Morning Prayer: Tom Lyda Choral Amen Hymn of Faith *Lord, Who Throughout These Forty Days* The Witness of Scripture: Matthew 4: 1-11 Anthem *Our God Is God* Joseph M. Martin. FCC Chancel Choir Sermon *Tempted to Self* David Spain
Recorded on February 26, 2023
The church has moved into the season of Lent, the 40 days from Ash Wednesday through Holy Saturday, not including the six Sundays in Lent. Lent’s 40 days come from the story of Jesus spending 40 days in the wilderness, the story Matthew has just told. We hear a particular emphasis and importance when the Bible mentions 40 – Noah’s 40 days and nights in the rain, our Hebrew ancestors 40 years seeking the Promised Land. When a person turns 40, that birthday seems like a passage into something else. Matthew says Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness—which is a rather tame way to say that. Matthew wrote the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness, but it is more of a sending than a leading. In the wilderness—which can be either, or perhaps both, a place of desolation and a place of divine encounter—Jesus fasts from food and faces his future. Frederick Buechner reminds us that “in many cultures there is an ancient custom of giving a tenth of each year’s income to some holy use.For Christians, to observe the forty days of Lent is to do the same thing with roughly a tenth of each year.After being baptized by John in the river Jordan, Jesus went off alone into the wilderness where he spent forty days asking himself what it means to be Jesus. During Lent, Christians ask themselves one way or another what it means to be themselves.” (Whistling in the Dark, 74) Lent is a time to reflect, to take stock, to see how well we are matching what we say we value and what we do with our living. Honest reflection like this can be heavy lifting.It was no picnic for Jesus who does not ask us to do anything he has not already done. But as Buechner concludes “if sackcloth and ashes are at the start of it, something like Easter may be at the end,” which is his way of saying that going through the wilderness can be clarifying, cleansing, renewing, restoring, can bring new life and new direction. It is not a guarantee, but it is hard to imagine how the new can emerge without going through whatever crucibles life inevitably presents, or any time of change or challenge or passage from the certainty of what has been to the possibility of what will be.
The sermons for the first four Sundays of Lent are in one way or another about temptation. The flow will move from the particular to the global, as John’s gospel will guide us through many temptation stories. Nicodemus is tempted to negation, religion is tempted to presumption, people are tempted to condemnation. Both today’s story and John’s stories remind us that temptation at its core is the opportunity to use power in ways other than God’s intention. Sometimes power is simply misused, other times power is abused, and sometimes the line between those two is razor thin. Suffice it to say we spend our entire lives wrestling with power’s tempting allure.
For the many creative ways we think of being made in the image of God, we recognize that to be made in the image of God is to be granted power. Spend a little time around a 2 day old, or a 2 year old, or a 12 year old, or a 22 year old, or a 92 year old and we realize power is always in play. We look to the creation stories Genesis tells and we see that from the beginning it is God’s good design to create life having both force and energy—in other words, power.The Genesis stories proclaim that God gives every living creation—from the tiniest insect that crawls to the galaxies that orbit—force and energy; while giving to humanity a particular kind of energy to tend, to care, to nurture, to name, to cooperate. We know that if power is truly given, then it comes with a range of possibilities—the possibility to tend or to ignore; to care or to be indifferent; to nurture or to be selfish; to name or to demonize; to cooperate or to dominate. To be made in the image of God is to be given power; to live in the image of God depends on how that power is used.
One of the ways to look at the first few chapters of Matthew’s gospel is through the lens of power. Joseph had the power (and the religious backing) to do away with Mary; magi with their means and their status presented their gifts and bowed to a toddler; Herod with the support of the empire and the legions of military perpetrated fear and hatred; John’s thundering voice cries in the wilderness and then directs everyone’s attention to another; Jesus, immersed in God’s deep love, is blessed and claimed for life. We know how powerful blessing is both in the deep gladness of those who have received it and in the soul sadness of those who may not have received it from a parent, or whose image of God is of a power to be feared not a grace to be welcomed.
This is where Matthew’s story of Jesus in the wilderness begins, just after Jesus has been claimed, blessed, beloved. What greater high point could there be for Jesus? It is at this apex that Jesus confronts and questions and wrestles with how to live his power. Well, that is life, isn’t it? A 5th grader moves to middle school and has new powers to choose; a teen passes the driver’s test and new powers are granted; a high schooler graduates and finds in college hereto-fore unimagined choices; the first job is landed and the first paycheck comes in and there are options with that income; the promotion is given and the job title changes from employee to boss; the covenant has been pledged and the wedding cake is eaten and now the couple will discern how each relates to the other. How do we use the power we have?
Jesus has incredible power which means that his temptations are equally strong.Contrary to how it is commonly thought, temptation does not trade in weakness but in strength, “for the stronger you are, the more capable you are, the more opportunity you have, the more influence you have, the greater will be your temptation” Fred Craddock reminds us as he cites George Buttrick who once said “you are not going to have a sea storm in a roadside puddle.” The temptation Jesus faces is the same one we face, albeit by degrees even stronger. At the core of what happens in the wilderness is the foundational question for all of us. God has blessed us and in the image of God has given us power. What will we do with that power? How do we live God’s
power flowing through us? Before Jesus had ever preached or healed or taught, he was facing the same question—what will he do with his God-granted power?
Matthew’s telling of this wilderness story is stunningly insightful, as long as we don’t cartoon it into a picture of a heroic, serene Jesus versus a devil in a little red costume with a switching tail and pitchfork. Matthew is telling us a deep truth—that the embodied presence of goodness in the life of Jesus has stirred up the forces that stand against that goodness. Who Jesus is and what Jesus does threaten the ‘powers that be,’ and those powers will not go quietly into the night. Let the voice of justice speak in the midst of inequity, let the voice of compassion speak in the midst of vengeance, let the voice of community speak in the midst of ideology and the ‘powers that be’ may howl like an infernal wind in the wilderness. Anyone who signs on with Jesus, who is willing to follow Jesus, will at some point along the way be challenged by the powers that be. Matthew’s telling of this truth is poignant and played out in every generation.
The Tempter, of course is way too subtle for a cartoon depiction. So often the voice of temptation sounds reasonable and may even be reasonable by a certain measure. ‘Jesus you are famished, you need bread, here have something simple to eat; Jesus you want to do good, show people the incredible power you can command by making a soft landing from the top of the tower; Jesus take control of the palaces and the precincts, boot the Romans out and sit on their thrones and wear their crowns…all you need to do is bow down to the way the Tempter works which is always by deceit, by contrivance, by manipulation, by control—it is the only way people think things ever get done anyway, and as you will soon find out Jesus even your own disciples—not to mention all the people—will want you to rule with an iron fist not a smooth touch. It’s just the way the world is Jesus, if you want to get something done, if you want to be acclaimed and appreciated and admired.Who doesn’t want that?’
For all the many tentacles swirling around Jesus in the wilderness, the consistent temptation that Jesus faces is likely the one often confronting us. Tempted to self is what is being offered, tempted to place self at the center of the universe or the center of the action or the center of the credit. Turn the stones to bread—as we know Jesus would later feed people, thousands of them but it was never so that people could hail him as some kind of meal messiah; instead, Jesus came to be bread of life which is to say Jesus is not here so that people can get something from him but is here to proclaim that life is more than personal satisfaction. Let the angels hold you up Jesus —as we know Jesus did provide wondrous healings and helped people be well, but he never took the path of “cheap exhibitionism” as Ron Allen called it, nor did he want people to fall down at his feet. In fact, most of the time Jesus told his disciples to keep quiet about the healings. Jesus wants disciples, not side-show fanatics. Rule the world Jesus—you can be the center of it all, you just have to use the Tempter’s method which is always a shortcut:controlling, manipulating, dominating is so much faster than transforming and disciple-making. You can do it Jesus, it can be all about you.Tempted to self:Self-consumption, self-preservation, self-glorification.
Jesus says no to it all. Kathryn Johnston wrote it this way—“After 40 days in the wilderness, three temptations, three refusals to submit, and angels who attend him, Jesus gets on with the task at hand: teaching, healing, loving.”(The Christian Century, Feb. 2023, p. 29). The temptation in the wilderness, and more broadly the season of Lent is not about will power (as in resisting that chocolate cake or that electronic device, important as that will power can be); instead, Lent is interested in how we will use power. How do we use power that identifies us as children of God? How do we exercise influence that enlivens and empowers rather than controls and manipulates? How do we use power not as means to an end but as the way of God’s grace and justice, as the way of truth-telling and reconciliation? How do we live not to get what we want from God but so that God’s desires live through us? The church in its wisdom enters Lent asking hard questions which always has the potential to move us from Ash Wednesday to Resurrection Sunday with Jesus as our wilderness companion, helping us see the goodness and grace of living well beyond being tempted to self.