So I sat down and thought about what I was prepared to share ... and remembered my preparations for this study, so I wrote a sermon that merged the gospel text for the day with the first lesson in our study. In the end, she had written me in on the wrong day - I am preaching on March 3rd, but since I have this one prepared, I thought I'd share it with you. Peace, Deb
*************
Luke 4:1-13 (New Revised Standard Version, 1989)1 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, 2 where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. 3 The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread." 4 Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone.'" 5 Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6 And the devil said to him, "To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. 7 If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours." 8 Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'" 9 Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 10 for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,' 11 and 'On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'" 12 Jesus answered him, "It is said, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" 13 When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.
These forty days of Lent bring immediately to mind the forty days of Jesus’ struggles and testing in the wilderness, and are related to Moses’ forty days without food on the mountain, Elijah’s forty days in flight to the mountain of God, and the forty years of Israel’s struggle and wandering in the wilderness. Filled with the Holy Spirit at his baptism, this same Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness, and following this time away, allowed for temptation to become real in Jesus’ life. Afterward, Jesus went into Galilee to minister in the power of the Spirit. In other words, through out the whole experience, Jesus was never alone.
Many of us face the same temptations that Jesus faced. First, the need to take care of our own needs immediately. For Jesus, the devil encouraged him to take care of his physical hunger by making bread from the stones readily available around him. We could all sympathize with the desire to have this deep hunger filled. But Jesus did not give in to temptation. Instead, he quoted from the book of Deuteronomy, saying in essence, that bread is not all there is to life.
Another common temptation for us is the need to use power in a way that other people will really know who we are. Like Jesus’ second temptation to throw himself from the top of the Temple, we often take unnecessary risks to prove something about ourselves to others. We want them to think highly of us, to understand our importance. There’s a story going around the internet this weekend – it may or may not be true, but I can certainly see it happening.
A full flight gets cancelled at an airport, and the gate staff is trying diligently to get people rebooked on flights and home as soon as possible. A man in the back of the crowd pushes himself to the front, demanding to be waited on immediately, for the work at his destination is important. An airline employee responds, “Sir, we’ll get to you as soon as we can, but I’m waiting on this person right now.” His angry retort, “Do you know who I am? Without hesitating, the agent smiled and grabbed her public address microphone. "May I have your attention, please?" she began, her voice heard clearly throughout the terminal. "We have a passenger here at Gate 14 who does not know who he is. If anyone can help him with his identity, please come to Gate 14". She wasn't intimidated by the man’s bravado and anger. She saw everyone as someone in need. And after standing up to him, so did everyone else.
For Jesus to try to prove something by extraordinary means, it would only put him in a long line of other people proclaiming that they were the chosen Messiah – the one who had come to save. The difference with Jesus was that in not giving in to that temptation, he was actually able to be the Messiah – maybe just not the one they were expecting.
Our third temptation is our willingness to literally sell our souls for power and wealth. Most of us think we don’t know a lot about either of those things, and so we can be lured into making power and wealth our goals, instead of loving God and neighbor. In order to be given all the money and wealth that Satan promised, Jesus would have had to give up the most valuable possession he had – his relationship to God. Again, he warned that putting God to the test is a dangerous thing. And the Devil went on his way.
These temptations play themselves out in our lives in some way everyday. And most of the time, or maybe some of the time, we do OK at remembering who we are, but other times, we forget that we are children of God, not gods ourselves. We do what Jesus warns not to… we put God to the test, and in that test, we fail. Mostly it happens slowly – like the freshman “15” – all of a sudden one day we can’t fit into our favorite jeans. And sometimes it happens all at once, cataclysmic failures of personal choice are given witness every day. But Jesus’ baptism, his life, his death and his resurrection mean that our failures are not the end of our story. All we have to do is get back on the right track. Repent, and believe in the good news.
Jesus resisted the same Temptations that we all face and that we will face again and again. Maybe the reason we do not resist is that we are not headed in the right direction – facing the cross. Maybe we are measuring our successes and failure by the standards of the world. Maybe we have forgotten what kind of life Jesus calls us to live. Lent reminds us that God’s standards are different. That God’s standards are set up to help us remember who we are.
The season of Lent is one of the oldest in the Christian year. Observed since the fourth century, it is a time set aside to learn and grow through grace, service, and study of God's word, so that we can see where we are headed and stay on the path. Lent is a time for us to learn and share something about the Cross of Calvary. Our freedom and salvation were born in suffering and death, not joy and ease. We must learn again the discipline to resist our wants and wishes for immediate gratification for a better purpose and higher goal. It is a time for us to look inside and ask important questions. Who is God calling us to be? Where do we want to be in 5 years, as individuals and as a church? And are we doing what it will take to get there?
In this season of Lent, we are challenged to rethink how we define temptation, to push beyond seeing it as those things we wish we could have, instead seeing that these things compromise who we are as children of God. In this passage, Jesus' baptism has just taken place. In that baptism he is affirmed as the Son of God. And at the end of his 40 days, Jesus is being tempted to be someone he is not. In our lives, how often do we allow that to happen to us? Temptation is more than just not doing something we would like to do but shouldn’t. Temptation is that which pulls us away from who we are... children of God.... those who are baptized… those who believe and trust in God.
You and I both know that evil is very real in our world. But often we make light of temptation by dressing up the source of it in horns and cloven feet, the Devil of Halloween and Dante’s Inferno, not the Devil that come disguised in our lives every day. Through this Satan, we are tempted to do only that which is within our capabilities, but never to push onto something new. Through this evil, we are tempted to do only that which is desirable, and never that which is hard. I look at my life and the status of the world around us, and I am overwhelmed by all I see. But that’s what I get for being locked into the world's perspective. The power of God's Word defeats evil. So when will we learn to use it, and lean on it, and count on it to be the power in our lives?
Temptation is many faceted. Jesus refuses to turn stone into bread, then later feeds 5,000 on the hillside. Jesus refuses glory and power, but we know and trust that one day every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord of all. And Jesus refuses to let the angels support him in mid air, then ascends after the resurrection. Jesus finally accomplished all of the opportunities that the Devil gave him for greatness. And it made me realize that sometimes temptation is doing good things for the wrong reasons, or doing them in OUR good time instead of GOD'S good time.
If Jesus used prayer, fasting and scripture to guide him through the "wildernesses of temptation", then maybe as disciplined followers we shouldn't be too quick to jettison the disciplines of Lent. Prayer, fasting, reflection on the scriptures, and Christian conversation… these disciplines will help us to know that when we are in our own wildernesses, we will never be alone. For the Spirit of God leads us, holds us up, and goes with us to a new day. Thanks be to God!
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete