centre of His life on earth anyway?
And so the devil presented Him with three kinds of strategy.
All of them however demanded a certain level of doubt, certainly of diffidence. IF you are the Messiah – then prove it. Be dramatic. Use your powers: even, abuse them. Make that compromise and cut the corners.
Above all, deal with the symptoms of human misery and alienation, but do not touch the deepest, interior causes. It is far easier to blame society or the system, or the history of your people than to take an honest look at one’s own standing before God.
Far easier to make excuses than to accept personal responsibility. Far easier to make a few minor adjustments personal life and lifestyle than to accept that profound bias to self in the deepest parts of the human soul.
Far easier to find a few fashionable scapegoats than to accept the need for personal repentance and faith in the provision that God has made for that personal reconciliation.
And so, one by one Jesus rejected the easy but superficial strategies for human salvation. The state could never achieve this; neither could it be done by arts and entertainment; even universal welfare would feed the body but starve the soul.
And so, one after the other the devil’s alternatives to the cross were rejected. It would have to be the cross for only there would a full, perfect and sufficient atonement be made. It would be made for the whole of humanity and for all of time. It would address that deepest sense of human rejection of God in the most intimate parts of the human soul.
And no, there would be no alternative.
Writing to the church in Rome, Paul was addressing people who might also be tempted to avoid Jesus and avoid talking about Him.
There would be plenty of other things to talk about: the welfare of the people, the state of politics and the arts. And that remains true today.
But for Paul it was and still is the atoning sacrifice of Jesus that counts. There is nothing else. All the other benefits of the gospel of Jesus – the rule of law, concern for our neighbours, the incorporation of beauty and the arts into the life of the church are outcomes of the atonement of Jesus. Definitely not alternatives.
They can never be substitutes for it. And yes, it is as we speak of them that others can learn. Personal contacts, word of mouth and style of life all count here.
And so Paul stresses that if we believe in our hearts that God raised Jesus from the dead, and confess with our mouths that this is so then we shall be saved. Questions of welfare, the state and the arts and entertainment come later.
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