Sermon Text - Feb. 10, 2008
"Characters We Meet Along the Way (to the Resurrection) - the Tempter"
Matthew 4:1-11
Rev. David Kratz
Gracious Lord, we thank you for words and for silences and for the movement of both of them in our lives, we pray that we might listen carefully during these days. We pray that the words of my mouth of the words that rattle through our brains this morning might be acceptable vehicles of your presence with us, Amen.
During Lent this year we want to follow a little theme. It’s a bit episodic, but it’s a theme called “the characters we meet along the way” (to the resurrection). We believe that Lent is preparation for the new life that Christ gives, that we celebrate at Easter time, and along the way we have these wonderful meetings with, and conversations with, characters along the way.
We’ll be meeting Nicodemus next week, and the following week we’ll be listening to the woman at the well and so forth. Along the way we’ll have five characters that will lead us up to Palm Sunday. Then we’ll think about the last week of his life, which will be lots of characters.
In any case, as I thought about these scripture readings it seemed to me we have something to learn from these characters along the way - about life, and about the new life. This morning’s text is a familiar one to many of us, it's called the temptation story. It's found in the first three Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Matthew and Luke are quite similar, although the order of the temptation is different. And while Mark’s is much shorter, only about three verses, his ending and Matthew's ending are quite the same. Each year, at the beginning of Lent, the first Sunday of Lent, is always the temptation story. And this year we read from the Gospel of Matthew. May it be God's Word for you.
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to Jesus, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him. Amen
Familiar text, difficult text. It's a difficult one to hear, I think. It's difficult partly because it's hard to recognize the tempter. The truth is, is that most of us, I suspect, imagine the tempter as the kind of guy in a red suit with pointy ears and a pitchfork and a goatee – or something like that. Literature has kind of created this image for us to see the devil, or this tempter, or what I prefer to call the tempter, in visual ways. And that's helpful, but you know after you've reached about 9 it kind of doesn't matter anymore, does it? It sort of trivializes the devil. It seems like it would fit more into the Flip Wilson sketch you know “the devil made me do it!” Actually the devil didn't make anybody do it, not Jesus in this case. We sort of trivialize the devil and the make sort of irrelevant to real life decisions that we make about our purpose and meaning.
It's interesting to note that in this text the tempter is not described at all. We get to bring all of our imagination to the text because this person, we’re not sure if it's a man or woman, maybe sexless, who knows. This tempter is not described at all. Now later in the story of Jesus, as he's walking along the road, he asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” And they argue among themselves, and finally Peter pops up and says, “You're the Christ, the son of the living God.” And then Jesus tells them what it means to be Christ the son of the living God – which means to go to Jerusalem (the city power) to be beaten up, handed over to the authorities, tried, executed by crucifixion on a cross, and then three days later to rise again. And so Peter says “that’s not my Christ, that’s not my Jesus – my Jesus doesn’t do those kinds of things like get hurt.” And then Jesus says to him, get thee behind me Satan.”
Then there is the story at the end of Jesus’ life, where Satan doesn't really appear but he sounds like he does. Jesus is hanging on the cross, with two bad guys next to him. And there are the religious leaders, who even though we sort of put them down as Pharisees and so forth, we think they’re hypocrites. But actually, people did respect them, look up to them – they wore robes, stood in front of people giving sermons, talk to them and confessionals, that kind of thing. Anyway, these religious leaders said, “If you come down from that cross, if you do it, I'll believe. Save yourself and us and we’ll believe.” And Jesus doesn't do a darn thing. He says, according to the Gospel of Matthew and not long after that, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It’s an interesting thing for a Christ, a Savior, a messiah, a powerful person to do – “My God my God, why have you forsaken me?”
At different points in Jesus life, at three very important times in his life he has been tempted to be more than human. And he has chosen to resist the power of the Satan and by simply being vulnerable – by simply being human, by not giving up his compassion with us in favor of titles or power or influence. It’s an interesting thing how temptations, these temptations, really are temptations to abandon his identity and purpose as this particular anointed one of God.
Now it’s interesting, sometimes we don't recognize temptations because they don't come to us like we imagine. A lot of us grew up thinking that we should resist the temptations of the devil and all of his ways because we thought we knew how they were to come.
I don’t know about you, but when I grew up temptations were pretty much limited to smoking, drinking and not having sex before marriage. Those were the biggies anyway – and be a nice person, lying was important not to do, stealing of course. But we often imagine temptations as being tempted to do something bad. And sometimes the image of the tempter is kind of a sleazy looking guy, you know kind of a drug addict with a sallow face wanting to hand you some dope. Or saying you can really get away from stealing that toy in the candy store if you really just put it in your pocket and nobody will notice – bad things.
Sometimes women, actually the devil sometimes look like a deviless or a temptress trying to seduce those young men out of their virginity. But it’s interesting in this story – in this story they're not bad things that Jesus is tempted to do are they? Not bad, I mean what’s wrong with changing some stones into bread? I don’t know, Lianne may have some trouble with the ecological implications of that, but really most people would be happy to have another loaf of bread. It’s a good thing! And later on in Jesus’ ministry he actually feeds 10,000 people with a whole bunch of loaves of bread, well at least he starts with five. So it's not that he doesn't do it, but he doesn't do it here.
And then there is this story about going up to the pinnacle of the Temple and jumping off, and don't we often talk about risking everything for God. You know isn’t that what faith is about? Risking your life for God and trusting that God will be there? And Jesus doesn't come down from the pinnacle of the temple of the cross, either one. And when he says “Don't test the Lord your God” and the other when he says “God, where are you,” in neither case does he jump. But it's a good thing. And wouldn’t it be a good thing to have people say, “Wow Jesus, aren’t you great?” I mean, isn’t that what mega-churches are all about these days, is people saying, “Hey look what Jesus has helped me do! I scored that touchdown. I got the million bucks. All you have to do is believe in Jesus, and everything’s going to come your way - it’s a good thing.” It’s a good thing to tell your story, to inspire people's trust, isn’t it?
And then that last temptation, who in the world would not like to have Jesus in control? I mean let’s have somebody in control of the political situation. But Jesus would do. I mean I trust him! It’s a good thing to do, to have political power, to manage the affairs of humanity so that we live in a just society as well as an opulent one, isn’t it?
These are good things that Jesus is tempted to do, but in every case, he says, no. He expresses his underlying trust in God, unwillingness to test God’s trust in him, and he remains vulnerable. He is willing to be a creature and the creation of God, but not willing to go against the orderly process in order to express it. It's easy, sometimes, to get our ends and means confused, but Jesus never does, because he knows that the end the purpose of his life is wrapped up in how he gets there.
The third thing that makes this story interesting and difficult is that it takes place in the wilderness. I don't know about the wilderness very much, I'm not comfortable there, but I know the inner wilderness. Sometimes in our lives when we have been frightened, thing to happen to us that shake our confidence in the way things are organized, the way the world supposed to be. Times when we lose our bearings. Sometimes they happen a predictable times, the so-called midlife crisis that can happen anytime between 35 and 60.
But we know when we're in the midst of a crisis or the midst of the wilderness where with all the familiar landmarks are no longer there and we get scared, we get frightened. Jesus gets famished, and that's how we feel often even though we may eat a lot of food there is some hunger in us that doesn't get filled, and there is a kind hole in us that cannot be covered over or we fall into it – that’s the wilderness.
It happens to us both as individuals, and it happens to us as nations, doesn't it. 9/11 for instance threw us into a wilderness, where all of our defenses were cut down and the only thing we could feel was vulnerable to the world again, for the first time! Invaded by the people who wanted to kill us. It made us jump into the wilderness of the world. And when we're in the wilderness and we’re frightened, we are tempted to act on our own behalf like, you know that bread? I mean it wasn't a luxury meal or anything it’s just a loaf of bread – what’s wrong with taking a little loaf bread? Don't we deserve to survive?
Can’t you hear yourself saying, it's no big deal. I'm worth a loaf of bread, our country is worth a loaf of bread, we’re worth a loaf of bread. And how about wanting to get a little notoriety? When you're scared, when you're frightened. Isn't it comforting to know that other people see your faith that you've been able to manage through these difficult times. Isn’t it affirming to you to kind of say wow, other people think I'm great, I must be a little great. If we could just have our position in the world, we said after 9/11, we could just exercise our power, we said, no it’s not a lot.
Well maybe it’s a lot to control the world, to be number one, to not have our place threatened. But certainly one of the things when we’re in the wilderness, when we’re anxious about our lives, when we lose our bearings, we at least want to control something, if not the whole world then our individual lives, although sometimes we’re tempted there, too. At least we can control a little bit - our spouse maybe, or our neighbor, or our church, something where we can feel some power.
And what happens in the wilderness is that we begin to develop excuses or deceits that allow us to think that good things done for the wrong reasons really aren’t so bad at all, because after all - it’s a good thing! And we lose the point that life is not just about us and our own needs. It's about God and learning to trust God with our vulnerability.
The tempter is a very important character to meet on the way to the resurrection, because in this case, in Jesus’ case, and along the way talking to Jesus and even on the cross, Jesus engages the tempter in a conversation. One of the mistakes we actually made after 9/11 was to identify evil in one person, or one organization, or one movement or one theology. And that's one of our problems when we get anxious and the wilderness, we want to identify the tempter with one person. And if we could just get that person out of our lives we would be safe.
But that's not this story, is it? This story has Jesus engaging, not accommodating, but at least engaging, the tempter, because it's not the tempter that's the problem, it's our identity, it’s our destiny. And whether we’re willing to trust our identity and our destiny into the loving, compassionate hands of God, and see one another as companions along life’s way.
Amen.