Providing Power for Presumptuous Pride
Sermon for the First Sunday of Lent – 9 March 2025 – All Saints, Kesgrave
Text: Jesus answered, ‘It is said: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”’ (Luke 4v12)
God give you peace my Sisters and Brothers.
Those who have watched our Lent Film The Kings Speech[1] will have heard a tongue twister, apparently one of those originally used by Lionel Logue in his work with King George VI, that’s all about minding his ‘T’s’ and ‘S’s’
I am a thistle sifter.
I have a sieve of sifted thistles,
and a sieve of unsifted thistles.
Because I am a thistle sifter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9QB1AMavZ0
Which is interesting because the one initial letter of a word that the king struggled with was ‘P’. Perhaps he should have gone for the more traditional….
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper.
A peck of pickled pepper Peter Piper picked.
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper,
Where is the peck of pickled pepper
Peter Piper picked?
The Temptations that Christ faced in the Wilderness, and the ones we will face during these Days of Lent, are also problems which have ‘P’ as their primary letter.
Provision
Power
Presumptuous Pride
Provision:
When the children of Israel were wandering in the wilderness the manna of God’s provision that rained down from the heavens would only keep for one day – unless the next day was the Sabbath. Which is an even deeper form of Provision.
When Jesus reminds us that God will provide for us we are commended to ask, ‘give us this day our daily bread.’ Jesus doesn’t, however, command the disciples to ask God to ‘fill up our trolleys with our weekly shop’.
When Jesus wants to feed a multitude He hasn’t even got any food of His own and has to borrow five loaves and two fish from a wide-eyed young boy who had a heck of a story to tell when he got home to his mum.
Our first lesson on the journey of Lent is that we are here to deepen our faith. When we choose to provide for ourselves. When we want to turn stones into bread instead of waiting for manna to rain down from heaven, we say that God is not faithful and so we need to fend for ourselves
This is why one of the godly disciplines of Lent is to go without our own provision.
To fast, to give something up, is not just about self-discipline but about learning the deep truth that God is our provider in everything. Learning to be faithful in a small bodily discipline, to fast from a food or an unhelpful habit. is to make a statement of faith. We proclaim that our hungers can only be met by the provision of the One before whom we use these words when the collection is received;
All things come from you
and of your own do we give you
Power
Amandla![2]
Power is such a pernicious thing isn’t it? When a people are oppressed and have all agency taken away from them. When a minority are persecuted they can easily be trodden on one by one. The so called ‘Black Power’ salute takes the individual fingers of a hand, which can be broken one by one, and folds them together into a fist which can stand against the challenges thrown at them by those who abuse power. Our challenge is that the clenched hand can too easily become a punishing fist.
This is the danger of the unbridled power with which Jesus is tempted on the high mountain. Power used well can serve and build.
Power used for personal gain tramples and destroys and feeds the lusts of the flesh.
Jesus says ‘no’ to the power that compels and conquers and instead chooses to find power in powerlessness. The Letter to the Philippians puts it this way:
…being in very nature God, [He] did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross! (Philippians 2v6-8)
Jesus becomes powerful because He refused to give in to the temptation to wield it for personal gain. He chose to make ‘himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant’.
Is this the way we use our power? Are we people who give up the first place so that another can thrive? Are we the ones who put ourselves at the back of the queue? Are we able to show how powerful we are by choosing to serve rather than rule?
The second of the godly disciplines of Lent is not about giving things up but about taking things on. We are called to fight the temptation to abuse power by taking on acts of service. Perhaps a better question for each of us during Lent is not what have we given up but instead who have we chosen to serve?
Presumptuous Pride
Like the second temptation Power, our final one Pride, is a two-edged sword. Just as we need to be people who empower and serve others rather than rule over them, so Pride has its place so long as it doesn’t become Presumptuous Pride.
A child who works hard at school and overcomes a barrier to their learning deserves to be proud of their achievement.
When that child grows up, flies the coop and takes a risk going out into the wide world, and proseprs (or even just survives) they and their family have a right to be proud of them.
Someone, as our Lent Course will teach us, who has fought to find their voice, stood up for the truth, become more fully who they are, has earnt the right to be proud.
However when we use Pride to push others out of the way.
When we use Pride as a tool to presume that we are better than others.
When Pride turns to hubris and we are tempted to ‘put the Lord [our] God to the test.’ we enter into the realm of what I call Little Jack Horner theology and presume we can do no wrong because we are a child of God.
Christianity at its worst, when we go overboard and aim to be ‘Muscular Christians’ without considering those around us or give in to a Prosperity Gospel and decide that ‘King’s Kids travel first class’, we are the ones who are guilty of throwing ourselves down from the pinnacle of the Temple. It is not for nothing that C.S. Lewis proclaims Pride, especially when it is at its most presumptuous, as the worst of the Seven Deadly Sins!
Here is the Good News.
We are God’s children.
We don’t need to prove it by putting God to the test.
We will be provided for and empowered by God to demonstrate our heritage.
We need do nothing more than learn to trust and to obey.
We definitely don’t need to demonstrate that we are children of God by keeping other people away from God.
However we do need to demonstrate that we are the Children of God by putting our lives into the hands of God and learning to not become denizens of darkness giving into the wiles of the Tempter, but instead become who we are, Children of the Light!
[This blog ‘Providing Power for Presumptuous Pride’ is copyright © Andrew Dotchin 2025 and may be reproduced without charge on condition that the source is acknowledged.]
oooOOOooo
Jesus is Tested in the Wilderness
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, 2 where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.
3 The devil said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.’
4 Jesus answered, ‘It is written: “Man shall not live on bread alone.”’
5 The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6 And he said to him, ‘I will give you all their authority and splendour; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. 7 If you worship me, it will all be yours.’
8 Jesus answered, ‘It is written: “Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.”’
9 The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. ‘If you are the Son of God,’ he said, ‘throw yourself down from here. 10 For it is written:
‘“He will command his angels concerning you
to guard you carefully;
11 they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.”’
12 Jesus answered, ‘It is said: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”’
13 When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time. (Luke 4v1-13)
[1] During Lent our Benefice will be using the book ‘Finding a Voice’ to study the movie ‘The King’s Speech’. If you would like to join in our study there will be a session at 7pm every Wednesday evening in All Saints Church Kesgrave.
There is also a Zoom meeting on Monday evenings at 7pm. Please contact me for details of the link if you would like to join us.
[2] ‘Amandla!’, and it’s response ‘Awethu!’ are words in the Nguni group of languages which mean ‘Power’ and ‘is ours’. It is a Southern African version of the 1960s saying ‘Power to the people’.
Suffolk Vicar 