Lectionary Commentaries for February 22, 2026
First Sunday in Lent

This scene, whether in Matthean or Lukan form, appears frequently in the lectionary. What to do with such a familiar passage?

The passage is susceptible to unhelpful readings. Sermons that urge parishioners to “quote scripture when you are tempted” have turned out to be very ineffective. Likewise, sermons that claim that Jesus is rejecting any concern for social justice efforts (bread), political structures and programs (power), and miracles isolate the Gospel from everyday life. And subsequently, Jesus multiplies bread to feed folks, constantly conflicts with sociopolitical leaders over societal vision and imperial practices, and performs miracles (healings, exorcisms). These actions manifest God’s empire in the midst of Rome’s empire.

Moreover, some interpreters present the devil’s tests for Jesus in contrast with Israel’s experiences in the wilderness. They appeal to both the wilderness setting and Jesus’ three citations in verses 4, 7, and 10 from Moses’ sermon in Deuteronomy 6–8. The link, though, is not compelling. In the exodus, God, not the devil, tests Israel. And the second and third tests have little or no resonance with the wilderness experience. Worse, this approach encourages some interpreters to read the scene as contrasting Israel’s faithlessness with Jesus’ faithfulness. The text does not assert this contrast. That move unacceptably emerges from and reinforces errant claims of Christian superiority and of Israel’s rejection from divine purposes.  

A preferable approach attends to the scene’s position in the Gospel. The scene follows Jesus’ baptism in which God declares him to be God’s son, or agent, and representative. God has commissioned, or authorized, Jesus (3:16–17).    

This identity statement is the latest in a sequence of such statements about Jesus’ identity in the first few chapters of the Gospel: the Christ (1:1, 18), son of David and Abraham (1:1), who saves (1:21), Emmanuel (1:23), a ruler (2:6), my son (2:15). This sequence aligns Jesus as an agent of the divine will. In addition, citations of Hebrew Scriptures locate Jesus in the divine purposes (1:22–23; 2:5–6, 15, 17–18, 23), and he has his own personal ambassador, John, who prepares the way for his public ministry (3:1–12). 

Yet before this public ministry begins in 4:17, Jesus’ identity is tested (4:1–11). The scene’s function is not to proscribe the means or goals of Jesus’ ministry, but to establish its basis in Jesus’ identity. The scene affirms Jesus’ identity as God’s agent or son as the foundation for his ministry activity. 

It does so by presenting the Matthean Jesus with devil-inspired diversions which serve as opportunities for him to affirm his identity and loyalty. Two powers collide. Verse 1 identifies God’s Spirit that leads Jesus into the wilderness, where he encounters the devil, the agent of the test of Jesus’ allegiance and identity. The devil is named without explanation; the text assumes common Jewish cultural knowledge. 

Matthew’s Gospel elaborates on this opponent of God’s purposes with a series of synonyms; the tester or tempter (4:3), Beelzebul the ruler of destructive demons and its own empire (12:24–26), the evil one who produces its own human children or agents (13:19, 38), the enemy (13:39), and Satan (16:23), a cosmic force whose destiny is destruction in an eternal fire (25:41). However we think of the devil, the figure’s presence in the Gospel personifies the vulnerability of human life and life in relation to God. No one, not even God’s anointed agent, is free from having their identity and loyalty tested. 

The Gospel presents the cosmic force’s work through human agents. With nasty polemic and verbs of “testing” and “approach,” it identifies the Jerusalem leaders as the devil’s agents. Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodians “approach” and “test” Jesus (16:1; 19:3; 22:18, 35–36). This demonization of Jewish leaders has fueled a long and tragic history of anti-Judaism. The devil also opposes new Jesus-followers (13:19). Circumstances of trouble and opposition, the cares of the world, and wealth turn Jesus-followers away from faithfulness (13:20–23). So, too, do household members (10:34–39).

The devil presents Jesus with three proposed actions that have highly desirable outcomes. If Jesus accepts the devil’s options, he can address extensive food insecurity for many in the Roman world by turning stones into bread. This is a brilliant idea. He can also gain power over all the empires of the world. Here the Gospel makes a crucial political statement in revealing the devil as the power that controls the Roman Empire. And Jesus can rely on God’s protection in a dramatic public and attention-getting display. 

In fact, Matthew’s Gospel will later narrate Jesus performing powerful acts: feeding crowds (14:13–21; 15:32–39), gaining all authority in heaven and earth in his resurrection (28:18) and return (24:27–31; 26:64), and publicly displaying God’s power and compassion in healings and exorcisms (4:23–25). 

Yet Jesus rejects the devil’s invitations. Why? If Jesus acts on the devil’s bidding, he becomes the agent or son of the devil. He ceases to be the agent or son of God. He would betray his identity.

Further, the devil misrepresents the nature of Jesus’ sonship. The devil’s three tests involve only displays of power. Jesus will, of course, utilize miraculous power, but his sonship also involves suffering and death (1:21–23; 16:21).

The scene ends with the devil’s departure (4:11). The scene has exposed the devil’s opposition to divine purposes, its claim to control the empires of the world (especially Rome’s), its demands for obedience and homage, its workings through sociopolitical elites and structures, and the limits of its power. These insights are crucial for the Gospel’s narrative of Jesus’ public activity that follows.

How will Jesus manifest God’s empire? His calling of followers, his conflicts with the Jerusalem leaders, his actions that reverse human suffering (exorcisms, feedings, healings), his teachings about life that manifests God’s empire, his eschatological declarations of God’s triumph, and his crucifixion and resurrection play out in an ongoing struggle between the devil-controlled Roman Empire and God’s empire.

With the devil’s departure, angels—agents of God’s presence—care for Jesus (4:11).  

As I write this biblical reflection—more theological and historical, likely—I start with a confession. After years of preaching the lectionary texts, and most often choosing the first reading or the psalm for the week, I approached this text with dread. Not because I don’t find it particularly interesting, but because of the way it is weighted with a history of interpretation and the notion of a “fall,” though neither this word nor anything close to it is in the story. Because it comes at the first of Lent, it also infers that those shaping the liturgical story expect us to reflect on this “fall,” or at least on human disobedience—which, according to historical readings, led to a fall.

You see my dilemma? Of course, scholars on Working Preacher over the years have taken this notion up time and again, and so I don’t feel any need to do so. I hope you’ll visit all that work. Rather, I decided to be in conversation with two Womanist biblical scholars, Dr. Wilda C. Gafney and Dr. Judy Fentress-Williams. What follows is my dialogue with their work, which I hope will help anyone brave enough to preach these texts, as it has helped me.

As a Lenten text, it does seem that we are being asked to “reflect on the nature and limitations of humanity, including the consequences of our actions and inactions and our responsibility in and for this world,” as Gafney notes.¹ Since Lent invites us to this kind of reflection, accompanied by fasting and letting go of worldly habits as we march toward Jerusalem and the Holy Week, preachers have another non-cosmic place to begin with the text.

Humans are prone to push boundaries. It starts early. When my younger son was two, I put the cookie jar up on the refrigerator, out of his reach, and explained to him that he could have a cookie after dinner. When I left the room to vacuum, he dragged a dining room chair to the counter, climbed up on the counter, and pulled the cookie jar between his chubby legs. I came back into the kitchen just as he was reaching into the jar for the cookie that I had delayed but not forbidden. I promised I would pop his hand if he got a cookie. He looked me in my eyes and never left my gaze as he got a cookie and ate it. He had determined in his two-year-old mind that the cookie was worth a pop on the hand.

Was that sin? No, but it was disobedience and pushing the boundary. I had not promised him he would die or suffer alienation or be kicked out of my house—such threats would come much, much later as he grew into teenage years. But my confession is that it was my sense that I had no control over him. Influence, maybe. But not control.

God, it is clear, also has no control over humans. I can hear my son saying, “Why buy cookies if I can’t have them when I want?” I can hear Eve saying, “Why put a tree of the knowledge of good and evil and a tree of life in the garden if we are forbidden to eat from them?” And that is the center of boundary crossing—the question “Why?”

As Gafney notes, the snake plays the role of the questioner and should be seen, not as a tempter, but as a tester of the question “What will humanity do in response to boundaries?” Test them, bend them, break them. The serpent also tests something else—how humans hear, remember, tell, question, and interpret God’s words: ‘Did God say…?’”² This framing of boundaries and boundary crossing will give preachers a lot of fodder for the sermon, from my perspective.

Of course, another angle for the sermon is how to include all humanity in this decision-making process during Lent, and not just woman-bash, as centuries of pre-Christian (see also Sirach 25:24 [“sin began with a woman”]) and Christian interpretation has managed to do. “It’s the woman’s fault” ought to be an insult to men, as it portrays men as weak and feckless and unable to hold their own boundaries or decisions to obey or not obey God. This sentiment is reflected in questions turned onto women when they have been sexually assaulted: in other words, “What were you wearing?”

Fentress-Williams aptly reframes the story of the encounter between the woman and the serpent. She describes it as sensual, with four of the five senses engaged: “She (Eve) hears the voice of the serpent and ‘saw the tree was beautiful with delicious food and the tree would provide wisdom, so she took some of its fruit and ate it’ (touch and taste).”³ Thinking about the sensual nature of the encounter gives preachers an opportunity to think about how we use the Lenten season to discipline our sensual selves—not just our sexual selves.

What would it mean to “guard the gates of our eyes” (see also Proverbs 4:23–27) during Lent and limit what we watch on the internet or on TV? We already limit what we put in our mouths (at least we say we do), but what happens when we use these disciplinary actions not as punishment or flagellating, but as heightening our sense of God and even of what makes our hearts so “prone to wander,”⁴ as the song-writer says?

Fentress-Williams gives us another way to engage this text, and I would say, the preacher who is brave enough to use it will continue to challenge our usual understanding about this woman Eve. In the preaching space, we often don’t talk about what was going on around the telling of our story, but we could. This story is in conversation with the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh and the role the woman plays in pulling the man from the world of animals.

In this story, “the woman is associated with sexual knowledge and civilization.”⁵ So, too, is the woman in the biblical tradition associated with knowledge and wisdom (see also Proverbs 1–9). For Fentress-Williams, “the serpent speaks to the woman because women are affiliated with wisdom and civilization—that which separates humans from animals. … Read this way, it makes sense that the serpent addresses the woman. In her role as purveyor of wisdom and knowledge, she would naturally want to know.”⁶

As a literary dialogic Womanist hermeneut, Fentress-Williams also leans into the context and the presumed reason for the text. She says:

To the extent that the stories in the primeval history tell us how things were and are, the account in Genesis 3 tells us that, given the opportunity, we—and all humans—will eventually transgress the boundaries God has laid out for us. No one can remain in Eden or the womb forever. Thus, from a dialogic perspective, the taking of the forbidden fruit in the garden is less a moment in chronology and more an example of chronotope. It is the moment upon which the narrative hangs, and this is not just a moment for Adam and Eve. It is the existential and inevitable moment for all of us, their descendants.⁷

Finally, I want to offer preachers another option. If you want to go down a rabbit hole on how this doctrine of the fall was solidified, and how the serpent/snake becomes “the devil” in other Abrahamic traditions, see the link in the footnotes.⁸ But every religious tradition has tried to answer the question of human failings, violence, and frailty, with some version of a “fall” from a time when humans were not frail and violent in our imagination, which readers can find on the same site. What seems true to me is that we want a perfect human and, I believe, a path back to that perfection. Lent suggests that we have no path back to some mythic perfection, only repentance and starting over again and again.

Notes

1. Wilda C. Gafney, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church: A Multi-Gospel Single-Year Lectionary, Year W (Church Publishing, 2021), 80.
2. Gafney, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church, 80.
3. Judy Fentress-Williams, Holy Imagination: A Literary and Theological Introduction to the Old Testament (Abingdon, 2021), 9.
4. Robert Robinson, “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” 1758, https://hymnary.org/text/come_thou_fount_of_every_blessing.
5. Fentress-Williams, Holy Imagination, 10.
6. Fentress-Williams, Holy Imagination, 10.
7. Fentress-Williams, Holy Imagination, 11.
8. “Human Fall,” The New World Encyclopedia, accessed January 6, 2026, https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Human_Fall.

Verses 3–5 of Psalm 32 articulate the simple story of forgiveness.¹ The key is found in the move from concealing sin to confessing sin, and divine forgiveness comes to the fore. These verses reflect the reality that “silence kills” with the associated difficulties the text narrates in the denial of sin: the body wasting away, groaning all day, an ever-present oppressive presence that dries up the person the way severe drought and heat waves dry up land and vegetation in a day of global warming. Unconfessed sin gnaws at a soul in a debilitating and devastating way. The unconfessed sin brings two negative consequences. 

It is, however, the verb “acknowledged” in verse 5 that marks the sudden shift that brings hope. The speaker of this poetic narrative has now acknowledged this sin to God. The change is sudden, and the speaker suddenly speaks their admission of sin and guilt. The sin is no longer hidden (verse 5), the same word for “covered” in verse 1. To acknowledge is to say out loud, to speak clearly of the sin, to say what this soul has been experiencing as deadly. The third line of verse 5 includes a self-quote: “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.” It is notable that “sin,” “iniquity,” and “transgressions” are all used to identify the wrongdoing.  

Such a full vocabulary of sin suggests the readiness of the speaker to blurt out the whole of this distorting and death-giving sin. Concealing the sin has brought death and brings great weariness. Acknowledging the sin to “you,” the emphatic pronoun for YHWH, brings immediate forgiveness or lifting of the guilt that comes with the transgression. There is no divine punishment or discipline; there is simply the unvarnished telling of the truth. The poetic story is of the falsehood of silence that is radically changed to truth-telling, and the God of all mercy is at the ready with forgiveness.  

Readers/hearers would do well to pause and remember the story of David and Bathsheba and Uriah, often associated with Psalm 51, and how this simple narrative of Psalm 32 is reflected in 2 Samuel 12:13 with David’s confession to the prophet Nathan: “I have sinned against the Lord.” Nathan replies: “Now the Lord has put away your sin. You shall not die.” David has remarkably defied YHWH, the Torah, and the prophet! And yet the prophet announces forgiveness.  

In contrast to the brief narrative of confession and forgiveness in Psalm 32, however, note that the 2 Samuel text goes on to identify the death of the son from this oppressive violation of Bathsheba as the deadly result of this transgression (verse 14).

The story of Saul and Samuel in 1 Samuel 15 is also relevant. Saul confesses sin and seeks forgiveness, but remains unforgiven. Psalm 32 provides one remarkable account of confession and forgiveness, but it is not the whole of the complex proclamation about sin and forgiveness in the Older Testament.  

The striking drama of confession and forgiveness in Psalm 32:3–5 is then surrounded by teaching material in verses 1–2 and 6–11. The shapers of the psalm find it crucial for the community to learn wisdom from the basic narrative of sin and forgiveness. Based on experience, the one who has been forgiven teaches others, not in a prideful way, but with an emphasis on God’s forgiveness. God is the one who forgives; the task of persons of faith is to confess, tell the truth in their relationship with God and other persons. God forgives and restores wholeness. Others are invited to confess their sin and depend on divine mercy.  

The opening verses of the psalm take the form of beatitudes, wise reflections on whole living, here focused on divine forgiveness. Forgiveness is central to full living, and essential to forgiveness is the absence of deceit. The wise person of faith does not hide transgressions but acknowledges them to the God of grace. The contrast is between dependence on divine mercy and the sufficiency of the self to hide and manage the sin and guilt. 

The verb “impute” in verse 2 is significant. God assigns “no iniquity” to one who has sinned and is forgiven, not to one who is sinless. The person who stands before God as forgiven is whole. For contemporary readers, I do not think the rendering “happy” communicates the significance of the text. The term begins a beatitude with the wisdom reflection of life walked in a whole, healthy path, a life in faithful relationship with God and others. 

Two additional uses of the verb “impute” are worth mentioning. Paul quotes Psalm 32:1–2 in Romans 4:7–8 to suggest that forgiveness—and not circumcision or any other qualification—is the basis for new life. In that same passage, Paul refers to Genesis 15:6 and Abraham, to whom God assigned—“imputed”—righteousness. Forgiveness before YHWH derives from divine mercy.  

Verses 6–7 invite readers/hearers to trust in YHWH and to pray at times “of distress, the rush of mighty waters.” The distress is chaos; it may come from guilt, but not necessarily. The narrative of forgiveness in verses 3–5 has taught that the safe place for persons is in YHWH. The psalm urges an open response to YHWH, in this psalm characterized by turning to YHWH in confession of sin. YHWH freely offers forgiveness, and that is the hope for humanity, not some misguided sense of sinless autonomy.  

Psalm 32 is listed among the Penitential Psalms in Christian tradition. There is not, however, any sense of what is commonly considered penitence in the psalm. The psalm is about the amazing forgiveness of YHWH rather than some discipline or work of penitence. God restores life through forgiveness. The emphasis in Psalm 32 is on divine hope to forgive and on the human capacity to tell the truth in a direct way.

Truth-telling—confession—makes possible forgiveness. Silence kills. This wisdom lesson in poetry fits well with modern psychology’s concern to deal with denial and self-deceit, which harbor guilt. The ancient psalmist understood that silence kills. Contemporary studies of such silence have often been conducted by women in the face of authoritarian societies led by men, societies often built on deadly silence.

Psalm 32 begins with the wisdom teacher commending confession and forgiveness as crucial to fullness of life. The poetry then narrates the deadly effect of silence, contrasted with the true and direct confession of transgression to the God of all mercy who forgives. The remaining verses call readers and hearers to the faithful life of prayer with YHWH, who forgives and preserves. The psalm is a teaching psalm about sin and forgiveness, calling faithful readers and hearers to prayer of confession. 

Notes

1. Commentary previously published on this website for October 30, 2022.

His name was Mr. Steve Moore, and he was the honors English Literature teacher during my junior year at Crete-Monee High School in Crete, Illinois. Mr. Moore was brilliant, seemingly performing in a role far below his true potential—at least, that was what all his students believed. One day, someone leaked that Mr. Moore had been on the game show Jeopardy! and had won a game or two. In the next class, students dared each other to ask if this growing rumor was true. 

My friend Perry and I debate to this day, some 37 years later, which one of us asked Mr. Moore; both of us claim bragging rights. Regardless of who did it, when the question was finally asked, Mr. Moore, face flushed red, said, “Mr. Gibson” in my version and “Mr. Clay” in Perry’s, “I think our class time would be better served if we stick to the lesson.” In our minds, he was a rock star and a Jeopardy! champion! 

I mention Mr. Moore not only because he was the man who taught me English Literature and encouraged me to explore texts that otherwise wouldn’t have interested me, but also because he shared his love for writing and convinced me I could excel at it someday. 

One day, Mr. Moore, while handing out graded papers for a weighted assignment, skipped my desk and handed out the rest of the papers. Embarrassed and being the class clown, I made a joke to ease my embarrassment that also made the other students laugh. Without looking up, Mr. Moore invited me to stay after class to meet with him personally to get my grade. When the bell rang and the students mockingly filed out of the room, Mr. Moore, without raising his voice, explained that this paper did not reflect my true work because it contained many uncharacteristic mistakes. He then said something I will never forget: “You never turn in a final copy without first writing a rough draft. Because in your final copy, you are able to fix all the flaws.”

Paul, knowing that Spain was a scintillating galaxy of intelligence, a place of culture and evolving thought, endeavored to take the gospel there. To do this, he decided to set up camp in Rome. Consequently, he sent and commended Phoebe from the church at Cenchreae to deliver and interpret his letter, which would become the book of Romans, before he arrived. He wanted to ensure that the people were exposed to his teaching and that everyone was learning and preaching the same theological strand of the gospel. As a result, Romans is one of the most theological books in the Bible, and it is considered by many scholars to be the seminal or groundbreaking work on systematic theology. 

From the very beginning of the book, Paul discusses foundational theology. As we scan through chapter 1, Paul asserts, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation for everyone, Jew or Gentile.” By verse 19, he assures us that even if someone has never read the gospel, God has revealed himself in nature, leaving people without an excuse. 

Paul continues this no-excuse idea in chapter 2 by talking about God’s judgment for sin and the tendency of some Jews who keep the law to feel spiritually superior to those who have not. But he levels the playing field in chapter 3 when he reminds us that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” He then posits to us that God remains faithful to us, as Jesus took our punishment so that all who have faith in him would be justified. 

In chapter 4, Paul reminds us that we were bequeathed this faith from Abraham, and by the time we pull into the parking lot of chapter 5, Paul says that because of this justification through our faith, we experience grace. He also suggests that there is a relationship between sin and grace, and that is where we bump into our text for today. 

Paul contrasts sin and grace by placing them in the personhood of two of the most prominent figures in the Holy Scriptures. He brings Adam to center stage, a place he has not been since Genesis, and reintroduces him as sin’s escort into the world. This is a powerful indictment, one that, in ways, contradicts what Paul wrote in the 13th and 14th verses of the second chapter of his first letter to Timothy, where he names Adam’s wife Eve as the sin culprit. Paul says here that it was Adam who brought sin and, thereby, death into the world. It is because of the mistakes Adam made that sin entered the world and death came to everyone.

Then Paul shifts focus from the sin part of the equation and also changes the person representing it. Paul states that just as sin and death entered the world through Adam, God’s gift of grace entered through Jesus Christ. He explains that Adam brings condemnation to everyone because God’s law was given to reveal humanity’s sinfulness. However, the more people sinned, the more God’s love produced even more grace for us, and God’s grace was greater than the sin. This suggests that, in a sense, although Paul calls Adam a “type” of Christ, it was God’s grace in Jesus that fixed all the flaws, mistakes, and deficits caused by Adam’s sin. I now realize that if Adam is indeed a type of Christ, he was probably just a rough draft compared to Jesus’ final version. Amen and Ase’.