February 22, 2026
No one believes in the existence of the devil these days, do they? Do you? According to movies and television, the devil might have pointy horns, pitchforks, and red costumes. Red tights and long tails may be a frightening thought as you consider your Halloween costume, but they may not always be the way we meet the devil’s power.
Our texts for today and the Lent season are about wrestling with the forces of good and evil. Absolutely suffering can be real for ourselves, our loved ones, our neighbors, our global communities, and creation itself. Greed, envy, rage, hatred, war, discrimination, and apathy are just some of the ways the devil’s forces wreak havoc. Evil forces turn us away from the will of God. But what is this devil figure with which Jesus wrestles? In his conscious? A physical form? A voice? Difficult thoughts?
The word Devil in the Greek language is Diabolos. “‘Diabolos’ comes from dia, meaning ‘around through’ and bollo meaning ‘to throw.’— like throwing a ball. Diabolos means ‘one who throws things about’—one who stirs things up—gets them confused. The work of the devil is just to get us muddled.” The father of lies, the one who scatters them about, the slanderer, the accuser of the saints, then, is really the Great Confuser.
Many things get confused in life. In this temptation with Satan, it is primarily Jesus’ identity that is being subverted and assaulted. And Jesus rejects more than specific temptations, but also the Tempter himself.
Satan’s temptations get immediately to the core question of Jesus’ identity, calling into question his relationship with God by beginning with the provocative, “If you are the Son of God….” This relationship, announced just before his baptism, is now confirmed through Jesus’ complete trust in God. Individually, each temptation invites Jesus to turn away from trust in God and his identity as God’s son.
Jesus’ baptism and the transfiguration are moments of clarity. Jesus identity is loud and clear: “my son, the beloved” — named, claimed wholly redeemed by God. And now that identity as the Christ is questioned: “If you are the anointed one, the chosen of Israel….”
In the reading from Genesis: there is blaming and confusion. / God says… but not really.
In the book In the Name of Jesus, author Henri Nouwen identifies three primary temptations based on Jesus’ desert experience: the temptation to be relevant (turning stones into bread), spectacular (leaping from the temple), and powerful (ruling the world). Nouwen finds the resistance of Jesus to be a “downward mobility,” urging leaders to embrace vulnerability, prayer, and, ultimately, a holy irrelevance in a success-driven world.
If Jesus accepts the devil’s temptation, he can address extensive food insecurity for many in the Roman world by turning stones into bread. He can also gain power over all the empires of the world perhaps to bring peace. But amidst the power and control of the Roman Empire, Jesus can only rely on God’s protection. Jesus rejects the devil’s invitations. The scene ends with the devil’s departure and the angels care for Jesus.
Part of being human is realizing like Jesus’ humanity and Adam and Eve that we are insufficient, that we are not complete in and of ourselves, that lack is a permanent part of our condition. To be human, in other words, is to be aware that we carry inside ourselves a hole, an emptiness, a restlessness that we will always be restless to fill. Adam and Eve behold the fruit and conclude in a heartbeat that their hole is shaped just like that fruit. Yet after they eat, the emptiness remains. Today, we might imagine that hole to be shaped just like a new car, money or computer, or better house, or the perfect spouse.
But after laboring and sacrificing and obtaining these things, the emptiness remains. Blaise Pascal once described this essential condition of humanity as having a “God-shaped hole,” and this is what Jesus demonstrates. There is no filling of that gap, no permanent erasing of that hole, except in and through our relationship with God. Or, as Augustine said, we humans are always restless until we rest in God.
The temptations of evil come to us to suggest that we are not enough, that we can be relevant, spectacular, and powerful without God’s power and calling working in our lives. Jesus shows us a model of resisting the temptations and lures of power and evil. The temptations even come by quoting Scripture, and they look really appealing. Jesus remains clear that his identity rests as God’s beloved.
The grace of this season is that Jesus suffers with us. Jesus is the journey from his clear identity as God’s own at baptism to the cross where death, hell and the devil are surely defeated. In the struggle of our hearts, in the journey of life, Christ has been there and will be there.
Another grace I find in this Gospel lesson is the gift of time. Jesus wrestling with evil and knowing his calling is not just a one-time conversation with the Devil; Jesus is on a journey for forty days in the wilderness. We have the gift of some time with Jesus to sort through the confusion and chaos, and keep listening for the calling of our true identity as God’s beloved.
Amidst our needs and concerns, faith helps us lean into the awareness, with the Apostle Paul, that God’s grace is sufficient for us; that the grace of God in Jesus abounds.
Such grace doesn’t do away with the hardships that are part and parcel of this life, but rather gives us the courage with Jesus, the one who was tempted as we are and thereby knows our struggles firsthand. This same Jesus now invites us to find both hope and courage in the God who named not only him, but all of us, beloved children, so that we discover who we are by recalling whose we are.