February 22, 2026

The Invitation of Lent
Kris Ferrario
Christ Church, Red Wing
First Sunday in Lent, 2026

Matthew 4:1–11; Romans 5:

This is the first Sunday in Lent, and I spent the first few days of Lent scouring my social media feeds and the internet to observe the annual ritual of people sharing their Lenten Disciplines. You know how it goes. There is the classic:"I'm giving up chocolate." And others who build on that. "I'm giving up sugar." "I'm giving up carbs." "I'm giving up Diet Coke." That last one, by the way, apparently has its own support group. Someone online said that they were giving up coffee to, and I love this, "channel their natural energy." One woman on TikTok is giving up shopping at Target for forty days, switching to stores with what she described as a more penitential atmosphere. Someone else gave up the snooze button and called it a heroic spiritual act. A friend of mine said that they planned on giving up online shopping, but received a sale notification that starts tomorrow and is now facing what they described as a crisis of faith.

Now, these are all perfectly fine things to do. But here's what's funny, and by funny I mean revealing. Not a single one of these involves any actual spiritual discipline or a sacrifice that benefits someone else. We give up chocolate and lose weight. We give up shopping and save money. We give up the snooze button and become more productive. Every Lenten discipline we choose seems to circle right back to making us a better, thinner, richer, more well-rested version of ourselves. In many ways the forty days before Easter have turned into the church's version of a New Year's resolution, except this time we've dressed it up in liturgical language and called it holy.

And I wonder if that tells us something about what we think Lent is for. We think it's our chance to get it right: our forty days to finally become the person we've been meaning to become. But what if Lent isn't about getting it right at all? What if it's something much simpler and, honestly, much harder? What if Lent is an invitation to walk with the One who already did?

I want to hold that question as we look at today's Gospel, because I think Jesus shows us what he means; not all at once, but three times, in three different ways. Matthew tells us that after his baptism, Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. This matters. He didn't wander in by accident. He didn't go looking for a spiritual experience. The Spirit took him there, into the same desert where Israel had spent forty years, into the same barren landscape where God's people had been tested and had failed. Israel went into the wilderness and couldn't keep faith. Now another Son of God goes into the same wilderness. And he fasts forty days and forty nights. And he is famished. And that's when the tempter arrives.

Provision. The first thing the devil says is this: "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread." It sounds reasonable. Jesus is hungry. He has the power to do something about it. Why not? But notice what the devil is actually offering. He's offering Jesus the chance to provide for himself. To take care of his own needs. To use his power to solve his own problem. And what's interesting is that Jesus doesn't argue about whether he could do it. He simply says, "One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God." He refuses to grasp provision. He chooses instead to receive it, to wait for God to provide rather than seize what he could take for himself.

And I think there's something here for us. So much of what we do in Lent, and in life, is about taking control of our own provision. We manage our diets, our schedules, our spiritual disciplines. We provide for ourselves and call it faithfulness. Jesus, in the desert, lets go of all of that. He is hungry, and he stays hungry, because he trusts that his Father's word is enough.That's what it looks like to walk with this God. Not to provide for yourself, but to be provided for.

Protection. Then the devil tries again. He takes Jesus to the highest point of the temple and says, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. God will send his angels to catch you."This one is subtler. The devil is quoting Scripture now, Psalm 91, a beautiful promise of God's protection. And he's essentially saying: prove it. Test the promise. Make God show up for you. And Jesus says, "Do not put the Lord your God to the test." He refuses to grasp protection. He will not force God's hand. He will not engineer a situation where God has to rescue him.

And again, I think this reveals something. We spend a great deal of our lives trying to arrange our own safety: financially, emotionally, spiritually. We want guarantees. We want proof that God is actually going to come through. We want a sign. Jesus stands on the pinnacle of the temple, with a promise from Scripture in his ear, and he chooses not to test it. Not because he doesn't believe the promise. But because trusting the promise and testing the promise are two very different things. Walking with this God means you don't need God to prove himself to you. You simply trust that he is with you.

Power. The third temptation is the most sweeping. The devil takes Jesus to a very high mountain and shows him all the kingdoms of the world in their splendor. "All this I will give you," he says, "if you will fall down and worship me." This is power, plain and simple. And unlike the other two temptations, Jesus doesn't just decline. He names what is happening. "Away with you, Satan. Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him." He refuses to grasp power. All the kingdoms of the world, and he lets them go. He will not take by force what his Father intends to give by love.

And this, I think, is the deepest refusal, because it's the one closest to how we actually live. We may not want kingdoms, but we want control. We want influence. We want to make things happen on our terms and on our timeline. Lent itself can become a way of grasping, forty days of proving that we have the spiritual discipline to shape our own lives. Jesus, on the mountain, opens his hands and lets it all go. Because walking with this God means you don't need to be in charge.

Three temptations.

Three refusals.

Provision, protection, power, and Jesus lets go of each of them. Not because they aren't real. Bread is real when you're hungry. Safety is real when you're afraid. Power is real when the world is broken. But Jesus refuses to grasp any of it because he already has something better. He has his Father. He has the relationship.

Grace. It's not an accident that the lectionary pairs this Gospel reading with Romans 5 today. Because Paul is telling the same story from a different angle. Paul looks at the whole sweep of human history and sees two patterns. On one side, there's Adam, the original grasper. Reaching for what wasn't his to take. And from that grasping came sin, condemnation, death. On the other side, there's Christ. And Paul can barely contain himself. He piles up word after word after word: gift, grace, free gift, abundance of grace, as if one word for generosity simply isn't enough. Where the grasping of Adam brought death, the self-giving of Christ brought life. And not just enough life to scrape by. Paul says that where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. It didn't just match the problem. It overwhelmed the problem. It outran the failure.And here's what should stop us cold, especially this time of year: this gift has nothing to do with our worthiness. We live in a world built on earning and deserving. You get the scholarship because you earned it. You get the loan because you can repay it. Good is rewarded; wrong is punished. That's how things work. And it's not unreasonable. But Paul says that logic cannot change you. It can restrain you, but it cannot give you life. Grace operates on an entirely different logic, a gift given freely to people who haven't earned it and can't repay it.

And here's the part I find most astonishing: Paul says that when grace reigns, we also reign in life. Sin and death diminish us; they shrink us, they steal our freedom. But grace doesn't diminish us. Grace empowers us. It doesn't make us less ourselves. It makes us more ourselves, more free, more alive, more human.

And that changes everything about what these forty days are for.

Because if Jesus, the Son of God, in the wilderness, starving and alone, didn't need to provide for himself, didn't need to test God's protection, didn't need to seize power... then maybe we don't either. Maybe Lent isn't our chance to get it right. Maybe it really is, simply, an invitation to walk with the One who already did.

So if you want to give something up for Lent, give something up. If you want to take something on, a practice of prayer, or generosity, or silence, or service, take it on. But do it as someone who has already been given everything, not as someone still trying to earn it. Do it the way you'd explore a garden, not the way you'd run on a treadmill. Do it because you're free, not because you're afraid. Because white-knuckling your way through forty days of deprivation is not a spiritual discipline. It's just a diet with a Bible verse attached.

Over the next several weeks, we're going to watch Jesus encounter all kinds of people: a religious leader who comes to him at night, a woman drawing water alone at a well, a man who has been blind since birth, a man who has been dead for four days. And every time, Jesus meets them not with a program for self-improvement, but with himself. That's all. Just himself.

And that's what he's offering you this Lent. Not a test to pass. Not a discipline to master. Just his company. His presence. His faithfulness, which has already been proven in the desert, on your behalf. You don't have to get it right. You just have to show up. He's already done the rest. Lent isn't your chance to get it right. It's an invitation to walk with the One who already did.

Amen