February 25, 2007 First Sunday in Lent
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 91; Luke 4:1-13; 22:31-34
There are two ways to read the story of Jesus in the wilderness. We can
read it seeing Jesus as a superstar, the greatest spiritual athlete of all time who
beats the devil in the Super Bowl without breaking a sweat. The devil says, “Turn
this stone to bread,” and Jesus, hungry as he is, quotes scripture at the devil and
stands strong. Once, twice, thrice the devil comes at him, and Jesus defies him
every time.
This is the triumphal Jesus, the pure God Jesus, who is different from us
mere mortals. But there is another way to imagine the story—one that a closer
reading of the text suggests.
Luke writes, “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.” Jesus ate nothing during those days, and at the end Luke says he was
famished. Then the devil sprung on him the final three tests.
We need to let the full impact of this description sink into our imagination.
Jesus was tempted forty days in a row, and he had not eaten in all that time. We
have to let famish have its full literal meaning, which is to suffer severely from
hunger. We have to see Jesus suffering. If you have ever fasted for one day you
know how tempting food can be and how weak you can begin to feel. Jesus had
been tempted that way continuously as well as other ways we can only guess, and
now for these last three he is starving and near collapse.
In this way of seeing the story, Jesus is fully human. He is filled with the
Holy Spirit, clearly grounded in God, but human, and the Holy Spirit is leading
him into a relentless agony and assault of temptation.
When I think of Jesus this way, I am reminded of a scene from the movie
Gandhi. Not the scenes where he has been fasting and does not even have the
strength to roll over in bed, but a much earlier time in his life. Gandhi began his
career as a nonviolent revolutionary inspired by Jesus Christ far from India, in
South Africa. Indians living there had to carry identification papers that other
residents did not have to carry. One day Gandhi led a small protest where they
burned their papers as a way of declaring that the law was unjust and that they
were worthy of equal treatment.
A co-leader was putting the papers into the fire one by one when the police
charged and beat him with their clubs. He dropped the box of papers and was
carried off under arrest. Gandhi then walked over and picked up the box and
resumed burning. The police looked at him with disbelief. Then they beat him.
Gandhi collapsed on the ground, but he reached into the box and lifted another
paper and dropped it in the fire. The police beat him again. He was bleeding and
in so much pain he could barely hold himself up, but he picked up yet another
paper and lifted it to the fire—at which point a police club came down one last
time.
It is not Jesus Christ, Superstar, in this version of the wilderness story. It is
Jesus the weak and vulnerable human on the verge of collapse who turns again and
again to God as the devil clubs him with temptation after temptation.
The reason I prefer this way of envisioning the story is because it is based
on the truth of human temptation. To be tempted is not to stand tall. If you can
beat it without breaking a sweat, you are not being tempted. If you take a rich,
moist chocolate cake with a solid inch of the best icing ever made and offer it to a
person who does not care for chocolate, that person is not being tempted. If you
put that piece of cake in front of someone who loves chocolate cake and can eat it
all day without gaining a pound or suffering any other ill effect, that person is not
being tempted—they just eat the cake as they would any other delicious food. But
if you put that same piece of cake in front of someone with a weight problem who
is allergic to sugar and will experience painful acne and mouth sores and will not
be able to sleep all night from the stimulation of the cocoa, and yet he still wants
to eat it so badly that he breaks out in a cold sweat—that person is being tempted.
Being tempted is by definition feeling pulled toward doing something we know is
harmful, a pull that is powerful enough that we actually consider doing it.
We need to imagine Jesus being tempted like that for forty days and forty
nights. We have to imagine the last three tests being the most tempting of all. We
have to imagine, I believe—and prepare yourself to be shocked—we have to
imagine Jesus capable of sin. Not only capable of it, but experienced in it.
If you have regained your composure, let me explain. The best definition I
know of sin is the one Paul Tillich and others have used: sin as separation from
God, from neighbor and from our true self. Jesus said that the two greatest
commandments were to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and to
love our neighbor as our self. Being tempted as Jesus was by the devil separates
us from God, our neighbor or our true self. The English word for devil comes
from a Greek root meaning to divide. That is what the devil, the force of evil in
this world, does—divides us into a condition of separation, or sin.
The person being tempted by the piece of chocolate cake that is so bad for
him is being divided from what his true, best self knows is good. He is being
tempted into self-destruction. And if he is trying to follow the commandments of
Christ, he is also being separated from the love of God, because to love God with
all your heart means to love and protect the objects of God’s love, the children of
God. By hurting himself he is turning away from God.
Jesus is being tempted out there in the wilderness, and in the very moment
of his temptation he is for at least an instant looking away from God, leaning away
from his true self, and considering doing something that he knows goes against
them. We do not need to understand why turning a stone into bread is a
temptation to Jesus. Maybe it is an abuse of his power, maybe a form of
selfishness (Reinhold Niebuhr’s summation of all sin), or maybe it is a distraction
from his simple trust in God, but for whatever reason, in that moment of being
tempted, Jesus is divided, separated and in a condition of sin.
This sheds light on the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus said, “You have
heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that
everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her
in his heart.” (Matthew 5:27ff) The sin begins in the moment that we are tempted
and turn our heart, mind, soul or strength away from loving God, or the moment
we no longer love our neighbor as our self but lust for them as an object to be
enjoyed by our self, or the moment that we no longer treat our self as a beloved
child of God, but as our own self-willed entity apart from God.
By the time we see the final three temptations, Jesus has learned what it is
to be tempted, and he has learned how to end the separation and be freed from
sin’s power. Each time the devil attacks, Jesus makes the same move, he turns to
God, he calls on the name of God, he declares his choice as being God. Jesus
stands weary, weak and wounded at the fork in the road where the difficult sacred
way climbs up in one direction and the easy tempting way leads down in another,
and he responds to his condition of being divided by consciously choosing to turn
back to God. He is saved not by his own strength, but by the mercy, the
forgiveness, the grace of God that lifts us, and restores us when we turn back.
If we read the story this way, we see Jesus emerging fully identified with
common humanity. He comes out filled with compassion. He suffers with those
who suffer temptation, and he gives his life to help them. He knows what we all
know—what it is to be tempted. What makes him different and useful is that he
emerged from his period of temptation transformed. He has learned the way
through the suffering of a painful, divided life to the peaceful, simple life of loving
union with God and neighbor. He is far up ahead on the difficult path, showing
us the way and its rewards.
We hear his compassion and wisdom in the poignant scene with Peter on
the night of his betrayal. Jesus uses Peter’s original, intimate name. He says,
“Simon, Simon listen!” In that repetition of his name we can feel the heartache
Jesus is feeling. In a few hours, Jesus will face his last temptation of fleeing the
cross, and he will sweat blood in the anguish of that struggle. Now he feels the
pain of being denied by the one he named Peter, meaning “the Rock.” But even
more, he feels compassion for Peter in his time of temptation.
He says, “Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like
wheat, but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when
once you have turned back, strengthen the others.”
Jesus is fully human, but he is also fully Spirit, fully God, so we need to
hear these words as spoken on God’s behalf to us all. Think of this the next time
you find yourself separated from God by the inner dividing that temptation creates
in you. Think of Jesus praying that your faith not fail no matter how far you go
down that tempting path.
Being tempted is not the failure of faith. Sinning is not the failure of faith.
Keeping our faith means that as soon as we can we turn from tempting separation
back to God, we call out to God, we ask God’s help and then return to the
undivided sacred way with God’s help. To keep the faith is to seek the end of
separation, again and again, a thousand times a day if need be.
Jesus prays our faith not fail, and then once we turn back, he gives us a
calling. The calling is to strengthen our brothers and sisters. Like Jesus in the
wilderness, every time we are tempted and turn back, we are gaining both
compassion and the knowledge of how to help others who are separated from God
or neighbor or their true self. We learn the way to peace and loving union with
God, neighbor and self through being tempted and finding our way out.
That is why the Holy Spirit drives us into the Lenten wilderness. So that
we may face the truth of the many ways every day we are being tempted and
separated from the way of Christ, and so that we may learn to choose at every fork
in the path to turn back to God. Peace comes not from being such a spiritual
superstar that we can outmuscle the devil and shrug off temptation without
breaking a sweat. Inner peace comes through the humility of knowing how weak
and vulnerable we are and how quickly we must turn to God in order not to be
lost. Outer peace comes through having compassion for everyone, even our
enemies, knowing the temptations they face. The best that we can do for world
peace may be to give our lives, like Gandhi and like Christ, to help others find
their way out of the temptations that divide them, back to loving union with one
another and with God.
Let us pray in silence, and whatever tempting thought comes to distract you
during this time, do not try fighting it off or running from it, but simply practice
turning back to God and asking for God’s help. Let us pray in silence…
Sermon 02/25/2007