Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of
Trinity Sermons. This week, we're continuing
our teaching series called This is the Way, where
we're uncovering spiritual practices that help
us dive deeper into our faith as we follow the
way of Jesus. And today, we are excited to welcome
a special guest, Kristen Dede Johnson, who is
an author, theologian, and speaker, as well as
the current principal of Wycliffe College in
Toronto. Kristen is going to be sharing with
us about how to read the Bible, and also about
her own experiences with the transformative power
of Scripture, and how we don't just read God's
Word, but we have to allow God's Word to really
read us. Today's reading is from the Gospel of
Luke, chapter 1, verses 1 to 13. The devil said
to him, If you are the Son of God, tell this
stone to become bread. Jesus answered, It is
written. Man shall not live by bread alone. The
devil led him up to a high place and showed him
in an instant all the kingdoms of the world.
And he said to him, I will give you all their
authority and splendor. It has been given to
me and I can give it to anyone I want. If you
worship me, it will all be yours. Jesus answered,
It is written, Worship the Lord your God and
serve him only. The devil led him to Jerusalem
and had him stand on the highest point of the
temple. If you are the Son of God, he said, throw
yourself down from here, for it is written, he
will command his angels concerning you to guard
you carefully. They will lift up their hands
so that you will not strike your foot against
a stone. Jesus answered, It is said, Do not put
the Lord your God to the test. When the devil
had finished all his tempting, he left him until
an opportune time. This is the word of the Lord.
Many of you are not from an Anglican background,
and that might mean that you don't know the very
special relationship that Trinity Streetsville
has with Wycliffe College. Wycliffe College is
an Anglican theological school. It's associated
with the University of Toronto. I studied at
Wycliffe College and graduated in 2004. There's
many people in our midst today who have studied
at Wycliffe. Britton, who was singing this morning,
has also studied there. And we have members of
our congregation who have served on the board
of Wycliffe College. In fact, Bob Motes, who's
here today, is currently a board member at Wycliffe.
And, of course, in his other job, our electric
guitarist here this morning, Justin Stratus,
serves as the academic dean at Wycliffe. So there's
these real—oh, and I should say that a previous
rector, Harold Percy, established the— Institute
of evangelism at Wycliffe college. So there is
this really deep. between Trinity Streetsville
and Wycliffe, which is why it's so especially
meaningful this morning that I get to welcome
our guest preacher. Dr. Kristen Deedee Johnson
is the principal of Wycliffe College. And before
coming to Toronto, Kristen served as the dean
and vice president of academic affairs at Western
Theological Seminary in Michigan. She's a theologian.
She's a leader. She is a teacher who cares deeply
about helping the church to think well and to
live faithfully in today's world. Kristen has
written and spoken widely, you know, whether
it's university classrooms or podcasts or churches.
In fact, one of her books, which she co -authored,
called The Justice Calling, was named one of
the books of the year by Christianity Today.
So beyond all that, though, I know Kristen is
passionate about equipping leaders for ministry
and helping the church engage with culture and
to do that with conviction and grace. So I hope
that you will join me in giving Kristen a very
warm Trinity welcome as she preaches for us today.
Kristen. Thank you for the warm welcome and such
a gift to be with you. I've heard a lot about
you, and it's a joy to be with you this morning,
to be worshiping alongside colleagues like Karen
and Justin and board members and friends of the
college, graduates and current students as well.
Let's pray together. God, we ask that the words
of my mouth and the meditations of all of our
hearts would be acceptable in your sight. In
Jesus' name, amen. Well, I do want to bring greetings
from Wycliffe and just to say again that it's
a gift to be with you this morning. We are grateful
for the long connections between Wycliffe and
Trinity Streetsville. And I'm also grateful to
be a part of this particular sermon series, your
new This Is The Way series, reflecting with you
this morning on the practice of scripture. That
Jesus is calling us to follow him in every area
of life. That this Christian faith is not just
a belief, but is a way of life. These convictions
that are guiding your series in the season of
Lent, these are convictions that are very dear
to my heart and have been shaping for me in my
own callings. As I was reflecting on the importance
of scripture and the spiritual discipline of
study in anticipation of this morning with you,
I was reminded of the very first moment when
I realized that the words of the Bible could
have a shaping impact on my life. A friend had
invited me to her youth group at a local Anglican
church. I think one actually probably pretty
similar to this one in the United States. So
that was when I was in grade seven. And that's
probably when I first started reading the Bible.
But that wasn't right away that I saw its connection
to my life. It took a couple of years. I remember
I was navigating a challenging situation with
a friend, by that point, honestly, a former friend
at school who I thought was mistreating me. And
I was hurt, I was angry, and I was really unsure
how to approach this friend. I went to youth
group and during Bible study, I remember hearing
really for the first time these words, love your
enemies, do good to those who hate you. Bless
those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat
you. I can still recall the sense of amazement
and conviction that I felt. Now I understand
that to be the work of the Holy Spirit. I was
amazed that these words of Jesus spoken so long
ago, being read from this book, could deeply
connect to my situation as a high schooler centuries
later. And I was convicted that these words invited
me to follow a different way than I assure you
I would have taken had I not heard those words.
I needed God to shape my imagination, to work
through the Bible to help me think differently
about what it meant to love others, and over
time to use the words of Scripture to invite
me into a wholly different way of life than I
had known before becoming a Christian. This is
what Psalm 1 speaks of to those who are blessed.
It invites us to meditate on the law day and
night. The Hebrew word is more like chew on,
ingest, and allow it to nourish and shape us.
To meditate on the law day and night so that
we can become like trees planted by streams of
water. This, the psalm tells us, is the way of
the righteous, the way of life to which we're
called. Being able to see differently and to
live differently through the Spirit's work shaping
us as we study and meditate on Scripture. This
is what we're hoping for. I think through this
series, through the practices you're being invited
to, through our local churches and through places
like Wycliffe College. I sometimes think about...
I don't know if you know the cultural phenomenon
of kindergarten soccer. As a soccer mom, I can
remember taking my five -year -old children,
now 13 and 16, but they'd go to practices, and
it would seem like they could do the drills.
They could really follow what they were supposed
to do, but you'd get to game time, and it really
looked nothing like soccer. And I had this moment
where I was in the midst of teaching a class
on discipleship, and I thought, is this what
we're doing? We invite people into the drills,
the Sunday mornings, the Bible study, the meditation,
the small groups. But isn't the point how it's
actually shaping our lives? How we move from
the practice to an embodied way of life in the
world for Jesus seeking the kingdom? And are
we bridging that gap, right? That's what we're
hoping for. So what we want to be doing in our
churches and small groups and Bible studies and
our own spiritual practices. is to be inviting
the Spirit to actually shape how we live, how
we love, how we respond. To enable us, like Jesus
in the passage that Karen read for us today,
to respond with faith and trust in God when faced
with challenges and temptations. To see God's
way as the most true and beautiful and good.
To understand that the power and authority, the
glory and the splendor promised by the world
don't compare to the abundant life we have received
in Christ and the gift of living each moment
in the light of the kingdom of God. As we continue
on in the 40 -day season of Lent, let us consider
what God might have for us to learn from Jesus
during his 40 days of fasting in the wilderness.
when he's tempted or tested by the devil. To
set the stage behind this passage a little bit,
this encounter between Jesus and the devil happens
just after Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist
and just before he begins his public ministry.
He was given the gift of the Holy Spirit when
he was baptized, and the passage tells us that
the Spirit led him into the wilderness, presumably
for a season of final preparation for ministry.
That was about to begin, and that ministry includes
the culmination in his death and resurrection,
towards which we're looking this Lent as we anticipate
Easter. So as we're thinking about the importance
of the study of the Bible this morning, I want
to pause to note that each time Jesus is tempted
by the devil, he responds with words from the
Hebrew Scriptures, or what Christians today call
the Old Testament. So the first temptation, the
devil said to him, if you are the son of God,
tell this stone to become bread. Jesus answered,
it is written, man shall not live on bread alone.
This verse is drawn from Deuteronomy 8 .3. Man
does not live on bread alone, but on every word
that comes from the mouth of the Lord. And this
longer version is recorded in the temptation
story in the Gospel of Matthew. Not only does
Jesus use the words of scripture to answer the
devil and resist the temptation, but the words
themselves point to the significance of the words
that God gives us in the Bible. We do not live
on bread alone, but are utterly dependent on
the words that come from the mouth of the Lord
that are captured in this sacred book. This is
part of what we remember when we fast from food,
a traditional Lenten exercise, our deeper reliance
on God. our need from the sustenance that comes
from God's words, God's wisdom, and ultimately
God himself. The response to the devil's second
temptation, worship the Lord your God and serve
him only, comes from Deuteronomy 6, as do the
words Jesus offers in response to the third temptation.
It is said, do not put the Lord your God to the
test. It's likely that following the common practices
of Judaism in his day, Jesus's childhood included
studying and memorizing the Torah, the first
five books of the Bible, which would have included
Deuteronomy. And we see evidence actually throughout
Jesus's lifetime that the words of the Hebrew
scriptures were deep within him and they emerged
as needed, all the way to him quoting the Psalms
as he was dying on the cross. Now we can imagine
that if Jesus, who was fully God as well as fully
human, needed to spend time with and even internalize
the words of scripture, how much more do we,
who only have the fully human part, need to spend
time with every word that comes from the mouth
of the Lord? But there's even more significance
to the three verses that Jesus responds with
coming from Deuteronomy. Because the 40 -day
reference is connected to the 40 years that the
Israelites spent waiting to enter the Promised
Land after they were rescued by God from slavery
in Egypt. And the desert where the temptations
of Jesus take place is like the wilderness where
the Israelites spent this time of wandering.
The verses themselves from Deuteronomy that Jesus
uses in their original context They point to
temptations that the Israelites faced in the
wilderness and times when they failed to resist
temptation and failed to trust God. So today's
passage from Luke is actually an invitation into
the story of scripture that unfolds across the
entire Bible. As one New Testament scholar writes,
the content of the tests that Jesus not only
endures but also passes. correspond to the tests
that Israel faced in the wilderness, but failed.
Jesus is tempted by hunger, as was Israel. But
Jesus rebukes with the words, a person must not
live on bread alone, where the Israelites simply
complained, first about the lack of bread and
then about the lack of variety in their diet.
Jesus is tempted to engage in idolatrous acts
by worshiping Satan, but he rebukes Satan. Israel,
however, succumbed to the temptation to commit
idolatry and fashioned gold in the image of a
calf and worshipped it. Jesus is tempted to test
God's faithfulness, as was Israel. Jesus rebuts
Satan, but Moses, when he challenged the Israelites,
why do you test the Lord? The people continued
to complain. For Luke, the specific content of
the tests discloses. According to this scholar,
that Jesus is Israel, God's son, who is called
out of Egypt to complete Israel's exodus. And
Luke also casts this scene as a reversal of Adam's
disobedience. So Jesus' faithfulness in the face
of temptation really comes to life when we place
this in the context of earlier temptation stories
within our canon of scripture, going all the
way back to the temptation in the garden. In
the opening pages of Genesis, and including maybe
most prominently the Exodus narratives. So the
Exodus, where God's people were freed from slavery
by God and then struggled. And so Jesus is sort
of placing himself in that story, right? And
finally completing the story where we can be
freed from our slavery to sin because of his
faithfulness on our behalf. When we step back
and consider this passage in light of the longer
arc of salvation history, of God's redemption
story unfolding through generations and centuries,
the amazing grace of God made known to us in
Jesus Christ becomes all the more amazing. As
we study scripture, stepping back to place passages
in the context of the larger story of scripture
not only brings into sharper relief the grace
and the steadfast love of our Lord, But I think
it also helps us to engage with the passages
more fully and faithfully. Now, I will confess
in my own story of engaging with scripture, I
already shared with you sort of that initial
point. So a couple of years later, still in high
school, I became aware of something called an
exhaustive concordance. We don't really need
this anymore because we have the internet, but
you used to be able to buy a book about this
big and every word in the Bible was listed. And
then you could see if you wanted to see, okay,
where else are temptations in the biblical story?
You look up the word temptation and list every
verse. Well, I thought this was an amazing resource
and I asked for it as a birthday present. And
I would, you know, if I heard a sermon on, there's
a difference between biblical hope or biblical
joy and biblical unhappiness, I would sort of
go to each word and look it up. But I had never
heard about things like context and genre. I
only looked at the individual verse. I didn't
know that it was important that it's placed in
a chapter as part of a book and that there are
different kinds of books. Some are poetry and
some are wisdom literature and some are biographies.
And I didn't know how they fit into the larger
story of Scripture. Now, I do believe the Spirit
used that season. But I will say, I believe that
the Spirit can do even deeply formative work
when we engage on these other levels. So it took
me many years to learn that the study of Scripture
in light of Scripture is a real gift. And to
learn that the different books of the Bible,
these different genres, the letters, poems, compilations
of wisdom are important to how we understand
and can apply the texts. This is part of why
I'm passionate about theological education for
all, because learning these things really did
alter and shape my reading of scripture. It's
important to take the time to explore how the
particular verses and passages we are studying
fit into the chapter and the book where they're
located, and also how they're connected to that
larger story. Now, when it comes to the story
of Scripture, there are different ways of understanding
that story. Biblical scholars like N .T. Wright
talk about it like a five -act play. Others have
attempted to emphasize four parts. Maybe you've
heard creation, fall, consummation, redemption.
I tend to tell in terms of six chapters, the
original creation, our fall, God's covenant with
Israel, Jesus Christ, the central part of the
story. Then there's the church and our calling
here and now. And then the return of Christ,
who is coming to usher in the kingdom of God
finally and fully. So practically speaking, I
would suggest that when we come to a text, we
do want to consider where it falls within the
story of Scripture and how that might impact
what's written. I was thinking about this a bit
yesterday. We had the Women's Breakfast at Wycliffe
College. This happens every fall and spring.
And yesterday we were studying the Psalms and
how we might learn from engagement with the Psalms.
Marian Taylor, who specially studies how women...
have engaged with scripture through the years,
brought to light a woman writing decades ago
and inviting others to study the Psalms in a
threefold way. Understand the original context
and then consider it in light of Christ. And
finally, reflect on how it applies to your life.
I think that's one concrete way of living into
what I'm suggesting. Now, another important thing
that we want to note about scripture in our passage
from Luke from this morning is that it's not
only Jesus who quotes the Bible. Did you notice
that? The devil himself uses scripture in the
third temptation. He is citing Psalm 91. Now,
this seems really important to pause to recognize.
Studying and memorizing the Bible is not in and
of itself a guarantee that scripture will shape
and form us into faithful disciples. It's not
a magic incantation that just by knowing it and
citing a verse magically we're formed and faithfully
following the way of Jesus. As you enter into
this series on Christian practices here at Trinity
Streetsville, I want to venture a word of caution.
Christian practices can be used by the Spirit
to shape and form us, but it's not inevitable.
When we consider practices as part of the life
of Christian discipleship, we're talking about
more than developing habits that in and of themselves
will change your life and make you a better person.
In an important book called The Danger of Christian
Practices, Lauren Winner, who by the way will
be speaking at Wycliffe in May at our annual
preaching day on a different topic, But she points
out that Christians who have regularly read the
Bible, prayed, gone to church, taken the sacraments,
all important Christian practices, have nevertheless
done horrific things. We have to be aware that
practices alone do not lead us to faithfulness,
even as we can accept them as what Winner calls
damaged gifts, marred by sin, but still gifts
from God that the Spirit can use in our lives.
When it comes to scripture, I think that one
thing that can get in the way of the Bible actually
forming us into disciples who live the way of
Jesus is not acknowledging the cultural lenses
we are bringing with us as we read scripture.
This can take shape in very simple ways, even
the simple English word you. From a Western culture
that tends to prioritize the individual. And
if we're reading in English, which only has a
singular form of you, other languages have single
you and plural you. When those of us raised in
the West read certain passages, we automatically
assume it's meant for me personally and individually.
And we may miss the ways that this is an invitation
into a family. a family story, and that Paul,
for example, when he uses the word you, almost
always is writing to an entire group of Christians,
issuing reminders for the whole body of Christ
gathered in a particular place. So we hold this
kind of tension, I would say. We have places
like Romans 12 that talk about our need to be
transformed by the renewing of our minds. We
don't want to be, Paul writes there, conformed
to the pattern of this world. We need to be transformed.
And that's part of why we look to Scripture,
to transform us, to help us do things like love
our enemies when we're 14 and don't have those
categories in my own story. But at the same time,
when we go to Scripture, we're actually bringing
our cultural lenses. So it takes a deep trust
that the Spirit can do that deeper work. And
it takes a certain humility before the text to
invite the Spirit. to shape us. One of the ways
I would talk about this when I was teaching was
through the Greek myth, the Procrustean bed.
So according to Greek mythology, there's this
man, Procrusteus, and he liked to invite people
into his home. And he had a certain iron bed.
And if you didn't fit in the bed, he would make
sure to either stretch you, to fit into it or
chop parts of you off to fit into it, right?
The bed was what was central and he would shape
you to fit into it. That's really the inverse
of what we want. We want God to shape us through
our reading of scripture rather than us going
to the Bible and saying, oh, that part doesn't
quite fit. I'm chopping that off. I'm not going
to listen to that. So it's this perennial back
and forth where we want the spirit to be shaping
us. But at the same time, we are bringing certain
lenses. And one way I think that we can become
more aware of our lenses is reading the Bible
in conversations with others who see it differently.
This would be Christians from other times who've
read the Bible faithfully in their own context,
to be Christians from other places, races and
ethnicities, reading the Bible together so that
we're together wrestling with what the Spirit
might be inviting us to see. And we also want
to be aware of, to do just kind of one step further,
as John Webster, a theologian, puts it, it's
not just our own cultural lenses, because that
can sound kind of neutral. We also have our own
sinful desire to alter, negate, or neutralize
the text. We don't always want it to convict
us and shape us. So we need to read, Webster
says, with a certain posture of humility. And
not approach it with a sense of mastery. But
again, allow the spirit to give us a humble posture.
Ultimately, as we read these words of scripture,
we want to remember that the words point to the
word. The word made flesh. Because in the beginning
was the word. And the word was with God. And
the word was God. The way John the Baptist always
pointed to Jesus, the words of scripture are
there to point us to Jesus. And as we're conformed
to the image of Christ, it's really not as much
about us and our transformation as it is about
God, who in the flesh came to save us and redeem
us and invite us by the Holy Spirit into the
family of God. So we are grateful that the Spirit
can form and transform us. even as we always
want to be remembering and pointing to Jesus
Christ. And that is what we will do together
in a few moments when we come to the table, remembering
that through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit,
we do have the power to become children of God
because the word became flesh and dwelt among
us. Amen. Thanks for tuning in to this week's
episode of Trinity Sermons. This sermon was recorded
at Trinity Church Streetsville in Mississauga,
Ontario on March 1st, 2026.