Sermon for Sunday, March 9, 2025 || Lent 1C || Luke 4:1-13

I’ve never been able to get over the fact that the devil quotes scripture in today’s Gospel reading. Twice Jesus defends himself from the adversary’s onslaught using words from the scriptures. Jesus is so full of the Holy Spirit that the words of life spill from him and counter the devil’s temptation. “One does not live by bread alone.” “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” I imagine the tempter was getting pretty darn frustrated. But the adversary adapts, and for the third attack, the devil uses the same tactic.

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Then the devil took [Jesus] to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will command his 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.’”

These are words from the psalm we prayed today, Psalm 91, a psalm about trusting in God. The devil has enough gall to quote two verses from this psalm, and not only that, but the verse immediately prior to them says, “There shall no evil happen to you.” See what I mean? The Evil One has the temerity to quote a psalm which specifically mentions evil not being able to touch the one who has made God their refuge.

The fact that the devil quotes scripture should give us pause. Those who seek nefarious or self-serving ends often cloak themselves in the rhetoric of morality and good values. This is the entire point of propaganda and spin. So we see “religious freedom” cited as a reason to discriminate against the queer community. We see “parental choice” cited as a reason to ban books. We see “efficiency” cited as the reason to fire a staggering amount of the federal workforce. The rhetoric of good values is also the reason that dictatorships call themselves democracies. Case in point: the official name of North Korea is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. But there isn’t a country on earth that is farther from democracy.

The nefarious and self-serving cloak themselves in the rhetoric of morality because they need to justify their behavior within their own constructed worldviews. Villains in books and movies are most interesting when they don’t see themselves as villains. In the Avengers movies, Thanos truly believes he’s doing the right thing by wiping out half of all life in the universe. He sees it as merciful to snap his fingers and give the surviving half of life a better chance. He justifies his plan by saying there are “too many mouths, not enough to go around” and the death toll will be “random, dispassionate, fair to rich and poor alike.” Thanos uses the language of mercy and fairness when talking about mass extinction.

Throughout history, Christians have used scripture to justify pretty much every despicable act Christendom has committed. Chattel slavery, not to mention racism in general, was justified by an awful reading of the story of Noah and his sons. Imperialism, colonialism, manifest destiny, and the genocide of indigenous peoples all received their warrant from a violent misunderstanding of Jesus’ call to make disciples of all nations. Climate change denial stems from poor readings of scripture that construct a rapture of the faithful, taking them bodily away from a condemned and burning planet. The list goes on: the Inquisition, deforestation, pollution via over-industrialization, vast segments of the German church siding with the Nazis in the 1930s. Somehow, Holy Scripture has been used to justify every one of these unconscionable realities.

So, if the Church can misapply the Scriptures so often to such egregious results, if the devil and Thanos can take good values and twist them to heinous ends, where does that leave us? How do we apply the scriptures and our values to our lives? How do we steer clear of the trap of justifying bad ends by way of good reasons?

There are two overarching ways that I respond to these questions for myself that I’d like to share with you. The first is that I try not to use the words “good” and “bad” to describe things. The problem with “good” and “bad” is their subjectivity. I might say that something tastes bad because it includes an ingredient that I don’t enjoy. But that same food might be your favorite. In my house we call this “yucking someone else’s yum.”

Rather than the “good” and “bad,” I have changed my language so that I now say things are either “life-giving” or “death-dealing.” Things either enliven me or they suck life from me. On a societal level, the ways we live and interact with others either bring more life or more death. Before the New Deal, elders often lived in poorhouses and died emaciated and alone. After Social Security became embedded in our society, elders had a better chance of care and comfort in their later years. This is life-giving. Closing Social Security offices around the country makes accessing benefits more difficult. This is death-dealing.

The concepts of “life-giving” and “death-dealing” help me clarify where to place my time, energy, and focus. I can feel these concepts in my body: “life-giving” feels uplifting, energizing, and pulse-quickening; “death-dealing” feels alarming, draining, and exhausting. “Life-giving” feels whole, like satiation after a good meal with friends. “Death-dealing” feels like your spirit is being unraveled like a fraying sweater. When you feel your values in your body, you are more likely to choose the path that Jesus invites us to walk: the path of abundance, freedom, and peace.

The second way I respond to the reality of the devil quoting scripture is to remember that I am just as capable as anyone of using the Bible for nefarious means. I call this “shooting verse bullets.” It is so easy to affix a barrel and trigger to our Bibles and fire verses at our opponents. My original goal in the conversation might not be nefarious, but when I get to the point of turning my Bible into a gun, I’ve lost my starting goal and embraced the less honorable goal of winning the argument. I have lost my curiosity and generosity. I just want to win at all costs. And so I chamber some verses and fire away.

The problem with this activity is that the Bible was never meant to be chopped into verses. The verse numbers are a convenience that weren’t added to the Bible until the 1550s. They exist to help us literally stay on the same page as each other. But the unintended consequence has allowed what is called “proof-texting”; that is, easily searching up verses that confirm the point I’m trying to make. Bible websites have made this even easier.

But scripture is not meant to be sliced and diced to say what we want it to say, like the devil pulling a bit of Psalm 91 out of context. And scripture is certainly not ammunition. Reading scripture is an encounter with the holy that has the power to change us for the better. When we’re searching for ammo, we will miss the God who is searching for us.

As we begin the season of Lent, I offer this invitation today: be aware of your morals and your values. In what way does holy scripture influence these morals and values? How are you compromising them to justify the unjustifiable? And most of all, how are you walking with Christ away from all that is death-dealing in this world and toward all that is life-giving? For that is the path upon which Christ beckons us to walk. Christ walks one step ahead of us, deeper into life.