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Good morning Austin Seminary. It's good to see you and be with you today. Grace and peace be unto you as we encounter the text today. In Matthew Chapter four, we encounter this text for many

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during the first sunday, the first week now of what is known as lint. The time of fasting and prayer, the length of length, Usually 40 days and 40 nights. Has inspired by the gospel

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accounts of Jesus time in the Wilderness, Not only as we find here in Matthew Chapter four, but also mark chapters one, verses 12 through 13 and Luke Chapter 4: verses one through 13. Although it

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was recognized as a christian holiday, the biblical account suggests that lends deepest roots reach into practices of first century Middle Eastern Judaism, Where in the gospels, Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness again to fast

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and pray. The practice of fasting from food for spiritual reasons is also found amongst the three largest abrahamic phase, Judaism, Christianity and islam. In all three refraining from eating or from temptation in a larger

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sense is intimately connected with establishing relationship with God and the practice of assisting the poor by giving alms or donating food for example, in the late winter. Then dr Joanne M pierce Professor of Religious Studies at

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Holy Cross College will tell us, we prepare for lent this in preparation for the celebration of easter to commemorate jesus resurrection and also possibly our own spiritual renewal . The general idea of lent is to avoid self

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indulgence and to take out time and space to repent or to turn away from one's sins or wrongdoings Many during this season may abstain from eating something. For example, meat on certain days, friday's perhaps one

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might abstain from sweets. One might also participate in the practice of completely giving up something for lent. Often a favorite food or a drink or another pleasurable activity like watching television or smoking an internet. List

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of famous lent things to give up include social media , gossiping and procrastination. one interesting suggestion for lent was to give up something, Give away something or throw away something for 40 days each day one takes

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an item and either gives it or throws it away all sorts of activities suggested as a time for spiritual renewal and self discipline. Yet in all of this , It seems that there remains one temptation and this

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is the temptation of something like aesthetic pride lin becomes a message fundamentally about voluntary sacrifice, about us, demonstrating through our sacrifice that we have the iron will and the discipline to endure the current spiritual decathlon.

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And thus we deserve also to participate in the upcoming easter resurrection celebrations, almost as if it were reward for our stellar performance during lent lin takes on an air of microwave New Year's resolutions perhaps, and many

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of us anticipate with great alacrity, the moment when we can post our post Lenten successes on facebook tick tock or twitter, all of this is good, but it is still fundamentally about voluntary sacrifice. That

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is that we have the power and the means to produce our own satisfaction. Furthermore, it is often the case that asceticism can blind us to the ways in which we still practice self interest in other ways

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. Reinhold Niebuhr and his moral man and immoral society offers us a famous example. The man in the street. He says, with this lust for power and prestige thwarted by his own limitations and necessities of

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social life, projects his ego upon his nation and indulges his anarchic less vicariously. Never understood that although there were moments where we could deny ourselves, it would still be the case that the will to power

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might exert itself in other, more vicious ways. All of this suggests that the focus on lent as a time for voluntary sacrifice possibly hides another meaning. The meaning which was also reflected in jesus's life and

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ministry during and after his wilderness experience. The meaning namely, that God is the source of life and that God's desire is for the abundant life and healing of all peoples. Now, a social psychologist might

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have a little bit of a field day with the ordinary and standard view of lent that is lent as voluntary sacrifice. You see according to them, humans tend to place a higher value on an object that

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becomes scarce and a lower one on those in abundance . They might point out the problem that in singling out an object to give up or to quit Cold Turkey. One might actually only increase their desire for

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the object with the result that our iron will during lent Tends to turn into Jell O shortly after the 40 days. In this way, there is actually a hidden link between the asceticism that many of us

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embraced during lent and consumer culture. They share a common root. The aesthetic is preoccupied, were practicing severe abstinence self denial. The consumer and consumer society is preoccupied with acquiring consumer goods and self satisfaction.

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Asceticism is about cutting back, becoming spiritually lean and clean as it were. Consumerism is about conspicuous consumption and aesthetic display. Yet both of them focus on the self, easily hiding the fact that both share

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a scarcity mindset about the world's resources. That is both asceticism and consumer culture, interpret the world as a place where resources exist or are available only in insufficient quantity. That is that they are barely hardly

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only just or not quite. Perhaps then this was one of the insights of jesus during his time in the wilderness, jesus experience was to teach him primarily not about temptation as advice and self denial as a

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virtue, but perhaps it was about temptation as a certain scarcity perspective on life. The temptation to view things like resources, food, property, security as scarce, not only so scarce that we must have

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them at any cost, but also that there must always be a cost. Both the aesthetic and the consumer believe that things that we want are available in limited supply and that goods must be ration scarcity,

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says economist William Dirty as a function of infinite wants . It's socially constructed. It need not apply in all times in all places. And even if it does, we can still question the legitimacy of building

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our ideal societies on pillars of limitless desire and on the inability of humans to reach satisfaction. Science fiction . Literary scholar J. Jesse Ramirez notes how scarcity has defined the american social horizon since roughly the 19

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seventies due to things like quote the U. S . Energy crisis, the country's defeat in Vietnam and the explosion of the quote population bomb and the realization of limits to growth. Yet, says Ramirez,

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scarcity has lost its critical power and now represents in fact the greatest barrier to imagining better futures as it often turns either to a drab emphasis on efficiency or an overemphasis on security, says Ramirez, to avoid

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or simply deal with eco apocalypse. So the dominant narrative goes, we must scale back massively learn to accept insecurity and in an effort forsake the Utopian dream of an existence that is free from toil and want

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. Perhaps this dream is simply no longer valid. Perhaps it was always just an idealistic fantasy, but maybe our task today is to begin to reinvent utopia to this end, Ramirez says, I propose the

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concept of anti anti abundance, Ramirez says by this , I mean a cultural politics that seeks to build on critiques of abundance without sacrificing its utopian potential. Perhaps this was one of jesus's insights during his time

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in the wilderness, that the greatest temptation was the temptation to a certain scarcity perspective about life and that the call to ministry was a call to see the world as blessed with abundant life and as a place

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of healing. Indeed, this theme is present not only in the Gospel text before us, but in all of the election ery text for this first week of lent In Romans five Paul talks about God's abundant

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provision of grace and the gift of righteousness And Psalm 32, David says that he is blessed, such that he does not waste away anymore, that his strength is no longer accept and that God is his

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rock protector And hiding place in genesis, we find this most powerfully, especially in the creation story where God brings forth the stars and the streams, the rivers and the gardens and all kinds of trees growing

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out of the ground, and we find the theme of of abundant provision Not only in Matthew four, but also in all of the gospels. Will we find jesus proclaiming his ministerial vision. Woman is theologian

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, Delores Williams caused this jesus ministerial vision of abundant life and healing. The text suggests says Williams, that the spirit of God and jesus came to show humans life not death, to show redemption through a

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perfect ministerial vision of writing relations. God, that is through jesus gives humankind new vision to see resources for positive, abundant relational life. It shows us how to live peacefully productively and abundantly in relationship in

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this vision says Williams, God becomes the only element of necessity after jesus time in the wilderness, Jesus preached a life of abundance, he would say in the Gospel of john I came that they may have

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life and have it abundantly. This ministerial vision of abundant life and healing went forth. Williams will tell us through a healing ministry of touch through a militant ministry of expelling demonic forces and through a ministry of

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compassion and love grounded in faith, jesus wilderness experience led him to a life marked not primarily by sacrifice , although, yes, it was there, but by sustainability and solidarity. This was not a gospel

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of prosperity where one receives materialistic merits as a consequence of spiritual virtue, it was one of sustainability, As Jesus notes, the importance of healthy interdependent communities , saying Love one, another It is a gospel

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of solidarity, as Jesus speaks life to death, dealing forces and preaches as an advocate to the poor and the oppressed. Surely, in a context of our own marked by violence against undocumented persons marked by

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violence against women and trans persons marked by mass incarceration and racialized criminal punishment. Surely it is the case that we need ministerial visions of abundant life and healing for Williams. This ministerial vision ultimately invites us to

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revalue our values themselves to rethink what we believe is good and valuable in light of the needs of the oppressed and in light of Jesus's commitment to sustainability and solidarity, Jesus's ministerial vision of abundant life and healing

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invites us to revalue values like scarcity, values, like security values, like traditional family values, values like white supremacy. This season will likely be for many of us, a time of temptation and of

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seeking the Lord as we seek to abstain from or completely give up certain things. The gospel story of jesus wilderness experience invites us to consider that one of the greatest temptations maybe to take on a certain scarcity

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perspective about life, that resources like food and property and security are so scarce that not only must we have them at any cost, but again, that there must always be a cost. The gospel story

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also invites us into Jesus's ministerial vision of abundant life and healing. This is what the songwriter meant when they pinned the words, his eye is on the sparrow and I know he watches me. This is

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what the old spiritual men when folk gathered in cabins and on plantations to sing. I know the Lord has laid his hands on me, brothers and sisters during this season as we seek to gain new insight

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into what God is calling us to let us remember that jesus wilderness experience produced a ministerial vision of abundant life and healing and that we all have a part to play, May God be with you on this