Updated sermon stuff

Thanks to the thoughts and posts, I think I've found a better placement of the tech for the sermon:

There once was a couple who wanted to become a family. After having their first child with little trouble, the parents struggled mightily to have a second. Complications always seemed to arise, and it took four and a half years of pain and questions for the family to have their second child. The newborn was the picture of health for the first couple of weeks but quickly developed an infection that needed hospitalization to treat. The father, being so worried about his newborn son, visited the child every day and would sing him the song, Bridge Over Troubled Waters by Simon and Garfunkel. As the story goes, every time the child heard that song the baby’s heart rate would stabilize and the conditions eased bit by bit; this song seemed to give him strength and seemed to draw out the illness. The child eventually recovered and became very fond of the song and the story associated with it.
To this day, however, I do not know if my father sang that song more for himself or for me. I can see it fitting both of us quite well, my father asking for help from God as he was worried and needed comforting, or my father assuring me that he was by my side. This song came to mind last night as I sat thinking on ways to relate the presence of the Holy Spirit in our Gospel reading. The presence of the Holy Spirit rests with Christ in our story of struggle much the way I am sure that the Holy Spirit rested with my father and me in the hospital. And like my father and I in the hospital needing support, I can see the struggle we faced echoed in stories all around the world. It is in these echoes that I see our Gospel taking on a call to action for us on this day.
Our Gospel begins with a punch- Jesus was full of it. The Spirit I mean. Right away we are hit with our first dose of reality. Christ walking away from his baptism and into the wilderness is filled with the Holy Spirit. How do we see this meaning in our lives? We too claim the presence of the Holy Spirit in daily life in our creed, but are those words to us or do we take them to be the reality of everyday life?
We should see ourselves and one another pulsing with the Spirit of Christ in each breath, but it seems so easy to see each other by our humanity and our pitfalls: we are our houses, our cars or our electronic devices; we are who we know, or we are our jobs. And when we see each other by our humanity it can be easy to find one another unworthy of our time and our assistance because they are far away, faceless, nameless, and might be scamming us. But the Spirit brings us to the realization that all of us are worthy to be loved by God and that we are led by the Spirit to love one another.
Ah, so the Spirit leads us somewhere. That brings us to the next description in our Gospel. Christ is led by the Spirit into the wilderness. The Spirit leads Jesus! We Lutherans love to talk about Jesus, but here we see a wonderful glimpse into the Trinitarian God- a God in relationship! The Spirit is leading Christ to a place without food, separated from his family and friends, into isolation for an extended period of time. The Spirit lead Jesus into isolation, and it may seem a little strange: why would the Spirit draw Christ away from people?
I believe it is because this was the true test of the humanity of Christ by the devil. This was not a public display of power against Christ by the devil, we see how quickly Jesus tosses demons out of people in the Gospels, this was something different. This was the Spirit-filled Christ walking down into the viper’s den. Jesus walked into a situation where the devil could tempt his humanity. Jesus walked into a situation where he was humanly tempted to satisfy human desires of food, power, and safety. And the devil brings his ‘A’ game to try and test Jesus, with such a crafty and deceptive set of propositions
At first blush, these tests do not seem so insidious. Feed yourself, acknowledge the power the devil has over the world, make God deliver on the promises of Psalm 91. But in particular, I see the first test as the big attack by the devil on the potentially sinful humanity of Christ, and it is where I would like us to focus.
The situation is pretty clear: Jesus is hungry and has the power and authority to create bread from rocks, so the devil asks, ‘why not?’ This wouldn’t be the first time God has done something like this: miraculous feedings are something that happens throughout the Scriptures and not just by God directly, but by agents of God as well, and Christ would even perform similar feats later in his ministry. What’s the big deal?
To find out what the big deal is we should ask ourselves: What is driving the request by the devil? Is it to test Christ’s ability to manipulate matter and energy? No. Is it to test the capacity for Christ to live without food? No, I don’t think that is it either. What the devil is really testing Christ over is the willingness of Christ to go against God and sate the human hunger at the expense of stepping away from God’s will, to step away from the trust Christ has in God.
Christ walks into the den of the devil, is tempted by the devil personally, and denies the devil at each opportunity for sin. Christ does this so effectively, and so easy it seems. With this defeating of the devil achieved so swiftly, it can be really hard to try and see ourselves in this story. I mean, I know I do not have an easy time denying temptation of a frozen Twix bar after dinner, let alone more serious and consequential issues!

Where are we in the story? It can seem pretty easy to see how Luke considers the world being in the possession of the devil in his time, implying that the worldly kingdoms were the devil’s to hand over to Christ. And for us, judging by the looks of things in the modern times, it can feel like the situation has not really changed any. But I do not see us in a world that is overrun with sin, human evil, hunger, poverty, war, pollution and a dying and drying up planet.
I see us in this wilderness too. I see us powered by the Holy Spirit drawing us into experiencing the struggle of the world, into our modern day devil’s den. Our world is an angry wilderness, a digitally driven desert, and a place of struggle with sinful humans and structures. But we must remember that as children of God we have been empowered with the Holy Spirit, just as Christ was at His baptism. In the Spirit, we are led into this wilderness of our world to be tempted in many of the same ways. We too pray for things such as an end to hunger, world peace, and for a safe and healthy life. What motivates us to pray for these things?
But let us ask ourselves the same question we asked about the devil: What is driving the request? Why do we pray for these things? Do we believe that world hunger can only be solved by God with a wave of the heavenly hand over the crops of the earth? Do we pray for peace by conquest or by freedom and liberty our way and no other way? Do we pray for a safe and healthy life but turn around and think nasty thoughts about our friends and family and cut one another down?

Rob Bell, in his DVD, “Open” puts forth the wonderfully simple statement: Don’t ask God to feed the hungry when you have plenty of food.
Our life in the Spirit can be expressed very succinctly in Rob’s statement- When we have been empowered by the Spirit, why do we assume that God does not count on us, his good Creation, to answer the prayers of the world?
Jesus was right folks, we do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Humanity has the capability to feed itself, but people die of hunger every day. How does this happen? So quickly that crafty devil continues to draw us away from God’s command to live by and for God alone by saying to ourselves, “We have bread, but we cannot share what we have because we need bread for tomorrow, so let us pray that God will give more bread for everyone else.” It is in this response of Jesus that we can see how powerful our bread from heaven is. Every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord is calling us to walk in this wilderness to stand alongside and to struggle with those who hunger physically and spiritually, and ultimately to feed one another in these ways. My friends, we are in this wilderness together with the Spirit for reasons just like this. Let us not create more bread for ourselves, but let us share the bread that we have been given at a meal and in conversation with each other about God. We are in this wilderness with the Spirit and we have the ability to walk with each other in our pains and our sorrows of loss and want.
And this is where we are supposed to be. Christ walked into the wilderness and came back from it, continuing to push away temptation and draw closer to God. Christ continued in his walk to the cross living the abundant reality of the presence of God in our lives, and he walked through the veil of death and into our lives calling us to live for God and one another. When we create a community that lives and breathes with the Spirit, we can see the devil and sin failing at each temptation and falling back in retreat. Christ continues to walk in our lives, walking among us when we walk with each other in our struggles and pain. May we be continually empowered by the Spirit to do the same in our daily living.
As a closing meditation, I would like to play this song that my father used to sing to me. As we are in the wilderness, our times will be rough and we will be tempted, but I hope this song will remind us that we have each other and God walking with us in this wild adventure.