February 29, 2004 (David Hyers)

Old Testament Lesson                                                  Deuteronomy 26:1-11

When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, "Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us." When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the Lord your God, you shall make this response before the Lord your God: "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, and God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me." You shall set is down before the Lord your God and bow down before the Lord your God. Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.

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Gospel Lesson                                                                           Luke 4:1-13

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. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread." Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone.'" Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 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. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours." Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'" 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, for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you, to protext you,' and 'On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'" Jesus answered him, "It is said, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

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I won’t have a hard time talking to you about temptation this morning. I happen to know that after a few of my struggles with the order of the weekly prayer with the children, more than a few choir members have been tempted to make me flash-card diagrams so that I will get the prayer in the right order. Now it’s hair and heart, watch and wallet—isn’t that the right order?

I also know that on each cold morning when I forget to shut the office door, our own patient Joanne is tempted to ask me if I was born in a barn, which, while I was born in Tennessee, doesn’t really happen that much anymore. I also predict that after the skits at lunch, some staff members may be tempted to cause me bodily harm as I am certainly not above temptation myself.

After reading the devil’s first temptation, the turning of stones into bread, I was sorely tempted to make some comments about a certain someone’s remarkable culinary ability to turn bread into stones. And so, brothers and sisters, I pray that we will all continue to resist such temptations now before us.

As we enter the forty days of Lent, it is that we bring to remembrance the forty days and nights of testing, the temptation Jesus underwent in the evrh,mw, the wild place, the deserted place. In this place Jesus fasted and, I imagine, prayed, seeking that quiet place to clear his mind and perhaps to probe the depths of his personhood.

The story tells us that he was famished. It was then that he was tested, tempted by the accuser, the Devil. As we would expect of Jesus, he answered each temptation with an appropriate reference to the Hebrew Scriptures, not only resisting the devil’s wiles but establishing and confirming his identity as the Messiah and God’s faithful son.

As with so much of scripture, there are multiple layers to this text. Jesus’ forty days in the wilds draw us back to the Exodus, to Israel’s own forty years of wandering and testing in the wilderness. Some folks have even pointed out that the temptations of Jesus follow those struggles of Israel in the wilderness, the manna from heaven, the temptations of idolatry, and the importance of not putting God to the test. Functioning on many layers, these connections help us understand how Jesus is a fulfillment of God’s plan, the core of God’s reconciling love with God’s creation.

On a more personal level, I think we are invited to see connections between Jesus’ temptation, Israel’s struggles in the wilderness, and our own journey. We are helped to see the seriousness of Jesus’ humanity, that Jesus as “Emmanuel,” God with us, experienced the fullness of human life, the joy and the temptations, the happiness and suffering, not in an abstract way or disconnected way, but as one of us. Not only are the temptations of Jesus or of ancient Israel, but they are also our own temptations, our own struggles--struggles of faith and faithfulness, identity and allegiance. These temptations are as real for us as they were for Jesus.

How greatly I am tempted to satiate the temporal hungers of my body, forgetting that in the embodiedness of Christ, we learn that seeking only material bread isn’t enough to truly live. Often I do not and cannot pay attention to my own embodiedness, listening for the deeper hungers in the core of my humanness. How hard it is to seek to be fully sated with the breads of grain and with the Bread of Life, a life filled with Jesus Christ’s redeeming love. How often do I look to other gods, the gods of power, pride, and prestige, rather than to the Living God of Israel? How often do we form our own Golden Calves, gods we can touch and feel, rather than placing our trust in the God of Abraham and Sarah, of Moses and Miriam, the God whom we know in Jesus Christ? How easy it is to go looking for that quick fix, looking for that double mocha chino Divinity, a caffeine rush of divine instant gratification, to stave off the uncertainty of faith, the seemly cold ambiguity of life.

I recently heard a sermon about having the favor of the Lord. When we have the favor of the Lord, great things will happen. You might get that job you don’t deserve. When you have the favor of the Lord, good things happen to you. The preacher told a story of driving in a big city and asking God to clear a path. And sure enough, a path was cleared. Now I don’t doubt for a moment the real blessings of God in people’s lives, yet I worry about trying to test to prove God’s love and faithfulness in the miraculous in the clearing of traffic patterns and the gospels of prosperity and material gain. Perhaps I was bothered because I quickly realized that I must not have the favor of the Lord in that way because every time I drive to the metropolis, this guy must be clearing a path because I get stuck in traffic!

Yet there are ways in my own life that I seek to test the Lord, looking for confirmation to sure up my own struggles to believe. However, in the midst of temptation, testing and doubt, I still feel the call to faithfulness, the reaching out of God’s grace. Therefore, the forty days of Lent may stand for me as an invitation for us to enter our own time of faith-filled introspection, a serious time yet not a maudlin time. It is an opportunity to plumb the depths of our lives and beings, to reflect upon the tests and temptations of our individual and collective lives, to drop a line into the water and see what silt turns up.

Barbara Brown Taylor speaks of Lent as a kind outward bound for the soul, a time for us as individuals and a community of faith to listen to the song of our lives and to hear perhaps the voice of God leading us forward in a new direction. But be careful. This isn’t easy; stirring up the silt gets the water clouding, and things aren’t so clear. Emily Dickenson well understood the challenge of such an endeavor:

One need not be a chamber to be haunted,
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.

Far safer, of a midnight meeting
External ghost,
Than an interior confronting
That whiter host.

Far safer through an Abbey gallop,
The stones achase,
Than, moonless, one's own self encounter
In lonesome place.

There is real challenge, difficult testing, and winsome temptation to be found in the eramoan, the deserted place, and Lent calls us into that place The grace of God tells us that we need not, and I think do not, enter those places alone. We remember the journey of Jesus, not only the passion on the cross but journey through the empty tomb into the resurrection, the reconciling new life in the risen Jesus. We remember the totality of Jesus’ life that he was and he is Emmanuel, “God with us,” God among us.

I think our own testing times, chosen or not, are done in light of God’s loving grace. Our resistance to temptation isn’t a works-righteousness test, God’s seeking of Christian purity, our hoping against hope to earn our way into heaven, or our own selfish desire to follow right doctrine to ensure our own magical ticket into God’s favor. No, our Lenten journey is made with the grace of God, a grace-fueled response to God’s love for us. It promises to be no easier. In fact, I think in some ways it’s harder, but I am confident that while in the wilderness, we will encounter Jesus, and remember we need not enter such time in undue fear, for we know that because of who Jesus is, we learn whose we are.

 

 


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