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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
As you have heard, today is the first Sunday in Lent, and, on the first Sunday in Lent, the appointed Gospel Reading in each year of our three-year series of appointed Readings directs our attention to our Lord Jesus in the wilderness being tempted by Satan. This year of the series, when the Gospel Readings are drawn primarily from the Holy Gospel according to St. Mark, we heard St. Mark’s Divinely-inspired account of Jesus’s temptation in the wilderness. Though we also heard the preceding verses related to Jesus’s being baptized and the following verses related to Jesus’s beginning His ministry, we heard those same verses read and preached-on, respectively, on the Baptism of Our Lord and on the Third Sunday after the Epiphany of our Lord. So, today we focus on the two verses of today’s Gospel Reading that we did not hear on either of those occasions in the Church Year, which two verses tell of the forty days between those two events of our Lord’s life.
If we know St. Matthew’s and St. Luke’s accounts of the temptation of our Lord in the wilderness, focusing only on St. Mark’s account can be challenging, for St. Mark’s much briefer account does not provide all the same details that the other two accounts provide, though St. Mark’s much briefer account still does provide some details that the other two accounts do not provide. For example, St. Mark’s account tells us that in the wilderness Jesus was “With the wild animals”, though St. Mark’s account does not tell us exactly what Jesus’s being “With the wild animals” means.
You and I might hear “wild animals” and think “Lions and tigers and bears—oh, my!” But, there is nothing in St. Mark’s account to suggest that in the wilderness those animals, wild or not, had anything against Jesus (Grundmann, TDNT 7:796-797). Rather, St. Mark’s language is said to suggest a close and virtual friendship between Jesus and the animals (Raabe, CJ 40:2, p.157 with n.24’s citing Bauckham, Jesus and Animals II, 54-60). We might think of the kind of relationship between the first man and woman and the animals in the Garden of Eden before the Fall into sin, or we might think of the kind of relationship between the Messiah and the animals foretold by the Old Testament, which relationship presumably also all believers will have when creation is restored on the Last Day, to the extent that that relationship in the end is different, if at all, from the relationship in the beginning (confer Balz, TDNT 8:138-139 with nn.33, 34). Of course, Satan was present and tempting in the beginning, and we do not expect him to be present and tempting in the end.
You probably know how that tempting in the beginning went! God commanded the man not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:17), but Satan, in the form of a wild animal, as it were (Genesis 3:1 LXX), tempted the woman to doubt God’s word, and she and her husband both sinned (Genesis 3:1-6), plunging themselves and all of their descendants, including us, into sin. The Lord God put enmity between the serpent and his offspring and the woman and her offspring (Genesis 3:15). The Lord God Himself apparently made the first sacrifice in order to cover Adam and Eve’s shame (Genesis 3:21; confer vv.7, 10-11), and, after the flood, He put the fear of their descendants into all the animals, even as God gave their descendants all the animals for food (Genesis 9:2-4). Animals may attack us—for example, deer or cayotes may run into our vehicles—even as we may hunt and fish. But, the relationship is not what God intended, for it has been frustrated by the first sin that brought to Adam and Eve and to all of us the wages of sin, which is death (Romans 6:23).
Jesus is no mere Dr. Doolittle—English-American author Hugh Lofting’s fictional physician who could speak with animals in their own languages (Wikipedia). Jesus is true God in human flesh; Jesus is God’s promised Messiah, the Christ, the Savior; Jesus is the Father’s Son upon Whom the Spirit of the Lord rests, as foretold through Isaiah (Isaiah 11:2; confer vv.1-5); Jesus is He Who ushers in the time when the wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together, and a little child will lead them (Isaiah 11:6; confer vv.6-9); Jesus is He Who makes a way in the wilderness, and the wild beasts honor Him (Isaiah 43:16-20; confer Gieschen, CTQ 73:1, pp.78‑80). Because Jesus is the Divine and human Savior, He successfully resisted Satan’s temptation in the wilderness and ultimately defeated Satan on the cross (Colossians 2:15). Because Jesus had resisted Satan’s temptation, He could die on the cross as our perfect substitute and so pay the price for our sin, purchasing and winning us from the power of the devil (Small Catechism II:4). Three days after His crucifixion, He rose from the dead, and forty days after that, He ascended to the right hand of the Father. When, enabled by God, we repent of our sin, then God forgives us for Jesus’s sake. God forgives us through His Word in all of its forms.
In today’s Gospel Reading, the angels were ministering to Jesus, and Jesus sends pastors to minister to us. Through the reading and preaching of God’s Word to groups such as this group, those pastors proclaim God’s Gospel, the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes (Romans 1:16). And those pastors apply God’s Gospel to individuals with water in Holy Baptism, with the pastor’s touch in Holy Absolution, and with the bread and wine of the Holy Supper that are the Body of Christ given for us and the Blood of Christ shed for us. Especially in Holy Baptism we are rescued from the devil (Small Catechism IV:6). Holy Absolution opens to us the Kingdom of Heaven against which the forces of hell do not prevail (Matthew 16:18). And, the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ are our food and drink for the way through the wilderness of this world. As St. Mark tells it, the angels seem to have ministered to Jesus throughout the time of His temptation, and likewise for us, our pastors minister to us throughout the time of our temptation.
As we heard read this morning, in the Old Testament Reading (Genesis 22:1-18), Abraham was “tested” and, in the Gospel Reading, Jesus was “tempted” but the respective Hebrew and Greek words both refer to a “trying”, an opportunity to show oneself to be faithful or unfaithful, usually translated differently depending on who carries‑out the “trial”. Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac came from His faith in God (confer Hebrews 11:17-19), as ultimately do our successfully either passing the “tests” that God gives us directly or resisting the “temptations” that God permits the devil, the world, and our sinful nature to put before us, not wanting us to hallow God’s Name or let His Kingdom come but to deceive us or mislead us into false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice (Small Catechism III:11, 18). In that sense, as the Epistle Reading put it, God tempts no one (James 1:12-18). Rather, Jesus, Who was tempted as we are, sympathizes with us in our weakness, so we with confidence draw near to His throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4:15-16; confer 2:18). We have the sure and certain hope that God, out of His great love for us in Christ, ultimately will not only set us free from our sinful nature but also restore all of creation, including re‑establishing peace between humankind and the animals that will dwell on the new earth under the new heaven (confer Romans 8:19-22). Jesus was “With the wild animals”, and we will be “With the wild animals” someday, too! In the meantime, as the Small Catechism teaches us, we pray that God’s Holy Angel—arguably His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ Himself—is with us, so that the wicked foe has no power over us (Small Catechism, Daily Prayers, ¶2, 5).
As today’s Gospel Reading overlapped with the Gospel Readings appointed for other days of the Church Year, so the use of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther’s hymn “A Mighty Fortress” in some sense overlaps with other days of the Church Year. We may think of Luther’s hymn more as a Reformation hymn, but reportedly, before it was used for Reformation festivals, it was used for the First Sunday in Lent, and its use on this occasion is perhaps some of the oldest Hymn of the Day tradition. For, well the hymn describes demons snapping at us Christians but unable to touch us, for we belong to Him Whose Name arguably is the “one little word” that can fell all our opponents—the Name of Jesus! (Confer Herl, #656-657, LSB:CttH, pp.836-843.)
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +