Sunday, March 9th, 2025: "Full to the Brim: Even in the Desert"

Watch the Sermon Here

 The First United Presbyterian Church

“Full to the Brim: Even in the Desert”

Rev. Amy Morgan

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, 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. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” 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. 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. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus answered him, “It is written,

‘Worship the Lord your God,

    and serve only the Holy One.’ ”

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, for it is written,

‘God will command the 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.’ ”

Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ” When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

I was invited to spend an hour locked in a room with seven other people. It was my friend’s birthday, and escape rooms were a new form of entertainment. At first, I failed to see the fun in being confined to a 250 square foot room outfitted with a table, chair, bookcase, a padlock on the door, and items clearly purchased from the Dollar Store. Half of our company were people I had just met, and none of us knew what we were doing. 

But I learned some very important things in the 59 minutes and 35 seconds it took for us to escape:

1. I am bad at puzzles.
2. It’s easy to make friends or become enemies with people you’re stuck with.
3. Prolonged confinement makes cheating very tempting. 
4. The fun of an escape room isn’t escaping. It’s everything that happens before that.
5. When you do escape, life feels very expansive. 

The Israelites had been locked up for a lot more than an hour. They’d been confined to slavery in Egypt for generations. When they escaped, the desert must have felt expansive – at first. But after 40 years of wandering around, trying to figure out what God was up to, they are ready to pick the lock on the Promised Land. And in our text from Deuteronomy this morning, they are so close. 

But before they can get out of their desert detention, they need to figure some things out. Moses reviews all the laws of God, the way they need to commit to living in order to be liberated, not just from this wilderness landscape, but from things that will imprison their spirits or confine their community. During their time in the desert, the Israelites have been bad at solving the puzzle that is God. They have argued with God and their leaders, and they have made friends and worked together to try to follow God’s directions. They have cheated, for sure. There was that whole golden calf incident that got them nowhere. And maybe it hasn’t been fun, but it has made them a new people, a people prepared to possess the land and live abundantly and expansively. 

The Israelites are instructed to bring their best gifts, their first fruits, to God, so that as a community they can flourish and thrive. They rehearse their shared story, their collective identity, to strengthen those bonds that will help them move out of confinement and into the expansive life God desires for them. Because no one escapes alone. I can promise you that without those seven other people I would still be stuck in a tiny room in a sketchy office building in Royal Oak, Michigan. 

Jesus’s confinement to the wilderness didn’t last as long as the Israelites’, but his 40-day escape room was also an opportunity prepare for the expansive life God was calling him to. Even Jesus does not escape alone. He’s brought into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit, who, we might surmise, does not abandon him there. And the devil, the adversary, is there with him the whole time, too. Both friends and enemies help Jesus unlock his purpose and his resources. Jesus is presented with three puzzles to solve. Thankfully, he is much better at puzzles than I am. He resists all the temptations to cheat. And when he escapes, he is ready not just to live an expansive life but to offer that expansive life to others. 

We all experience wilderness seasons, times when it feels like we are wandering around, lost, unable to find our way out. It can feel like we’re stuck, locked in this suspended reality. Sometimes it lasts an hour. Sometimes it lasts for years. Sometimes we’re not sure it will ever end, that we will ever escape. 

We get stuck in relationships that leave us hungry for love and parched for affection. We get lost in the search for meaning and purpose and end up settling for power and control. We get stranded in the limitations of our bodies and wish for invincibility. 

It’s no fun. It is not a party, trying to escape from rooms we’ve been locked up in, rooms that maybe we’ve locked ourselves into. We just want to escape. Escape from the confinement of our ideological echo chambers, our endless need for more, our insatiable desire to be admired. Life feels like a series of confounding puzzles, and everyone around us seems to be solving them easily while we remain perplexed. And the clock just keeps ticking. 

We may not be good at puzzles. We may make friends and enemies. We may be tempted to cheat. But in these locked rooms, in these wilderness seasons, there is something happening that will prepare us to live the expansive life God desires for us. 

That may not be easy to see or trust.

But first we have to recognize that we are not locked in these rooms alone. Right now, that might be the most difficult part of the equation. We feel so alone. We feel like the only one with our problems, the only one who doesn’t know what to do, the only one trapped in this life. But we are not alone. 

We are in this room with all the saints of God, those who surround us in this space, those worshiping with us online, and all those folks in every time and place who have contemplated the puzzle that is God. The Israelites remembered their shared ancestry and shared their communal story. And we can do that, too. Remembering our ancestors in the faith, sharing our connected stories, gives us a sense of who we are, who we belong to, and what we’re capable of – together. 

And then we can commit to bringing our best gifts to the table. Maybe I’m not great at solving puzzles, but I can really celebrate when other people figure things out and encourage people along the way. Some of us may not be great at trust, but we can think reasonably and critically. Some of us may need help with humility, but we are great at inspiring and strengthening others. Some of us may not be courageous, but our honesty is a great asset. Because we’re working together, we will make friends and enemies along the way. And both kinds of people can contribute to solutions, to helping us find our way out. 

We may be tempted to cheat, to find a shortcut, a workaround, an advantage. When we’re trapped in a grueling, meaningless job, we are tempted to manipulate people around us to get a promotion or get hired on somewhere else. When we’re locked inside systems of power that feel unjust and oppressive, we are tempted to worship at the altar of whomever or whatever can put us on top. When we’re bound by the belief that nothing we do really matters, we can take risks that could hurt ourselves or others so that we can feel alive. Cheating is always a temptation when we feel confined. 

Jesus counters temptation with something much stronger than personal willpower. He remembers the words of his ancestors, the promises of his God, the instructions of his sages. Jesus doesn’t come up with clever retorts off the top of his head. He doesn’t have a single original idea that enables him to solve the puzzles of his escape room. He has time-tested, community attested, divinely articulated answers. 

And we have those same resources. We do not need to try to escape our personal or communal escape rooms with cleverness or originality. We just need to remember the words of our ancestors, the promises of God, the instruction of our sages. 

We do not survive on what we can do and create for ourselves. Only God is worthy of our faith and praise. We don’t need to test God to trust God. 

Together, sharing our best gifts, remembering our shared resources and stories, we can find the way out of the desert, the wilderness, the places we feel imprisoned. But we will not be the same. Something happens to us in this process of figuring our way out. We connect more deeply with each other and become a stronger community. We know ourselves and our gifts more fully. We are released from the identities, fears, barriers, and burdens that kept us stuck in place. 

And that process prepares us to live the expansive life God desires for us. And it prepares us to share that expansive life with others. People who have come through the wilderness, who have escaped from the confinement of their souls, are those who live so expansively that their presence is life-giving to the whole community. 

As we journey through this Lenten season, may we remember that God is offering us and preparing us for an expansive life, full to the brim with love and hope. Even in this wilderness season, we have everything we need to thrive. As long as we share our gifts, engage in community, and resist temptation, we will find a way out. No matter how long it takes, we are in this together, and we will get through it and out of it together.