Deuteronomy 26:1-11, Luke 4:1-13

The offering of first fruits described in the book of Deuteronomy is a ritual of identity. 

“A wandering Aramean was my ancestor,” each person says, offering a basket of fruit and grains at God’s altar.  It’s a way of embedding one’s own self in the whole story of the people of Israel: I am one who God led through strange lands and strange times, who experienced the awe and terror and miracles of the exodus from Egypt, the experience of God’s fulfilled promises in a homeland of abundance.

This is who I am.

We practice that same ritual, that same basic narrative, when we are baptized or renew our baptismal covenant. 

“I believe in God…” we each say. 

Reciting the creed, we tell the story of our creation, of experiencing the coming of God into the world as Jesus, of the awe and terror and joy of passion and resurrection, and the fulfillment of God’s promises in the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. We tell this story in the first person, saying “I believe” not as a statement of intellectual acceptance, but as a recognition of our own self, my story, in these truths.  

Through the story we tell, we participate in the experience of God through the ages, and that shapes who we are. It’s our identity, and that identity leads us to the behaviors, and the sense of self and community, that sustain us in the time of test.

Like Jesus, whose imperviousness to the devil’s suggestions in the wilderness is rooted in the identity revealed at his own baptism: ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’

Jesus does not need to prove his self-saving power with loaves of bread, or gain the recognition of the world, or test his relationship with God by leaping from the temple into a safety net of angels. He already knows who he is; whose he is. Jesus’ habit of finding his purpose, his self, in the word and worship and trust of God gives the devil no leverage.

Our baptismal commitments to community and sacrament and tradition, to repentance, proclamation, serving Christ and shaping the world, are the habits that both express and reinforce our identity as God’s. And they are our answer to the devil’s and the world’s suggestions that we use our power for self-serving ends.

“The church is changing / dying / political / boring,” the devil says to me or to you. “You can do better for yourself! Make your own bread!” And we respond “I’ll continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers….”

“This is who I am, with God’s help,” we get to say, to silence the devil in every time of test. “I am a person in community; forgivable; a grace-bearer; a servant of Christ; a person of justice, peace, and dignity, part of God’s story from creation to eternal life.”