“Pull Out the Pacifier”
March 9, 2025
Luke 4:1–13
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 tested 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.’ ”
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 all this authority and their glory, for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. 7you, 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 led him to Jerusalem and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple and said 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,’
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. ***
Each spring the season of Lent begins with the story of the Spirit leading Jesus into the wilderness and being tempted by the devil after 40 days of fasting. In each temptation, the devil speaks first and Jesus replies. The story ends when the devil finishes the temptation and leaves Jesus, for the time being.
You have heard preachers expound many times on what Jesus and the devil said to each other. So, my attention is on the wilderness where the testing took place.
Perhaps you have been to the wilderness. Maybe it looked like a nursing home or hospital room or your best friend’s couch after you and your partner split. Maybe it looked like your first AA or Alanon meeting. Perhaps the wilderness was in the middle of your own chest, where you begged for a word from God and heard nothing but the cadence of your own breath.
The truth is wilderness comes in many fashions. What you normally count on to save your life is unreachable, so you come up empty. Wilderness.
None of us seek such wilderness. Instead we spend time and effort trying to stay out of it. I have never met anyone who succeeds at that entirely or forever. Sooner or later, we will get to take our own wilderness exam, our own trip to the desert to discover who we really are and what our lives are really about.
For Jesus, the wilderness was beneficial. It freed him of the devil’s attempts to distract him from his mission and any illusion that God would make his choices for him. After forty days in the wilderness, Jesus had not only learned to manage his appetites; he had also learned to trust the Spirit that had led him there to lead him out again, with the kind of clarity and grit he could not have found anywhere else.
Christians began the season of Lent on Ash Wednesday. “Lent,” comes from the word lencten, which means “spring season”. Spring makes me think of crocus and daffodils emerging just in time for Easter. But for Christians, Lent is to be about the greening of the human soul
Throughout the ages and with the direction of priests and pastors, the season of Lent meant people were instructed to grow and green up their soul by practicing subtraction instead of addition. Give up chocolate, diet Coke, Bombay gin and tonics, meat on Fridays, even your cell phone. These subtractions of things you cherish or need are supposed to discipline faithful living in order to acquire whatever it takes to grow and green up your soul. Or so you were told.
The problem for most of us in any Lenten discipline is that we cannot go straight from leaving the gin bottle above the refrigerator, tossing the chocolate bar in the trash, turning off the cell phone to hearing the still, small voice of God in the wilderness. If it worked like that, churches would be full and Verizon would be out of business. If it worked like that, Lent would only be about twenty minutes long.
I want to propose that Lent is about wilderness learning. I realize this is challenging because we are naturally afraid of being in the wilderness of life. So we hone behaviors or reach for whatever anesthetizes life in order to avoid the wilderness because it is too sad, or too frightening to face ourselves with all the pain, shame, fears, guilts, regrets and faults.
Wilderness learning, according to Jesus, is the beginning of a greener soul with a life of trusting in a greater power that we call Jesus. Focusing on Lent as a time for such learning and growth provides us forty whole days for finding out what life is like without anesthesia or the pacifier.
Once you turn off the television or put down the Kindle, a night can get really long. Once you take out the earbuds, silence can be really loud. After a while you can start thinking that all of the quiet emptiness or, worst case, all the howling wilderness, is a sign of things gone terribly wrong: devil on the loose, huge temptations, God gone AWOL — not to mention your own spiritual insufficiency to deal with any of these things.
But if you remember to breathe — and say your prayers — then nine times out of ten you can make it through your first night in the wilderness with no extra bread, power, or protection. You can get used to the sound of your own heart beating and whatever it is that is yipping out there. You may even be able to sleep a little while and wake up gladder to be alive than you can ever remember being. So there are thirty-nine days to go. Do not count. Take it one day at a time.
After you have reached for your pacifier a few times and remembered it is not there — not because someone stole it from you but because you made a conscious decision to give it up — then you may discover a whole new level of conversation with yourself.
Are you hungry?
I am famished .
Well, what’s wrong with that? Are you dying?
No.
Can you stand being hungry for a while longer?
Maybe. I guess so.
Okay, so what else? Are you lonely?
Yes, I am! I am terribly lonely!
What’s wrong with being alone? Will it kill you?
I don’t like it.
That’s not what I asked. Can you live through it?
Probably not, but I’ll try.
Our minds are geniuses at telling us that losing our pacifier is going to kill us, but it is almost never true. All that’s going to happen is that we’re going to suck air for a while, then we’re going to hiccup, then we’re going to look around and see things without that pink plastic circle under our noses, which is going to turn out to be a good thing both for us and for everyone else in our lives.
But it would be a mistake for me to try to describe your wilderness test. Only you can do that, because only you know what devils have your number, and what kinds of bribes they use to get you to pick up. All I know for sure is that a voluntary trip to the desert this Lent is a great way to practice getting free of those devils for life — not only because it is where you lose your appetite for things that cannot save you, but also because it is where you learn to trust the Spirit that led you there to lead you out again, ready to worship the Lord your God and serve no other all the days of your life.
Resources for growing and greening your soul this Lent
1 “There is God’s Garden” a daily devotional for Lent provided by Luther Seminary, St Paul, MN Download a PDF copy here Lenten Devotional
2 “The Hardest Part” a daily devotional by Kate Bowler.
Life is this strange, tender mix, isn’t it? Joy and sorrow, love and loss, heartbreak and hope, all tangled together.
This year, embrace Lent as it is — raw, honest, and tender. Let these 40 days be a time to pause, reflect, and find the courage to stay with the hard part, trusting that the good part is still coming
The Hardest Part — Kate Bowler
3 “Have a Beautiful, Terrible Lent a daily devotional by Kate Bowler.
At 35, Kate was blindsided by Stage IV cancer and the aftermath of its grueling treatment. It was a wilderness time. After that colossal suck and her subsequent recovery, Kate began to rethink pretty much everything she thought she knew about life, loss, grief, and even joy.
Kate: Lent is full of hard truths. And it is a perfect moment for spiritual honesty. We can look on this tragicomedy with love and bemusement as we wait for the someday that will be God’s promised future. There, God’s kingdom comes. God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And in the meantime, there’s this . . . our beautiful, terrible days.
