Lectionary Commentaries for March 9, 2025
First Sunday in Lent

Before anything else, we must get clear about the characters in this scene. There is Jesus, and in Luke’s story we have just seen him baptized and identified as God’s Son, the Beloved. We have also seen him woven into a genealogy that begins with characters that could be anybody and continues to the great figures of Jewish history: David, Abraham, Adam, and finally God.

And there is the devil, whoever he is. 

We are part of a long popular theological history that is very sure it knows what it means for Jesus to be the Son of God. This history is also sure it knows what it means to be the devil. The tradition might be wrong.

First of all, when Jesus is first identified as the Son of God, it marks him as Messiah, the Anointed One (see Psalm 2). But at the end of the genealogy, another character, Adam, is given the same identity. Adam is not the Messiah; not a transcendent figure, not even quasi-divine. He is the first human, the being into whom God blew the breath of life. If Adam is filled with the breath of God, so is Jesus, who was led into the wilderness where the scene for this Sunday takes place. Whoever Jesus is in this scene, his identity is a bit more complicated than traditional theology generally acknowledges. 

And the devil is similarly complicated. Traditional popular theology knows him as the one who tempts human beings to sin. Many translations (including the New Revised Standard Version) have had him doing that to Jesus in this scene. They translated peirazomenos as “tempt,” rather than “test,” as the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition renders the word. The more recent translation is better. 

But who is this tester? In Greek he is the diabolos, which sounds diabolical, and this fits into popular theology with its notion of a devil, a power who stands over against God. While such dualistic notions are not entirely foreign to Jewish thought, there is an older, more interesting tradition. If behind the diabolos is the satan, this character is the Cosmic Building Inspector (see the book of Job), not a diabolical opponent of God’s rule. 

If the diabolos in this scene is doing what the satan does in Job, then he is carrying out his divinely ordained role by testing the durability of God’s creation. In this case, it is the Son of God who is being tested to see if he holds true. If the Son of God is the Messiah, the testing is powerful and interesting. If the son of God is Adam, the testing becomes perhaps even more intriguing. 

The first test seems simple. Jesus is fasting for a very long time. He is famished. The tester offers him a release: Since you are “Son of God,” make these stones into bread and break your fast. We, of course, do not know if Jesus had the power to make the stones into bread. He does not perform any similar miracle in Luke’s story (nor in any of the canonical gospels). So perhaps the tester is simply toying with Jesus: “You must be hungry,” he says, “hungry enough to dream of eating anything, even these stones …”

Jesus’ answer is interesting. It reminds me of the experience of a friend of mine. My friend’s daughter was approaching the time for her bat mitzvah. One day she asked her father what was wrong about eating pepperoni pizza. She had encountered that particular delicacy at slumber parties in the homes of non-Jewish friends. “God made pigs just like God made sheep. What’s so wrong about eating pork?” She loved arguments. So did my friend. 

“That’s a good question,” he told his daughter. “You’ll have to find an answer.”

His daughter had hoped for an argument, and she got a research project. She went to slumber party after slumber party, and came home smelling of pepperoni, pulled pork, and bacon. Especially bacon. 

One day (about when she should have been beginning to learn her Torah portion for the bat mitzvah service), she came to her father and announced her results. “I have concluded that there is nothing wrong with pork,” she said. “God made it, and it tastes wonderful.”

My friend was not surprised, but he was a bit nervous. Perhaps his daughter would be non-observant. This would not be a catastrophe. Not all faithful Jews keep kosher. But perhaps she would decide that she was not Jewish, not in any form. Again, this would not be a catastrophe. Such things happen, and God understands. But it would be at least awkward.

“There is nothing bad about pork,” she repeated, “but there is a great deal that is good about learning to control yourself. When I smell pepperoni pizza, I will remember that I am a Jew, and I will control myself.” 

That is essentially what Jesus says to the tester. “Of course I am famished. I am fasting, after all. There is more to life than food.” Such self-control is important in a human being, more so in a messiah.

Then comes the second test. “In a world full of enemies and danger,” says the tester, “what you need is the power to control them. Bow down to power, and I will give that power to you.” 

This is a stronger test. If the Messiah has the task of turning the world right-side-up, surely that task will require power. Just listen to the hymns we sing; listen to the worship songs. Jesus will reign, rule, conquer, control. All of those accomplishments require power.  

Listen to the political fantasies that attend any election cycle. Candidates offer power and call their opponents weak. They do this predictably because they know we imagine that we will be safe if only we have enough power. 

Jesus picks up on a subtle flaw in the test. The test is about the desire for power, but the tester disguises this behind a call for Jesus to bow down. Jesus notes that worship is to be directed only toward God. But his response is more than just a dodge. “You are to worship,” he notes, “the LORD your God.” The word “LORD” signals the presence of the unpronounceable divine Name, YHWH, which the rabbis note names the mercy attribute of God. The other name for God, Elohim (translated as “God”), names the justice attribute. But that means that Jesus just accomplished what Jewish tradition calls “the unification of the Name.” Both attributes are brought together, and it is made clear that the justice of God is lived out in acts of mercy, not power. This is a marvelous rejection of our love of power. This rejection makes it possible for any human being (even the Messiah) to participate in the reign of God. 

The final test sounds like a circus trick. “Since you are the Son of God, let’s see you fly.” Again, Jesus never does anything remotely like flying. He does not do circus tricks. 

But the test is again more subtle. The tester is offering him a chance to be above it all, above all restraints, above all law, even the law of gravity. This test offers the Messiah (and every human being) the chance to be absolutely free. And if the Messiah is free even from the law of gravity, then the Messiah is invulnerable. 

Which, of course, is precisely what it does not mean to be Messiah. Or human. Every parent learns the radical vulnerability that comes with attempting to raise children. You can do everything right and still have everything go wrong. Likewise, every child learns the radical vulnerability that comes with having parents. They are flawed, all of them, and their flaws leave marks. They grow old and become increasingly vulnerable so that finally the parent we understood to be the strongest, smartest, bestest in the world becomes frail and confused. 

And the Messiah must suffer and die, says Luke at the climax of the Gospel. Messiah must be subject not only to gravity, but to the Roman power to torture and kill. Otherwise, Messiah is not one of us at all, not a son of God like every child of Adam, the son of God. 

At the beginning of Lent, Christians often participate in a ritual of remembrance, recalling their mortality. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (see Genesis 3:19; Ecclesiastes 3:20). Lest we lose our grounding, the ritual imposition of ashes and proclamation of mortality foregrounds our human connection to the humus, ’adam “earthling” as essentially ’adamah “earth” (Genesis 2:7). Following Ash Wednesday, on the first Sunday of Lent, the lectionary takes us to another down-to-earth ritual.

Deuteronomy 26 prescribes a bit of land-based liturgical theater for the Israelites. Each year, when the harvest begins, farmers are told to gather a basket full of the firstfruits of the harvest to present to God at the place of worship. Just as in the Ash Wednesday tradition, specific lines of dialogue are given to these farmer-worshipers to recite. First, they are to declare that they are immigrants—that they have come to the land as outsiders. This is strange, because the text imagines that this ritual would be performed by each generation, annually. Even farmers who had been born in the land, whose grandparents and great-grandparents had been born in the land, are asked to declare for themselves, “I have come into the land that the LORD swore to our ancestors to give us” (Deuteronomy 26:3).

From one angle, this statement reflects an ancient understanding of procreation, that individuals (men) carried the seed of all of their future descendants within their own bodies. From that perspective, the generation of Israelites who physically entered the land had brought future generations with them. Even native-born Israelites had “come into the land” with their ancestors.

Remembering dependence

More than this, however, is communicated in this ceremonial declaration. By foregrounding their status as perpetual immigrants, this firstfruits ritual reminded each generation that the land did not actually belong to them—they were recent tenants, but the land itself belonged to God. They depended on the land for survival and depended on God for the land. When they presented a basket of produce from the early harvest before God’s altar and declared their immigrant identity, worshipers were reminded, year after year, that their enjoyment of the bounty of the land was not inevitable. It was not their right. It was not their reward. The benefits of the land were a gracious gift from God. 

Like our Lenten ashes and fasting practices, Israel’s presentation of firstfruits and declaration of dependence served as an embodied mnemonic—a memory aid—fueling humility and gratitude to God for the gift of life and sustenance.

God’s covenant with Christians is not a land-based covenant. But just as much as the Israelites’ covenant, ours is grounded in God’s grace and lived out in our bodies of “dust.” Lent is a timely season to be reminded, as the firstfruits offering reminded Israel, that we are entirely dependent on God for our embodied lives in this world.

Ritual time-travel

The ritual script continued. The next part of the ceremony required each worshiper to recite their community’s historical memory of God’s saving action, bringing them out of Egyptian bondage and into the land of promise. It reminds me of the Words of Institution often recited at Christian celebrations of the eucharist: “On the night when he was betrayed, Jesus took bread…” At the Lord’s table, we remember and vocalize a history of God’s saving acts on our behalf. Through our own participation in that meal, we find ourselves mystically invited to the table with Jesus’ disciples. In a mysterious way—metaphorical and yet somehow real—we were there.

This is precisely the ethos we find in the historical recitation at Israel’s firstfruits ceremony. There, gathered around another divine table (the temple’s altar), prepared with bread (the firstfruits offering), their “words of institution” rehearse a gospel of God’s saving work in history: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor…” (Deuteronomy 26:5). The mystical time-travel of the eucharist is also paralleled in the firstfruits ritual. In the telling of their story, they were there with their ancestors: When “we cried to the LORD … the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction … brought us out of Egypt … brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey” (Deuteronomy 26:7–9).

Ritual remembrances such as these communicate—and in some ways create—communal identity. Those who participate are formed by their participation. For ancient Israel, this firstfruits ceremony envisioned a community for whom liberation was not just part of their origin story but was at the very heart of who they were and would always be. Jews and Christians alike have inherited that liberative identity from our ancient Israelite ancestors in faith. We are people rescued by God. 

An inclusive celebration

The lectionary reading ends with instructions for the great celebration that ought to follow the liturgical ceremony. Importantly, these instructions include the explicit command to share the bounty of the harvest “together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you” (Deuteronomy 26:11). Levites and aliens were those who had no ancestral heritage of land, and therefore depended on landholding Israelites for their daily bread. They were not, however, parasites on the Israelite economy. To the contrary, they were “essential workers” whose labor contributed significantly to the flourishing of Israelite society.

A celebration of the fruit of the land risked excluding those who did not possess ancestral land, Therefore, the text demands that these important, but vulnerable, community members must be sought out and included in the festivities.

Likewise, while care for the poor and vulnerable is our responsibility throughout the year, Lent has traditionally been a season of special focus on almsgiving. Just as our spiritual ancestors embedded a reminder to care for the needy within their annual celebration of the firstfruits, Christians can mark the season of Lent as a time to redouble a commitment to care for the most vulnerable in our communities—especially those without the privilege of generational wealth and those considered aliens and outsiders by the privileged insiders.

Israeli scholar Yair Hoffman once characterized Psalm 91 as an “amulet psalm.”¹

The term originated from a practice that developed in both early Jewish and Christian communities of placing bits of Psalm 91 in amulets so that the wearer would feel God’s nearness and be reminded of God’s providential care in times of trouble.

While today we might consider such a practice superstitious, this custom draws attention to the heartbeat of this psalm, the unwavering testimony of the psalmist that God is our refuge and our strength, the one in whom we can put our confidence. In this individual psalm of trust, the psalmist pulls out all the stops and holds nothing back in confession that God will indeed cover the psalmist with divine protection such that “no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent” (verse 10).

It is not immediately clear what precipitates the psalmist’s song. The psalmist opens with images related to military protection—“refuge” and “fortress” (verse 2a)—which would suggest that the psalmist is under attack and physically threatened. Verse 6, however, moves beyond military threat to include “pestilence that stalks in the darkness” and “destruction that wastes at noonday.” The impression given is that whatever danger the psalmist may encounter in this life, whether it be persecution, physical or mental threat, or even illness, the psalmist will find safety and shelter under the wings of Almighty God.

Some have struggled with the hyperbolic language of this psalm and its strong statements about God’s saving action. Certainly, our earthly experience, which is full of trials and tribulations, doesn’t seem to reflect the psalmist’s testimony. A few notes, however, may help to clarify what the psalm does and doesn’t say about God’s care for his people:

1. Psalm 91 is not a doctrinal statement. The psalmist isn’t teaching a course on the Doctrine of God. Instead, the psalmist is professing faith in the same God who has shown himself to be faithful throughout the history of God’s people, delivering them from slavery in Egypt, from their enemies in the land of Canaan, and from all who would seek to destroy them as a people. Through the ages, God remained faithful to his covenant so that the psalmist can say with confidence that God will continue to sustain his people. The point is that while God’s protection did not mean that Israel never suffered pain or went through difficult times, in the broad scheme of things, God did guard people in all their ways (verse 11).
2. Reading this psalm in its literary context, and particularly in relation to Psalm 90, lends nuance and perspective to Psalm 91. Psalm 90 begins Book III of the Psalter. The superscription associates this psalm with Moses, reflecting on the fragility and brokenness of human life in relation to the eternal goodness and grace of God. Psalm 90 ends with the cry, “Have compassion on your servants! … Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and prosper for us the work of our hands” (verses 13b, 17a). Psalm 91 is a response to this prayer. It is a statement of conviction and trust that though we are dust and “our years come to an end like a sigh” (90:9b), yet God, the Most High, invites us to take up residency in the shelter of the Almighty. Reading these two psalms together shifts attention away from the distress of the psalmist to the astonishing fact that the Most High—the almighty and everlasting God—notices, responds to, and cares about our suffering. Though we are dust and our life is but a fleeting moment, still the Creator of the universe commits himself unfailingly to his people so that the psalmist can say with confidence, “He is my refuge and my fortress.” The remarkable truth that the psalmist professes is that through the trials and challenges of life, we are not alone. God is on our side.
3. When the evil one quotes Psalm 91:11–12 to Jesus in the wilderness, goading him to throw himself off the temple, Jesus rejects any notion that God is at his beck and call. Responding with Deuteronomy 6:16, “Do not put the LORD your God to the test,” Jesus spurns the suggestion that one can presume upon God’s saving power for one’s own gain. The testimony of Psalm 91, then, is not that God’s people are immune to suffering, especially when that suffering comes as a result of folly or sin. Instead, it is that God will not ultimately let suffering or even death separate us from his love and care.
4. And this is certainly the emphasis at the end of the psalm. Structurally, the psalm can be divided into two main sections: verses 1–13 and verses 14–16. The first section is the psalmist’s confession of trust. The second, however, reflects not the psalmist’s voice but God’s. Strikingly, God’s words assume that his people will experience hardship and suffering. “When they call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble” (verse 15). In some ways, God seems to be offering a bit of a corrective here to the psalmist’s theology, redirecting the psalmist toward a conception of God’s providence as protection and presence, not necessarily immunity from suffering.

As we read this psalm during the season of Lent, it serves as a reminder that with God at our side, our trials and tribulations won’t overcome us. More than that, as we look to Jesus and his journey to the cross, we are reminded again of how seriously God took his word to be with us in our suffering. Taking on our sin, our sorrows, and our suffering, Jesus bore them on the cross and laid the foundation for their ultimate defeat. In Christ, God truly has rescued us and shown us his salvation.

Notes

Commentary previously published on this website for March 10, 2019.

The several exegetical challenges in the passage itself and in its context need not divert from Paul’s overriding focus on the absolute indispensability of wholehearted trust in God. During Lent, this reminder could not be more appropriate. The passage calls Christians to remember where the focus of their self-examination and confession should be: asking themselves whether they fully embrace God’s righteousness, complete trustworthiness, and capacity to bring life out of death. Living otherwise is a denial of God’s grace in offering us God’s own character (dikaiosūne righteousness/justice). 

This passage is a warning not to be like those Paul cares about so deeply—his fellow Israelites—whom he believes have a tragically ignorant zeal for God (10:2). In his view they do not know the righteousness of God, which leaves them in a situation of seeking to understand righteousness in or on their own terms (10:3). The obvious consequence of this is that, even though his fellow Jews have the law, they do not subordinate themselves to God’s righteousness (10:3).

Paul underscores that the life of faith is not a self-generated life, and certainly not something to take pride in. The life of faith is not one that works to be righteous but rather one that enacts the righteousness given by God through Christ. The word dikaiosūne means both righteousness and justice. While these two English words have different connotations, one focused on character (righteousness) and the other on action for the sake of others (justice), both meanings should be heard: What is essential for Paul is that it is only God’s dikaiosūne that is true righteousness/justice. And, moreover, that God’s righteousness/justice cannot be achieved by human beings; it can only be received.

The life of faith is lived from the righteousness that accompanies the gift of trust in God’s faithfulness (4:21) and power to create life (4:17). This was made evident from the start of the Jewish people: “For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith” (4:13).   

The righteousness of faith is the way of life of those who submit in faith to God’s righteousness/justice. In distinction from the righteousness of the law (10:5), the dikaiosūne of faith is equivalent to Christ (though, as we shall see, this does not prevent Paul from recognizing that the law illuminates the righteousness of faith). Christ and the righteousness of faith are organically connected; one without the other is inconceivable. It is not only that belief in Christ accords people God’s righteousness/justice but that Christ manifests righteousness/justice by faith. Christ entirely demonstrates knowledge of God’s righteousness and submission to God’s righteousness (10:3). 

Consequently, the telos of the law is Christ (10:4), in the sense of being its objective; Christ’s character and actions on behalf of others, revealed in both his incarnate and exalted life, are sourced in his absolute submission to God’s will, and so to God’s dikaiosūne.

Paul dramatically presents Christ as the manifestation of God’s righteousness by inserting Christ in place of the law in Deuteronomy 30. When Deuteronomy speaks of “who will go up into heaven” (Deuteronomy 30:12)—words Paul uses in Romans 10:6—it concerns the law. Moses in Deuteronomy exhorts the Israelites that the law is doable: “Surely, this commandment … is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ … No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe” (Deuteronomy 30:11–14). 

Paul makes his identification of Christ with the law unmistakable by his explanatory statement “that is, to bring Christ down” (10:6). And the organic connection between Christ and the righteousness of faith is made plain when Paul writes that it is the latter that says “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will go up into heaven?’” (10:6). The righteousness of faith knows where Christ is and who Christ is. It knows that “‘the word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart’ (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim)” (10:8). The “word of faith” is clearly Paul’s proclamation of the gospel, which, as he says at the outset of Romans, concerns Jesus Christ our Lord (1:1–4). 

Whereas in Deuteronomy what is near is the commandment of the law, Paul claims that what is near is Christ and the proclamation of Christ. And whereas Moses claims that the law is not too difficult and that it promises life (Deuteronomy 30:16), Paul rewrites these convictions: The only way to life (salvation; 10:9) is acknowledging that “Jesus is Lord” and wholeheartedly believing that “God raised him from the dead” (10:9).  

Such faith is essentially submission to God’s righteousness (see also 10:3)—it is an acknowledgment of where God’s righteousness is found—in Christ; and where it is not—in seeking to define and enact righteousness apart from life in Christ. Paul is not here criticizing or discarding the Jewish law but, rather, focusing attention on Christ, the one who manifests the righteousness of God to which the law itself bears witness.

This passage occurs amid Paul’s anguished explanation of his desire for his fellow Jews who do not yet know Christ (Romans 9–11). He believes that though God has not rejected his people (11:1) and that in the end they will be saved (11:26), nevertheless, their lives of law-keeping are deeply impoverished if they are ignorant of Christ. Notably, Paul sees the righteousness of faith as speaking words from the law, and in the process, the law illuminates Christ (10:6–10).

Paul here emphasizes that our greatest failure is to be ignorant of the righteousness God offers in and through Christ. It invites us to know that through God’s grace, Christ and the understanding of Christ (the proclaimed word) are near us, indeed within us. We do not need to strive but may trust. This is not, however, an exhortation to obsess over how much faith we might have. Rather, it is an encouragement to see that the word/Christ is near us and within us—and so, through trust that Jesus is Lord, we are embraced by the dikaiosūne of God.