Service for February 22 First Sunday of Lent
Sermon for February 22, 2026 Pastor Val Metropoulos First Sunday of Lent
Today is the first Sunday in the season of Lent. Traditionally this season has emphasized restraint, confession, and recommitment to spiritual disciplines. The idea was to leave the old way of life behind and prepare to be baptized or if already baptized to recommit to that identity as God’s beloved child. That approach to Lent can be useful but not if the spiritual disciplines are an end in themselves. The point is not self-denial. The point is not US. The point of Lent and the point of denying ourselves, the point of all spiritual disciplines is LOVE!
Lent is the school of love reminding us who we are. Reminding us that we belong to God and God loves us for no other reason than love. Because God is love. We are filled to overflowing with God’s love. Lent begins with that love so that we can live our lives driven by love’s promise – a full, and abundant life, so that we can love.
We are invited on Ash Wednesday to live in this Lenten season engaging in spiritual disciplines “that confront all evil and resist whatever leads us away from love of God and neighbor.” We are invited to practice these disciplines so that we can love better. We love by confronting evil. We love by refusing anything that leads us away from loving God and loving neighbor. You’d think that would be easy. But look around. The world is in tough shape. Love is not the word I’d use to describe what is happening in Ukraine or Gaza or on the streets of our cities or anywhere that human dignity is denied or creation is destroyed.
It’s hard to love as God would have us love so we practice these disciplines again and again. Lent is a rehearsal for our lives of love so we practice! We practice through: self-examination and repentance, prayer and fasting, sacrificial giving and works of love—strengthened by the gifts of word and sacrament.
Love is the starting point, and love is the process we use and love is the goal; to know we are loved, full to the brim and overflowing so that we can practice loving ourselves and others, so that everyone knows they are loved and the world becomes more loving. Sounds a little like an inspirational Instagram post or a bumper sticker. But it’s a story as old as the Israelites’ exodus out of Egypt. It’s a story as old as Jesus in the wilderness.
Jesus had just walked out of the river Jordan, those baptismal waters where he heard the voice of God claim him, “You are my beloved.” His feet were still dripping as he followed that voice leading him into the wilderness. He trusted that voice that named him beloved and so he followed. After days of hunger the voice he hears is not of love but of challenge. Much like us, the loudest voice in his head is no longer the voice that named him beloved. The voice that drowns out the love is the voice that challenges that love, the one that challenges the idea that we are worthy of love, worthy of respect, worthy of being cared for.
Debie Thomas compares this story of Jesus’ temptation with the temptation of Adam and Eve in the garden. That first temptation by the snake was to be like God, know what God knows, if only they would taste of the fruit of the forbidden tree. Coming full circle, now the tempter wants Jesus to deny his humanity. She says the question the tempter asks is "Can you be fully human? Can you exercise restraint? Can you abdicate power? Accept danger? Can you bear what it means to be mortal?”1
Jesus has come to live as one of us, to love us by living the human life but the tempter wants him to bypass all that messy human life stuff and get straight to the power, straight to the glory. This is not the story of Jesus’ amazing ability to resist temptation as the Son of God. Of course, the Son of God recognizes the tempter and the evil intent. Of course, the son of God can resist any temptation. This is the story of the Son of Man resisting temptation, as one of us, fully divine yes but also, fully human.
These are temptations we face in our own lives. The first is the temptation of hunger. We are tempted when we are hungry for power, or recognition, or security to trust in our own ability to achieve them. The question is, “When we are in our own wilderness, can we return to our own belovedness and remember that even in our hunger we are deeply loved?” Can we sit with our hunger until we can learn what it has to teach us? Can we wait and learn what is the hunger behind our hunger?
“This is the invitation of Lent. To learn that we can be loved and hungry at the same time. That we can hope and hurt at the same time.”1
Sitting with our hunger, waiting in the knowledge that we are God’s beloved teaches that the food God gives us will never be manipulative or disrespectful. It won’t require that God’s good creation is violated. God’s food for us will not necessarily be what we want, but it will be what we need. It will feed us, it will be love for us and through us, and when we share, it will feed the world.
The second temptation targets Jesus’ ego. The tempter suggests that if we are God’s beloved, we should be important in the eyes of the world. We should be noticed. We should be powerful and respected. The question for us is, “Can we accept and even embrace Jesus’ version of importance? Can we refuse to do anything for the sake of praise, or to gain power, or to get our way?
As uncomfortable as it makes us, the truth is that when we follow Jesus our only power is in weakness. “Jesus is lifted up – but he’s lifted up on a cross. His power is the power of self-surrender for the sake of love.”1 Can we trust that when we live as God’s beloved, we will thrive in obscurity; in the quiet places, unnoticed, without power?
The third temptation targets the vulnerability of being human, living in a human body, easily broken. The temptation is to believe that if we are God’s beloved that we will be invincible; that if only we believe enough or we’re faithful enough, we will avoid the reality of the brokenness of life in these bodies. But “If the cross teaches us anything, it teaches us that God’s precious ones still bleed, still ache, still die. We are loved in our vulnerability. Not out of it.”
God loves us and so God walks with us in our suffering. We are not guaranteed a lifetime of safety but a lifetime of belonging. This is good news “because we are also the children of God who resurrects. There is no suffering we will ever endure that God will not redeem. The story of humanity is not a story that ends in despair. It’s a story that culminates at an empty tomb, in a kingdom of hope, healing, consolation, and joy.”
Three temptations. Three invitations for us to consider this Lenten season. Can we live in the beauty, the glory and love of being fully human and beloved by God exactly as we are? Can we live with the truth that suffering is part of our lives as God’s beloved and we are never alone in that suffering and that God will bring new life out of all the deaths we experience? Can we live simply, satisfied and even rejoicing in obscurity, refusing to work for praise, rejecting anything that would draw attention away from God’s love for us and for all people, and all creation?
Even in the desert, we are full to the brim and overflowing with God’s love even when it doesn’t feel like it! It is true. We are invited to live in that overflowing love, trusting God’s love for us and for all humanity, all creation so that we can love.
Receive this blessing as the beautiful, beloved human beings that you are:
“Carry with you from this day the awareness that you are merely human, and that that is fully holy. May the dust of the earth and the keeper of your soul remind you daily that life is a gift and love is the point.”2 Amen
1Debie Thomas
2 Pastor Matt Moberg