Wake Up and Smell the Kingdom: To Defeat the Devil

It doesn’t take much to defeat the devil.

By the evidence in this story, all it takes to defeat the devil is a bit of quoting scripture.

Jesus doesn’t say a single word in this entire story that isn’t a specific quote or paraphrase from scripture.

“One does not live by bread alone,” Jesus quotes.

“Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”

And “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

Each of those comes from the remembrance of Israel’s years in the wilderness. And for those steeped in the holy story of Israel’s scripture, and our own, each statement resonates with God’s faithfulness in the face of human need, anxiety, and even complaint.

And the devil departs.

Even when the devil can quote scripture’s promises, a few fragments of the story of God’s faithfulness is enough to silence the devil.

That’s great news.

It may not be simple news.

Because what sends the devil away, what defeats every test, isn’t the ability to quote from memory, nor a specific set of magic scriptural words, but the whole story, and how deeply Jesus is living in that story. A story of God’s faithfulness rooted so deep it doesn’t need to be said explicitly; what Jesus quotes is our response to that faithfulness.

When Jesus says “Worship and serve only the Lord your God” he’s offering not a rule to follow, but a whole testimony of what God has done for us. Jesus draws that reference from a place in the story where Moses is telling God’s people to actively remember how God brought us out of slavery and to a land of abundance; how God chose us and our ancestors long before we were born.

That “commandment” is a declaration of God’s care and love and power and faithfulness. Which is the only antidote to the constant nagging forces of anxiety, pressure to perform, the demands of self-interest, the noise of the world – in other words, to the devil nudging at us, day after day.

You and I, in our own moments of test, in our own lonely wilderness times, also need that deep internal knowledge of God’s faithfulness. Not just to know scripture or quote it, but to know scripture as our own story, our own experience of God’s faithfulness from creation to the end of time.

That’s what God’s people are practicing in the story from Deuteronomy we heard this morning. Bringing the first fruits of their harvest to God, each household recites the story of God’s faithfulness:
A wandering Aramean was my ancestor. When the Egyptians treated us harshly, God heard us, God brought us out of Egypt; gave us this land and its abundance. This happened to us, to me, and I bring this offering as a declaration that God’s promise has been faithfully fulfilled.

The story of God’s people is my story, they say. Each of God’s people proclaims every year, probably several times a year, that God’s faithfulness has brought me to this place; this time.

Jesus grew up steeped in that story; absorbed it from his human community of God’s people; along with other practices of remembering God’s faithfulness, at the door of every house, woven into clothing, told and retold to children and one another, ritually remembered in acts of worship.

Just like you and I are supposed to grow up, to live our adulthood, steeped in that same story of God’s faithfulness. Steeped in the story of Jesus’ faithfulness.
And we, too, are supposed to make it our own.

Because that is our armor against “temptation” – against all the ways the devil or simply the world around us works to draw our focus away from God, works to focus us on ourselves, our wants and fears, instead of on the rich, deep experience of God’s faithful care.

It is what we turn to sustain us in the wilderness of a long, ever-changing pandemic; to keep us balanced and grounded as the edges and horror of war in the world reach into our lives and community; to keep us focused on, and ready to share, God’s faithful love just as Jesus himself did and does, when our wilderness and “tests” don’t necessarily feel like “temptations”.

That’s how scripture stops the devil.

When it expresses our confidence that we ourselves are part of the story of God’s faithfulness, both in our moments of abundance and happiness and in our times of test and stress and grief and pain.

That assurance that this story of God’s faithfulness is Jesus’ own; our own story is the difference between Jesus quoting scripture and the devil quoting it, too.

So what’s your story of God’s faithfulness?

You and I don’t bring the first tomatoes of our gardens – or the first paycheck of the year – to a priest and recite the story of Israel’s rescue from wandering, slavery, and need.

But we have – we must have – our own story of God’s faithfulness, and we need to repeat it, enter into it, tell ourselves into the whole of God’s story.

Maybe there’s a time when you were lost and found yourself in God; when you were broken or abused, and God’s strength brought you healing and freedom.

Your story may not have the sweep of the Exodus from Egypt, of course – one of my own stories is about finding a parking place right where I needed it, late on a night of grief and uncertainty, and feeling that little moment wrap around me as assurance of God’s faithful presence and care. Every time I remember that moment, tell that story to myself or someone else, I’m wrapped again in that vivid assurance of faithful love.

Or maybe it’s a family story, generations back, of emigrating to a new land to find freedom and abundance; maybe it’s how your grandfather’s law practice or your great-aunt’s bakery quietly provided services or food to those who couldn’t pay, to the point where it could ruin the business, and yet the family always had enough.

And even without naming God, your heart and your history knows this as an experience of God’s faithfulness.

Maybe it’s a story of a community you’ve been part of, like the congregation that sponsored me for ordination, who told the story of being on the brink of closure, being reminded that death leads to resurrection, and becoming a whole new congregation focused on giving away abundance and welcoming the outcast – so often and compellingly that it was all of our own story, each of us who hadn’t been there.

Maybe your story isn’t precisely a story. Maybe it’s the words of a prayer, or a hymn, or a pattern of scripture, worn smooth with repetition and time ---

Now I lay me down to sleep…I once was lost, but now am found…. give us this day our daily bread…though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil… all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well… Here I am, Lord… the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus…

words that started as a stranger’s expression of God’s faithfulness, and have worked their way into your heart, to be your own truth, your own story.

This Lent, this season of renewal and reflection, make it a practice to tell this story of God’s faithfulness – from your own experience, from your family, from scripture or the traditions of the church – at least once a day, to yourself. Tell it to others as often as you can. Tell it as your own story, your offering to God.

And if you don’t know your story yet, this season of prayer and study and reflection can be the time to find it: to sort through your personal experience, the well-worn stories of your family, to read a bit more scripture, and find what resonates with you, what you would like to tell as your own story – and repeat that. Re-read that story. Say that prayer again, and again. Tell the oft-repeated story with your father when it’s the four-hundredth time you’ve heard it this visit.

And listen to our prayers, as we gather. Listen for your story as we tell our shared stories of God’s faithfulness Sunday after Sunday in the scripture we read, in the Creed we repeat, in the consecrating prayers of communion, [in the hymns we sing].

Because all it takes to defeat the devil is the story of God’s faithfulness, which is truly our own story, yours and mine and Jesus’.