A Sermon preached by the Rev. Michael Anderson Bullock
[Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Romans 10:8b-13; Luke 4:1-13]
After his baptism, Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. [Luke 4:1]
To the attentive worshipping person [of course, to folks like you!], the gospel for the First Sunday in Lent – contains words and descriptions that are, upon some thought, curious, challenging, and (even more so) disturbing.
And here is a toehold point that sets the stage. It is this: That this day (and all the others in this penitential season) are referred to as being “in” Lent but not “of” Lent. This means that all Sundays are celebrations of Christ’s resurrection – even in the season of penitence. Therefore, Sundays in Lent are not numbered among the 40 days of Lent. This point is that there is a balanced mixture between Lent’s serious housekeeping of the soul with the anticipation of the hope and joy of Easter’s new life. But what about the curious, the challenging, and perhaps the disturbing elements in today’s gospel?
As a poignant example of these elements, take what happens to Jesus immediately after his baptism. If at his baptism (and by extension, in our own baptisms) the voice from heaven proclaims that we are irrevocably God’s beloved [which is very good news indeed!] – but if so, then why does the Holy Spirit drive Jesus [and by extension us] into the wilderness to be tempted? –to be tempted by no less than the devil? What do you think of that?
Such a scene and situation reminds me of the old quip that if God treats his friends in such a manner, it is no wonder that the Holy One has so many enemies! My point is to ask: How do you feel about being tested? More to the point, how do you feel about being tested by God?
And what about the wilderness life? Why would God’s own creative and sustaining Spirit book a month of basic training for us in the desert? No room service; no cell service; just for testing. Doesn’t this reinforce Lent’s negative caricature among us and [ironically] the exact reason we are tempted to ignore Lent’s call? Given the state of the world, do we really need more wilderness in our lives?
My response is that if Lent and its offerings are all meant to prepare us for receiving the new life we see in Jesus – especially and specifically in the events of Christ’s cross and resurrection, then I believe that we need to focus on the place that “temptation” plays not only in this season of preparation but also with the place temptation holds in our relationship with God and with our ability to live the God-life – to be in Lent but not of it.
“Lead us not into temptation”: It is a very familiar phrase of what we now refer to as the “traditional” version of the “Lord’s Prayer”. [Regrets to the “King James Version”!]. Nonetheless, the issue: Does God lead us into temptation?
That was an essay question a faculty member of the English Department posed to his students. The implicit issue in the assignment was to ask: “What kind of God would do such a thing?”, as if God were some kind of pervert we encounter: “Want a piece of candy, little girl?” How do you trust such a vision of God? Well, we don’t because that is not what temptation entails; nor [therefore] does this speak at all to the nature of our God.
“Temptation” matters. It matters because it goes to the heart of what it means to be human, more precisely, to what it means to be created by God, to be in relationship with God. The fact is that “temptation” is neither “good” nor “bad”. It just is an unavoidable part of human life because “temptation” entails how we make decisions. “Temptation” involves the unavoidable demand for human beings to make choices; and the essential choice humanity must make is what is the source of our life and what role does this source play for us? If we acknowledge that we are made in God’s image, our choosing is a matter of orienting ourselves either with the Creator of heaven and earth as our grounding source or with something else? That is the fundamental and unavoidable “temptation”: Being of God or of something else.
As the Creator, God asks us to choose because the Holy One made us in his image, but true relationships cannot be demanded or manipulated. It must be chosen. We have the freedom to say “yes” or “no” to God, to others, and to ourselves. We are not robots or puppets whose strings are pulled; but we can become numb about what our source is, in which case risk addiction to replacing God, to ignoring God. Which is to say that the “hell” of such addiction, to the shortcut replacements for God, is that we eventually lose our ability – even our willingness to choose. As such, we tragically relinquish our freedom; and I think this gets to the tragically serious reality of Hell – not pitchforks and flames but having no freedom, no choice but to live with the painfully recycled life we make for ourselves.
My own personal experience of “temptation” leads me to the reality of being tested. What if I fail the test? What if others discover my failure? More to the point of Lent, to what extent is God and the God-life the source of my choosing? As the first line of our “Confession of Sin” puts it: “We have sinned against you, opposing your will in our lives.” What’s that about?
Jesus was “driven” into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit. [“Driven” is the stronger word Mark uses rather than being “led” as Matthew and Luke use.] Jesus was driven into the wilderness – by the Spirit of God, to be tested, to confront all the deep and pervasive shortcuts that the “devil” and the “world” so conveniently offer. And, if you will allow me to say once more, we are at the gift of Christmas. The big part of the Incarnation’s message is this: “God became as we are so that we might become what God is.”1 Or “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”2 This is to say that Jesus would rather die than break relationship with the Father. “What wondrous love is this?” Is being in Communion with God that important to us? It would seem that God is a better friend to us than we are to him. Temptations. Choices.
In the wilderness the allure of “shortcuts” are most tempting, especially if we see them as “saving” us – saving us from what we don’t like, saving us from what threatens us, saving us from what we cannot control. So it is, in our repulsive experience of the wilderness and in our hope for a “shortcut”, we so easily turn to those who promise to “fix” people and things and make our lives all better. We purchase our “fixes”, but at the creeping cost of our freedom to choose life that is not addicted to, not rooted in fear and death.
“Deliver us from evil…” Evil lures us into relying on shortcuts that entice us to replace God with something more manageable, something of our own choosing. For instance, we would love the chance to turn stones into bread. What an outreach ministry that would make and how successful we would be, save for the fact that such “magic” assiduously avoids the probing question of why do the people lack bread in the first place? And what is it that the people (you and I) are truly hungry for? Magic or manna?
Or maybe we’d settle for the worship of the populace and having the power to command and be in control. We see this temptation in the daily headlines; and its cost is fealty to “Satan”, which is the same as worshipping heroin.
Or perhaps we would prefer the ability to know the salving relief of asking those in our lives to prove that they love us before we take any steps toward them. Under these conditions we would know if the relationship will make us “happy-ever-after”. But the hard truth is that (unlike yeast) love cannot be proved or demanded. It can only be risked, hoped for, shared, and taken into our transformed and open hearts.
To the extent that we are tested by God, to the extent that we might want to avoid the “time of trial”, the key just might be our need to experience ourselves (who we are and what we are) in the test. Perhaps passing the test is less significant than learning from it and verifying from what or from whom our life proceeds. If we learn that “temptation’s” test reveals our need for God’s help, then we will also learn that God’s love and life are never overwhelmed by our poor, fearfully subsidized choices.
Yes, we do live in the wake of our choices and the choices of others; and the heart of all our choices is always a basic matter of trusting God or trusting something or someone else. The key about participating in the God-life is that even the foreboding wilderness and all the failed shortcuts we have taken cannot keep God and the love and life of God away from us. And this truth gives us hope, not to mention lasting life.
So, we are in Lent, but by God’s grace and mercy not of it.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
1. St. Athanasius. On the Incarnation, Chapter 54:3
2. Hebrews 4:15
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