Lent 1c 2025; 9 March
Luke 4:1-13; Jack Hardaway
WHOSE WORLD IS IT ANYWAY?
A hot dry road runs through the dessert.
An old car comes along, windows down, no air conditioning, held together with primer and bondo.
The devil is driving the car.
Jesus sits there next to him in the passenger seat.
They’ve been driving like this for days and days, not saying much. Seeing the land. Seeing the world.
With a loud clank the engine quits, steam and smoke erupt from under the hood and they slowly coast to a stop, pulling over.
They sit there for a few minutes listening to the engine click and creak as it cools down.
Then Jesus says, “I told you, you should have let me drive.”
He opens the creaking car door, slams it hard, and starts walking.
The devil leans out the window and says, “It is my world you know.”
Jesus shades his eyes as he looks to the far off horizon, and he whispers, “We’ll see about that.”
Whose world is it anyway?
We get these conflicting statements from the witness of scripture and from our own experience.
Who is driving the car?
The tempting of Jesus didn’t end with the forty days.
It didn’t end until he was on the cross and he quoted a different scripture than the devil, rather than seizing or demanding or controlling he surrenders his life, “Father into your hands I commend my spirit.”
The devil’s world is full of power and wealth and glory and those who are twisted by it.
God’s world is the world of the suffering messiah, who claims the world for God with love rather than abuse, with grace rather than bullying, with hope rather than scorn, with hospitality rather than disrespect.
The thing about the wilderness road is that it really isn’t a journey that we choose.
It is forced upon us.
Most of us really aren’t on a journey for Lent, we simply are getting by, choosing to survive. Wondering how to just keep the car going.
The wilderness question does press upon us more acutely though. Perhaps even more so this year.
Whose world will I live in?
Who is driving?
That is the acute question, in the wilderness that is forced upon us.
Whose world will I live in?
Who is driving?
We answer it not with words or thoughts, but by how we live.
The choice.
Forty days and forty nights.
Whose world?
Who drives?
An old car comes down the hot dessert highway.
What happens next?