Remember Who You Are

Luke 4:1-13; Deuteronomy 26:1-11

Lent 1

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

¹ When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, ² you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name.

³ You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, “Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.” ⁴ When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the Lord your God, ⁵ you shall make this response before the Lord your God:

“A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. ⁶ When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, ⁷ we cried to the Lord , the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. ⁸ The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; ⁹ and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. ¹⁰ So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord , have given me.”

You shall set it down before the Lord your God and bow down before the Lord your God. ¹¹ Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.

Luke 4:1-13

¹ Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, ² where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.

He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished.

³ The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” ⁴ Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”

⁵ Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. ⁶ And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. ⁷ If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” ⁸ Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”

⁹ Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, ¹⁰ for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ ¹¹ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”

¹² Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

¹³ When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

The Sermon

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn out tools…

These are the first two stanzas of the immortal poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling.

I always thought the four stanzas of that poem were great, until the last two lines, where it says, if you can do all these things, that speak of an immense capacity for staying grounded, then—and here are the payoff lines—

“Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, / And—which is more—you’ll be a Man my son!”

I’ve always found that ending to be terribly anti-climactic. First of all, all of a sudden it seems like it was only meant for the males among us, and maybe it was even meant just for Kipling’s own son (in which case I kind of wonder what his two daughters thought about it). But more to the point, for many of us there is a higher, nobler, more crucial, more definitional goal than to have “the Earth and everything that’s in it”—much less to meet some dated, parochial concept of adulthood.

But those quibbles aside, the fundamental message is still tremendously worthwhile: remember who you are.

Because you will find times, if you haven’t already, when great things come your way. Business goes well, or you’re in carefree health and vitality, or your relationships all fall together or the roar of the crowd becomes almost overwhelming.

Many people have stood in those shoes, and it can be easy to forget who you are. A patient, kind, thoughtful person, dedicated to the well-being of the world and justice for all its people, after being pampered for a while, loses the sense of interdependence among all God’s people; forgets what it means to be human and begins to think of him or herself as the center of the universe.

And you may find times, if you haven’t already, when business slows to a halt, or relationships crumble, and they’re no longer calling your name. Spoken of as a random concept, we can all say, “Oh, yeah, that would be bad.” But when it’s you in the lonely inner circle of one, the opposite of remembering who you are is to succumb to hopelessness.

What is it that makes you who you are? We are physical beings—the Hebrews were much more holistic about that concept than the Greeks, from whom we received more of our cultural inheritance. We are also mental beings—“I think, therefore I am.” Artists throughout history have recognized identities in their emotions: I know a sad woman; an angry man; a troubled adolescent. And some rare proportion of the human race are identified by their spiritual distinctiveness: unusually grounded, spiritually centered.

No matter the source of your identity, you are a creature—which word is directly related to created—of God. You are part of this good creation, and you have a right and a reason to be here, and it is a good reason. I may not know it; the people around you may not know it; you

may not even know it yet. But you have a reason for being here.

You are real. To be without hope is to forget that, or to disbelieve it.

Christians all over the world will spend these forty days of Lent taking note of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, the action that immediately follows his baptism and which, evidently, must take place before he begins his ministry.

As always, the number 40 signifies a period of trial and struggle, but with the promise of salvation if we can make it through to the other side.

Buechner says, “In many cultures there is an ancient custom of giving a tenth of each year’s income to some holy use. For Christians to observe the forty days of Lent is to do the same thing with roughly a tenth of each year's days. After being baptized by John in the river Jordan, Jesus went off alone into the wilderness where he spent forty days asking himself the question what it meant to be Jesus. During Lent, Christians are supposed to ask one way or another what it means to be themselves.

“When you look at your face in the mirror, what do you see in it that you most like, and what do you see in it that you most deplore?

“If you had only one last message to leave to the handful of people who are most important to you, what would it be in twenty-five words or less?

“Of all the things you have done in your life, which is the one you most like to undo?

“Which is the one that makes you happiest to remember?

“Is there any person in the world, or any cause, that, if circumstances called for it, you would be willing to die for?

“To hear yourself try to answer questions like these is to begin to hear something not only of who you are but of both what you are becoming and what you are failing to become. It can be a pretty depressing business all in all, but if sackcloth and ashes are at the start of it, something like Easter may be at the end.” [i]

“You are a child of the universe,” wrote Max Ehrmann, “no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.”

I encourage you to know your history; to know what it is that makes you who you are; to know the answer to the question, “to Whom do I belong?”

And when you are tested, whether by hunger or by abundance, remember who you are.

And on the other side of your forty days—whatever they may be—may you celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.

[i] Buechner, Wishful Thinking. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1979.