Three Lies the World Tells Us About Our Identity
Three Lies the World Tells Us About Our Identity
And Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert.
Forty days and forty nights He fasted.
If you think about an ordinary social interaction,
that you might have at a party or some sort of scene,
and you are meeting people for the first time,
what is typically the first question after you have greeted?
What do you do?
And I am always reluctant to answer
because they are so disappointed!
They are like, "Oh, okay,"
and then the conversation comes to an end.
But here is what is interesting,
people want to know your title, where you work.
If they could, they would ask how much you make.
That is the unfortunate part of our culture.
Let me give you an example
at the other end of what happens.
I recently talked with a man who lost his job,
one of my former parishioners.
He said, "I lost my job six months ago.
I have not been able to tell anyone.
I have not told my family, I have not told anyone."
I said, "Six months? Why?"
He said, "I am terrified.
My job has been everything."
He said, "I go out the door every day and I come back."
I said, "You have not told them?"
"No, I do not know how.
My job has defined me.
I am completely lost."
Because that is the lie the devil tells us.
We are what we do.
It is one of the ancient serpent's lies,
and we hear it in the readings today.
In the first reading, we hear this ancient parable
from Genesis of Adam and Eve.
The ancient lie is to believe what the devil tells us
and to disobey God.
That is what the ancient serpent has been doing for eons,
and we hear it in today's gospel.
Jesus is tempted in the same way.
If you are the Son of God, change these stones into bread.
Show me what you can do.
If you are the Son of God,
throw yourself off this temple
and all the angels will minister to you.
Show me, see what everyone else is going to say.
If you are the Son of God, bow down before me
and I will give you everything.
You are what you have.
The three ancient lies of the devil.
You are what you do.
You are what other people say you are.
And you are what you have.
But friends, these may be the ancient lies of the serpent,
but they still play out again in our own lives.
And Christ comes to tell us
that we are not what we do.
We are not what other people say we are,
and we are not what we have.
We are a child of God.
And there is nothing that we can do
or fail to do to change that.
We can separate ourselves from God and push God away,
but it does not make us any less a child of God.
No matter how sinful we become,
and this may be hard for us to hear,
no matter how sinful anyone else becomes,
they never, ever lose that title
of being a child of God.
But it is important for us to hear that for ourselves first,
because we cannot share it with others
until we feel that we are the beloved child of God.
And that is how Jesus starts His ministry.
It is just after He gets baptized at the Jordan River,
and a voice comes out of the clouds and says,
"This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased."
Now He goes off to the desert to ponder this.
This is the real message.
You are a beloved child of God.
Do not forget that.
No matter what the ancient one ever tries to tell you,
you are my child, you are loved by me, your Creator.
And that is what the journey of Lent is about, my friends.
For us to push all the other stuff aside for a moment
and to really ponder the depth of that message
and how that can really change us if we allow it.
We have to allow the message to seep into us.
And to do that, the Church has given us three pillars of Lent
that help us to do this for forty days,
to walk like Jesus did.
And we do prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
But they are all called to bring us back to the same thing,
to focus on God, to listen to God's voice saying to us,
"You are my beloved Son.
You are my beloved Daughter.
I am well pleased in you. Now, come follow me."
It is hard to do this in our society
that has all the expectations of success
as being what you do, what other people say you do.
Look at social media.
The whole promise of social media is built on that lie.
It is the vice of all vices.
Look at how many likes you get,
how many followers, how many references.
It is the ancient lie played again today.
Different voice, same lie!
And that is what it is built on, the whole thing.
We are just eyeballs to them.
That is all we are.
They do not give a care about what us do or what we are.
They are just trying to get us on
so that they sell our attention to somebody else.
That is what it is.
Just understand the ancient lie takes on a different form,
but that is what it is—a BIG lie.
So maybe this Lent, maybe one of the things you could do
is fast from social media,
or maybe just fast for some period of time each day,
so that you could pause and pray
and listen to the more ancient voice that says,
"You are my beloved."
And then in that time of prayer, in that time of fasting,
you might then realize
that every other person is also a child of God.
And most especially those who are weak and broken,
those who live in fear,
those who are struggling to make ends meet,
those who are broken by homelessness or are unhoused.
We are called to recognize in them
that they are God's beloved son and daughter.
And believe me, we have lots of lies telling us otherwise.
We give them lots of labels.
They are vermin, they are from other countries,
they are terrible people, they are criminals.
That is all a lie.
They are a child of God, first and foremost.
And we need to treat them with the dignity they deserve
because that is the title God gives them,
and no one can take that away from anyone.
That is what we are called to do, my friends.
But we need to pause and understand
that we are being lied to,
that the ancient one is present yet again,
and those lies are present again in our society.
We are not what we do.
We are not what others say we are.
And we are not what we have.
So let us really dig deep this Lent,
fast from something that takes time away from God,
and give some time back to God each day.
Then turn to others
and treat them with that same respect
that we all want to be treated,
as a child of God.
And Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert.
Forty days and forty nights He fasted.