March 4, 2007 Second Sunday in Lent
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 51; Philippians 3:17-4:1; John 7:37-39
Last week on the First Sunday in Lent I talked about what it means to be
tempted. I got in trouble with some people by talking about an extremely
tempting chocolate cake. I may have done more harm than good. At least one
person I know struggled with that temptation for days after hearing me describe it.
Other people, I am sure, didn’t give it a second thought because they don’t like
chocolate. Or maybe they went home and ate cake and it was no big deal, because
chocolate and sugar do not cause problems for them. That was my point last
week. Being tempted means to struggle with the desire to do something that is a
big deal to us, that is harmful for us to do, that calls to us so seductively that we
may not be able to resist.
Jesus was severely tested during his forty days in the wilderness, but he
managed to find the way through temptation and come out on the other side. The
way that worked for him was to turn back to God over and over again. He was not
perfect in the sense of never stumbling into temptation. It would come along and
turn him away for God, however briefly—the kind of separation that theologians
call sin. But he returned every time to the thought of God and allegiance to God.
He finally emerged from the wilderness full of extraordinary spiritual power and a
clear vision of his calling. He would help others learn the same sacred way
through temptation and separation to union with God and spiritual power.
Jesus serves as a model for us. He calls us to turn to God over and over,
and to fill ourselves up with the Holy Spirit and go out to strengthen others with
the gifts we gain.
Today we will take another look at how this works. How can we transform
ourselves into more spirit-filled, spirit-led, spirit-powered beings? The answer has
to do with the spiritual physiology of temptation.
In the seventh grade I took a course called Anatomy and Physiology.
According to my dictionary, anatomy is the study of the structure of an
organism—what part is located where. Physiology is more concerned with the
way those parts function, the organic processes and phenomena of the organism.
It is not possible to locate the spirit in the human body with any accuracy or
consistency. We can say that our physical heart is a little to the left in our upper
chest, but when the Bible and mystics talk about the spiritual heart, the location is
usually considered somewhere between our physical heart and our deepest gut.
Today’s Psalm says, “You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me
wisdom in my secret heart.” The inward being is a translation of a phrase in
Hebrew that means the parts down around the kidneys. Jesus says in the Gospel of
John, “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water,” but the literal
translation of that Greek word is not heart, but belly. The belly is the place where
the living waters of the Spirit spring up in us.
Somewhere in our deepest core, the Spirit has its home. We cannot be
anatomically exact, but we know more about spiritual physiology. One of the
primary things we know is that wherever the Spirit is trying to spring up in us is
exactly where temptation arises as well. Jesus says that out of the believer’s belly
flow rivers of living water, but in today’s passage from Philippians Paul says of
enemies of the cross, “There end is their destruction; their god is the belly; and
their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things.” Spirit and
temptation, glory and shame, the true God and idol gods all strive to occupy the
same deep place within us.
At the risk of getting in trouble again, let me go back to that incredible
chocolate cake. The person who is tempted by it is someone who not only loves
and desires it, but also will suffer some negative consequences from it—blood
sugar will get out of balance, or pants suddenly won’t fit. But these are relatively
minor, and they do not seem to hurt anyone else, so why should we make such a
big deal out of them? How can this little temptation compare with, say, selling
your soul to the devil in order to gain the kingdoms of the world?
The two are comparable in their physiology. Every temptation, no matter
how big or small, works the same way in us. If we are truly being tempted, then in
the very place where God is present in us, where the living water of the spirit
springs up, the temptation will work to distract us, to separate us, to cut off or bury
the Spirit’s flow. Instead of finding God in our belly, we make our belly our god.
We set out mind on earthly things instead of seeing through earthly things to
God’s presence within and around them and setting our mind there. The way
temptation works physiologically was defined by Jesus in the Sermon on the
Mount: “No one can serve two masters….You cannot serve God and mammon.”
The process of being tempted by mammon cuts off the flow of the spirit.
Some temptations we are able to get past more easily than others. The
temptation to eat something that harms us will probably not stay with us long.
Either the temptation will pass or we will indulge and the guilt will wear off at
about the same time as the ill effects. But the temptation to have an affair or to
hate an enemy may become a lasting obsession or a weight of guilt we carry for
years. Day after day as long as we hold onto the temptation or guilt we are setting
off the physiological process of spiritual obstruction.
Even the slightest temptation has a devastating impact in the moment.
Every temptation separates us from God or from another person or from our best,
truest self or some combination of these. Every temptation makes it so the power
and guidance and abundant life of the Spirit is lost to us to some degree for as long
as the temptation lasts. Even if no one else seems to be directly hurt, the smallest
temptation robs us of our peace and our focus so we are not the people we could
be if we were aligned with the Spirit’s flow. We are not the parent, spouse,
neighbor, worker or student that we could be. We bury our gifts.
Martin Smith gives us a beautiful image for this in his book, A Season for
the Spirit. Every Lent I read it, and often I have retold it.
Smith was a student at Oxford. One day he rode his bicycle out into the
countryside to see if he could find an ancient spring, lost since the Middle Ages,
which had been said to heal eye diseases. He followed the directions of a failed
expedition of Edwardian ladies and gentlemen at the turn of the last century.
Smith dug all around the pasture where they believed the spring to be, but to no
avail. Finally it hit him that the cows were all standing in a mud patch. He went
down and prodded them off with his spade and began digging. Not long after, he
struck stone. In half an hour he had unearthed a carved platform. Through a
wooden pipe poured for the spring of living water.
Smith connects this story to today’s passage from John. He says that it is
important to translate the word as belly where the Spirit wells up in us. He says,
“The home of the Spirit is not in the intellect, the realm of concepts and ideas, not
in a refined interior sanctum of spirituality, but in the guts, the deep core where
our passions have their spring, the place of conflict, confusion, vulnerability and
desire. The fastidious Edwardian ladies and gentlemen had failed to find the
spring because they had hurried past the stinking mud patch, the huddled beasts
and swarming flies.”
If we understand the spiritual physiology of temptation, if we see that its
processes act to bury the source of our connection to God’s healing Spirit, then a
few things become clear. First, we can see the reason why we have to be willing
to sacrifice our servitude to the earthly treasures of mammon, why we have to be
willing to give up our attachment to things for their own sake apart from God. We
can see that even the smallest of daily temptations, even our unconscious and
tempting habits of compulsive control or anxiety or anger are so damaging to the
Spiritual life. We can see why a life that is free of big problems and big faults can
still feel empty or painful, because the accumulation of little temptations can be
even more effective than one big sin at stopping the flow of Spirit.
We can also see why what Jesus taught us to do is so effective at restoring
us. If in our very moment of temptation we turn to God, if we stand where the
cow manure and muck of our lives is thickest and we dig right there, we know we
will be in the exact anatomical spot where the Spirit is waiting to flow.
Temptations do us the favor of leading us to the place where we can find God.
This is why taking the wilderness of Lent seriously can prepare us like nothing
else to experience the light of Easter resurrection. The inner wilderness of
temptation and trial is precisely where God’s presence can be most powerfully
found.
Finally, we can see also why the most important work we need to do to
improve the world is first to address our own connection to the spirit. St. Seraphim
of Sarov said, “Have peace in yourself and thousands will find salvation around
you.”
If we use this Lent to develop the Spiritual practice of simply turning to
God every time we are aware the slightest temptation, every time we are aware of
the slightest separation from God or our neighbor or our best, truest self—if over
and over every day we call on God from the stinking place of our anxious
selfishness, we will not only come to have peace in ourselves, we will have greater
power and greater wisdom from the Holy Spirit. We need to sacrifice old habits of
mind and body, but then we will have gifts to use and a sense of how to use them
to help the world around us. We will have springs of living and healing water
flowing out of us that may be the only hope to restore our addicted, destructive
civilization to the sacred way.
Let us pray in silence, simply calling repeatedly on God. Watch for
thoughts that come along to tempt you away from opening to God. As you see
yourself being distracted, practice simply turning gently back to God and asking
for the Spirit’s help. This simple turning to God from the place of our temptation
is the wellspring and mainspring of spiritual power. Let us pray in silence…
Sermon 03/04/2007