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1st Sunday in Lent Feb. 22, 2026

“Blessed are the Imperfect for Lent Belongs to Them” – Based on Matthew 4:1-11

Rev. Jessica McClure Archer

The season of Lent gets its shape and form from this wilderness and temptation story of Jesus and the tempter.  40 days.  Giving up our own temptations.  Seeking to grow our capacity to trust God. 

There is something comforting in discovering that Jesus also experiences such moments when the tempter should come to seduce with their counterfeit schemes for what brings life.  Offers for bread.  Daring God into action.  Dangling kingdoms to have and lord over. 

Then, there’s the wilderness, too.  The wildness of it all.  The unpredictability of terrain and typography. For us we picture, the thick of a forest, like the snarling of vines and thorns and brush too deep to cut a path.  But this is the wilderness of 1st century Palestine.  It is Desolate Desert.  The pounding heat and sun of the day.  The rush of winds powerful enough to blow the sand, hitting the skin like a Brillo pad.  The cold of the night.  The barrenness of it all. 

Then, there is the real human suffering of it, too.  The pangs of hunger and thirst.  The wind swept and chapped face.  The lack of shelter and cover.  Exposed.  Lonely.  Isolated.  Seemingly left abandoned. 

It is at our most vulnerable that the tempter likes to tell their lies.  When we look at our lot at life and wonder where we can place our trust.  When we think those stones could indeed make some pretty fine biscuits. When we try to bargain with God, putting our trust on hold until God proves God can ultimately deliver.  When the trappings of this world lure us with their false promises of power and privilege.   

On Ash Wednesday, we proclaimed that Lent is a season for telling the truth.  Smudged on our foreheads were not only the black of soot and ash but also our frailty and finitude, our mess and mortality.  From dust we were created and to dust we shall return.  But there is so much in our world that would like us to avoid the truth of our dustiness, all the while whispering like the tempter that we are not good enough.  Thus, leaving our internal tape on a scarcity, fear repeat loop cycle and us chasing after empty paths that do not in fact lead to life. 

Lent is about embracing the wilderness reality that is often our human predicament, where we are tempted, tested and at trial far too frequently than we’d care to admit.   Lines and marks and strange pains remind us that our bodies don’t hold up and sometimes are unwieldy and in fact unreliable.  Diagnoses fell us, showing us once more that we are not in control and our own biology fails us.  Unsettling calls come our way at the time of night when it causes our hearts to stop because we know the news on the other end is never good.  Loved ones disappoint us.  We disappoint them.  Our hearts break.  We break hearts, too.  Unresolved conflict and grudges continue to trip up our relationships.  We are often paralyzed by our own self-loathing and self-sabotage.  Tragedy creeps too close.  Our dreams fizzle out and futures don’t pan out as we imagine.   

There’s never a shortage of sleek and seductive solutions out there promising to rid us of this dusty life of ours.  Perhaps not like one needling us in the wilderness to turn the stones, to call for the angel brigade or to usurp the world’s power, yet, still barking out falsehoods that do not ultimately lead to life.  Just more dead ends.  Scapegoating the “other” for our problems.  Exchanging abundance into scarcity. Thinking the best things and days are behind us.  Turning toward self-interest rather than our neighbors.  Choosing isolation over connections, silos over bridges, clenched fists over open hands. Believing division will solve our differences. 

For one doesn’t live by bread alone. 

Again, it is written, don’t put the Lord your God to the test. 

Worship the Lord Your God and serve only him. 

Jesus’ time in the wilderness and with the tempter solidifies who he is and to whom he belongs.  In ways echoing back to the garden when the serpent persuaded our ancestors to forget the divine presence in them and to neglect their belonging to God.  If one but eats from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the tempter promises. 

The wilderness redeems the garden.  For if Jesus falls, he is not who he is says he is.  He belongs not to whom he claims to belong.  We cannot, therefore, trust the one with whom he trusts, if the wilderness is not worked out, overcome by Jesus being faithful to who he is and to whom he belongs and by consequence causing the tempter to fail. 

The blessing of Lent is our opportunity to dwell in the land of our imperfections, where we see more clearly, as Kate Bowler writes, our limitations, our humanity, our failures, our sins.  Our cracks, our marks, our broken bits, the yokes we carry and the egg on the face we bear. But Lent is also for seeing more clearly that we are loved beyond measure, graced upon graced and fully dependent on the God whose image we bear and who has fashioned us, uniquely and wonderfully so.   

The lie we have believed that we can somehow save ourselves just simply doesn’t hold up in Lent either.  There is no prescription out there to cure being human.  There is not cream or injection powerful enough to stop the trajectory of returning to the dust.  There is no diet or exercise plan that will lead to a good life.  There is no amount in our checking accounts that will provide ultimate security.  There is no “after I get through this” things are going to get easier.  There is no avoiding the proverbial shoes from dropping.  There is no striving or doing that we can do that will make us more lovable, more redeemable, more perfect.  There is no security system powerful enough to protect us from all harms and tragedies that make up life.  Ultimately it will be a cross and a rolled away stone that will do it – save us and this world of ours.   

Certainly, our wilderness experiences often don’t resolve in the same ways as Jesus’. Sometimes we will believe the lies.  Sometimes we will be suck into by the power of the tempter’s seduction down dead-end paths.  Sometimes we will take the bite like our ancestors.  Sometimes we will be overcome by our wildernesses in ways that leave us crushed. 

The biblical story doesn’t end like some kind of hero movie with our protagonist walking out victorious yet all alone bearing the battle wounds, left to figure out what’s next on his own.  But with gathering angels who have come to wait on and comfort Jesus in his time of trial, temptation, testing, in the wilderness, so to meet his hunger, loneliness and vulnerability.  Jesus is not left alone but is cared for.  He doesn’t shun the assistance but welcomes the heavenly help.  He doesn’t go it alone but rests in the fullness of God’s promise that the divine presence never leaves him. 

Perhaps that’s the blessing of wildernesses and dwelling in our imperfections is knowing that we are not left alone to figure it you out.  There are angels waiting for us, too.  Perhaps, too, that’s the real test of the wilderness, when we are prone to believe we’ve been abandoned, God is still yet there.  When we think we somehow need to pluck ourselves up out of the pit, there’s heavenly help for us.  When we suppose we have to save ourselves, mercy and grace meet us instead.   

Blessed are you, wonderfully imperfect.  Blessed are you, prone to fail and break.  Blessed are you, totally dependent on the one who breathed and continues to breathe life into your dustiness.  Amen.