Lent 1A 2026

THE REV. E. WAYNE ROLLINS

​ I stand before you today as a man who is angry. Those who know me well wouldn’t be surprised to hear this. Those who don’t, well, in retrospect, it’s probably not a big surprise. 

I see planned instances of cruelty and hatred playing out in our national life. I wonder why millions would choose hatred while claiming faith in the one who came because “God so loved the world.” 

I listen as a dear friend is reduced to tears because healthcare systems are so preoccupied with how services are billed that they seem to have forgotten how to provide patient care. 

I answer the telephone to hear yet one more person ask for assistance to pay for a room in a boarding house, only to have to say I don’t have anything available to help, even while knowing it’s just for one month, and the calendar keeps progressing. 
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I wear out the mute button on a television remote to silence advertisements that promise a better life if we’ll spend what we have on their product. I see promises that if you’ll only use this body wash, this perfume, this hair color, this nail color, this makeup, this jewelry, even talk your doctor into prescribing this medication, you can be the “real” you everyone else wants to know. 

I’m angry, in part, because the serpent is still slithering around making promises that can’t be kept, yet even after thousands of years, we keep hoping they will come true. I’m angry because we keep selling our souls to the lowest bidder, hoping for power, wealth and fame even after we claim to know Jesus rejected those same things in his sojourn in the wilderness. 

I’m angry because all these things keep draining our very souls even as we chase after them, deluding ourselves that this time will be different. And we wonder why it all seems so elusive, so far out of our grasp, so futile. 

I’m tired of being angry. It’s so draining, it takes so much energy because I keep thinking that expressing my anger might result in changing everyone and everything around me. And I’m tired of being angry at that not being true. 

That is why I need to return to where we are today. I need to hear today’s first lesson and present my anger at being blamed for something that we're told happened thousands of years ago, if it’s actually true, and not just being held responsible for my own actions after I was old enough to know better. I mean, those things are probably quite enough on their own. 

​I need to offer my anger over being told that I need to work it out for myself, to get myself saved, lest I lose all hope, despite what Paul tells the Roman Church has already been accomplished for all of us, for all time.

I need to offer all the times I said yes to the temptations of power and wealth and fame in some way because, frankly, it felt really good when it happened.

I need to make all those, and all the pain of rejection, loss, and even fleeting success my offering to the only One who can redeem them and make them a loving encounter instead of a continuing source of pain and anger.

You see, when we come together and dare to approach the altar of grace, we place upon that altar, in one way or another, all that we are so that it might be consecrated into the very foundation of our lives. That means that we finally let go of all that has caused us pain and anger, stop letting those things identify who we are by offering them to God who takes what can be the nothingness of our own need to create a better past and somehow create it into a fountain of new life.

That’s the only way I’ve found to see my anger turned into a life-giving acceptance of the abundant life Jesus promises. I need to hear how you have witnessed your own offerings being transfigured in like manner, especially when events of my own life darken the way ahead of me.

I need to hear your stories of walking in the wilderness areas of life, and how you’ve answered the temptations presented along the way. And I need to hear how your return met your starvation and thirst for righteousness with a renewed hope of redemption.

Jesus may have gone into the wilderness alone. But since he did, we are not alone in our own journeys into similar places. He is there with us, or waiting when we wander out, hand outstretched with a cup of cool water, offering a sip of love and redemption to salve our parched souls.
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Reminding myself of that, I’m not so angry anymore.