Defeating the Devil, Living as Beloved

The First Sunday in Lent, Year A
Sermon for February 22, 2026

My friends, I speak to you today in the name of one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Please be seated.

Good morning, Epiphany. Even with more snow this morning, maybe especially with the snow, it is good to be together, it is good to be back here in South Haven. As most of you know, Abbey and I were gone last week, so thank you to Father Jeff for filling in on the Last Sunday after the Epiphany. Today is the First Sunday in Lent. Last week, we were out exploring our own Garden of Eden in Costa Rica, Manuel Antonio National Park… No tree of knowledge of good and evil, no tempting serpent there, but plenty of wildlife and sunshine and warmth. Thank you for giving us the privilege of that brief vacation.

And so today, with the Garden of Eden in the lectionary, I could preach about beautiful, green, warm Costa Rica, but it felt like that might’ve been cruel given the winter weather this morning? Instead, I want to start the sermon today with a little bit of Satan. (Quite a switch.) The devil, this tempter, Satan features in our Old Testament and New Testament readings today and is named in our collect too, so we need to at least set a foundation here at the outset of the sermon: Satan does exist. That may be difficult for many of us, we much prefer talking about love and leaving most else to mystery here. We also have been set up for this realization poorly by centuries of depictions of Satan; most often, a red, horned creature with a pitchfork and tail is the one that shows up in today’s pop culture. He’s almost cartoonish, certainly we don’t believe in cartoons. We’re grownups.

But great theologians, who we all would likely claim to respect, have acknowledged “he” is not some cartoonish fairytale, that Satan is real and active in the world, perhaps even the ruler of this world, drawing a contrast with Christ, the king of a better kingdom. C.S. Lewis famously wrote The Screwtape Letters, a fictional dialogue between two demons working for this devil. In Letter 4, Lewis puts these words in the lead demon’s mouth: “The simplest way (for us to win) is to turn humans’ gaze away from God and towards themselves.” Thomas Merton wrote in New Seeds of Contemplation, “The devil is no fool… for the devil, the important thing is for us to think ourselves absolutely right and to prove that everybody else is absolutely wrong.” I love that. Martin Luther, St. Augustine, St. Teresa of Avila, John Wesley, even Pope Francis, they all write extensively about Satan, about this “personal tempter,” this “father of lies,” a force we have used imagery to depict like “a hat we put on a mystery,” as the saying goes, an active force in the world that is evil, that is tempting us, leading us away from God, away from love. If you do not believe God is an old, white man with a beard sitting on a cloud but you still believe in God, may I ask this morning that you reject the red, horned creature with a pitchfork and still consider that there is a devil, a force that tempts us, a Satan. Just… consider it.

Most often, I think, that tempting, that “leading away” that the devil is all about, it is not done as dramatically as it is in today’s gospel. In the book of Matthew this morning, we have Jesus being “led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” (There’s something interesting there with the Spirit doing the leading, but we’ll leave that for next time.) Here, we have a starving Jesus being offered bread… we have Jesus on the pinnacle of the temple being offered uncommon safety and security… we have Jesus on top of a high mountain being offered power over all the kingdoms of the world. Jesus – who, remember, is the eternally begotten Son of God – Jesus is being offered all these things we long for… being fully fed, being safe and secure, being in full control… and unlike Adam and Eve in the Garden in our Old Testament reading this morning, Jesus denies this temptation, he defeats the tempter, and the devil, the gospel says, leaves him.

Now this is a dramatic reading, this is something you could see depicted as a cartoon or in a movie, especially the pinnacle of the temple and the very high mountain parts. But as dramatic as it is, we know this morning that temptation for us often comes with far more subtlety. I’m not talking about being tempted to shoplift or to cheat on your spouse or to lie on your income tax forms, though those are all too real temptations for many. I think those temptations might be too obvious for us this morning, too clearly wrong; breaking vows and breaking laws, we understand we should probably not do those things.

But the temptation that C.S. Lewis was referring to, the cleverness of Screwtape – “The simplest way (for us to win) is to turn their gaze away from God and towards themselves.” – that is what I think we most struggle with in our daily lives as followers of Jesus, as Christians, as members of this beloved community. It is easy for all of us, in a society like ours, to be fully wrapped up in our own attempts to fulfill our own dreams, our own self-actualization, to spend the majority of our waking hours focused on our own security, our own ideas, our own desires. I preached on Ash Wednesday about an answer to those three particular issues, offered to us by Jesus here in the season of Lent, the answers of giving, praying, and fasting. Perhaps the answer for us this morning to resisting temptation is right in front of us: giving so that others’ needs remain in focus… praying so that our relationship with God stays paramount… fasting, or self-denial, so that we realize how much our desires have hold on us and how easily we can let them go.

But these smaller temptations, not the big ones, they tempt us, they take hold on us because they seem so innocent, so small. A clergy friend connected this issue of small temptation to social media this week: we watch cat videos on our phones, little funny clips, little snippets of beloved movies; we share photos of our family and friends; we “like” our friends’ newsletters and posts. We do these small, simple things that gradually get us addicted to the platforms, tiny bits of dopamine, tiny pleasures in something so innocent. But those platforms have algorithms that then serve us advertisements and fake news stories amidst the innocent little joys. These platforms have been proven in study after study to be addictive, and ultimately, we see them causing the breakdown of society, of democracy, and yet we find we cannot turn away. The small temptation, the cat video, the photo of a friend’s baby, it leads to the big problem, the breakdown of society itself.

So maybe it’s not cat videos for you, maybe it’s something else, maybe the small little temptations involve a drink after work, every day, and then another… or a small purchase, a new piece of clothing or furniture or the next new book, something you know will satisfy… until you buy it, put it away, and begin looking for the next. Temptation, you see, comes in all shapes and sizes, which for centuries has led theologians and philosophers to give animus and intention to it, to personify it, to depict it as a little devil sitting on your shoulder, whispering in your ear, as a snake, whispering in a garden to take a bite of an apple. Whatever you think about that this morning, please consider today, at the beginning of this season of Lent, the ways you yourself are being tempted.

Because temptation, all temptation, it comes from a refusal or unwillingness or inability to believe in your identity as beloved children of God. Temptation is about choosing something less than the goodness of God, the fullness of God, the goodness and fullness that God has for us. Jesus this morning is tempted by the devil to turn stones to bread; no, he says, man lives not only on bread, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. Jesus is tempted to throw himself off the temple, to see if God will catch him; no, he knows we need not test God’s love for us, that it is always there. Jesus is tempted with unmatched power, if only he will worship the devil; but no, he knows God is the only one worthy of our worship, service, and praise. Everything else is a quick, poor substitute.

Our temptations therefore come from a lack of trust, trust that God has good things for us if we only follow God, if we live like Christ, if we dwell in the Holy Spirit. As Christians, though we are tempted to lash out of our frustration, in anger, in violence, we can fully trust that love is the way. As Christians, though we are tempted to hoard our resources, to satisfy ourselves first, even to strive for praise from others, we can fully trust that God is enough. And finally, as Christians, though any other identity may be more appealing at any given moment, we can trust and rest secure in knowing that we are beloved children of God.

May we fully land on that as our identity, may we work toward truly believing it, because when we do, no temptation of any devil will have hold on us ever again.

Amen.