Why does the Church put this reading at the beginning of Lent every year? Why start our forty-day journey here, in the wilderness with Jesus?

Because Lent is meant to be a time of burnishing and refining. It’s a time when we let God’s Holy Spirit burn off the dross and the dregs of our spiritual lives. When all the parts of our lives – and our common life – that we wish weren’t part of us are given over to God for reworking.

The fear that paralyzes us in the face of violence or division – that’s given to God for an upgrade.

The cynicism that keeps us from trusting or hoping – that’s swapped out for a new and better part.

The wounds from trauma, from broken institutions, from years wandering in cultural and spiritual wilderness – those are brought to the refiner’s fire not to be forgotten but to be transformed.

But here’s the crucial distinction: God’s testing refines. The devil’s testing seeks to destroy through calumny and false accusation. God puts us in the crucible to burn away what isn’t gold. The Assayer wants to prove there was never any gold to begin with.

We’ve been in the crucible – personally, communally, nationally. We’ve been tested. And we’re still here. Still gathering. Still faithful. Still trusting, even when that trust has been hard-won and costs us something.

The wilderness doesn’t last forever. Even Jesus’s forty days came to an end. Matthew tells us that after the devil left, angels came and ministered to him. After the testing comes the tending. After the trial comes the care.

This Lent, as we walk these forty days together, may we follow Jesus’s example: standing on the Word of God, refusing the Slanderer’s lies about who we are, trusting that the One who tests us does so not to destroy but to refine, not to condemn but to raise to dignity.

The wilderness is real. The testing is real. But so is the promise on the other side of it. And so are the angels who come to minister when the testing is done.

You can view the entire sermon at this link.