1st Sunday in Lent
Texts: Luke 4:1-13;
Deut. 26:1-11; Rom. 10:8b-13
A WIN-WIN SCENARIO
Here's my main point right up front: the story of Jesus' temptation in
the wilderness is more
about the responses Jesus gives to the temptations than to
the temptations themselves. (1) It's not
that these particular three temptations are unimportant; we shall see
that they are. It's more that
focusing on the temptations alone gets us in trouble. If it's just a
matter of you or I wrestling with
these temptations, we will lose. It's because Jesus in his responses to
them wins that we are also
able to be come victors over temptation, too.
I think that we see this main point the best right in the first
temptation. Jesus has been in the
wilderness forty days fasting and is starving. You'd think that he'd do
anything to have
something to eat, to satisfy his need. It's a legitimate need, right?
But not when we would do
anything to get it, especially when it comes from the desire of the
tempter, Satan. Even in this
situation of seemingly dire human need, Jesus remains committed to
catching God's desire --
not the desire of another creature that Satan represents. Jesus tells
him that 'one doesn't live by
bread alone.' If we finish that quote from Deut. 8:3, it's: 'one
doesn't live by bread alone but by
every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.' Ever since the
beginning, humankind has
had the choice of catching our desires from each other or from our
Creator. We get in trouble
when we aren't listening to God and catching God's desires for our
lives. We generally fall into
some addiction or another -- not necessary a physical addiction but
spiritual ones.
And this is where physical addictions can help us to see our main point
for today. When a person
is addicted to alcohol or drugs, what is generally the result when the
only focus is on the
temptation that that substance provides. If it is purely a matter of my
will-power winning out
over the temptation that substance provides, can I win? No. That's why
the Twelve Step
programs work. The First Step is the first part of our main point
today: we are lost if we focus
only on the temptation. We are powerless to beat it. And then what are
the Second and Third
Steps of the Alcoholics Anonymous way of life? I recognized a Higher
Power than myself and
opened my life to that Higher Power. Jesus' responses to temptation all
revolved around catching
his desire from God and from God alone. It's only when we are opening
our lives to catch the
Spirit of God's desire that we are able to beat a life of fighting
temptation.
Are you struggling to get out of a rut in your life? What are your
addictions? And here I'm not
just talking about physical addictions but about spiritual ones. The
big one of our age is
consumerism, the race to keep up with the Joneses on all the things we
can accumulate in our
lives. The key to breaking any such addiction is not our own will-power
to break it. The key is to
let go with our fascination for the temptation itself and begin to
listen to God's Word, God's
Spirit, God's desire for our lives. What is it that God wants you and I
to do with our lives? Focus
on that and the temptation moves further and further into the
background.
Is it really that easy? We know it's not. Because focusing on God's
Word, on God's desire, on
opening our lives to God's Spirit, has never been an easy task. The
Bible is our main guide, but
the Bible remains a difficult text to read and understand.
Last week, we wrestled with the Transfiguration story, and the fact
that God seems to be telling
us to listen to Jesus over even such huge biblical figures as Moses and
Elijah. There's something
we need to see about who Jesus is and what Jesus shows us about God
that provides the key. By
the end of last week's sermon, the implication is that there's
something even crucial about the
pivotal story of the Hebrew Scriptures, namely, the Passover. If we
truly read the God of Jesus as
behind the slaughter of Egyptian children, then I'm not sure we are
hearing the true God
correctly.
I deal with this issue more in my newsletter column for March. But let
me tell you another quick
follow-up story from last week's Transfiguration story. In one of my
interim assignments, I had a
Thursday morning Bible study with folks off the street in the central
city. Many of them suffered
from mental illness. So in Luke's story of the Transfiguration,
followed immediately by Jesus
casting out demons from a boy who hears voices, we have two stories of
people hearing voices, a
common problem for people with mental illness. So they asked me a
question I had never
considered before, that went something like this: 'The first story is
about the disciples and Jesus
hearing God's voice. The second story is about a boy hearing the voices
of demons. How do you
tell the difference? How does one know if the voices are from God or
demons?' Wow! I was
stunned. But after a few moments of reflection, I hope my answer was
from the Spirit. I told
them, "If the voice asks you to harm yourself or anyone else, then it's
not from God. God never
asks us to harm people. God never uses force."
The second temptation of Jesus is about this, I think. The powers of
Satan, the powers of all this
world's kingdoms, are based on force. They are based on the ability to
punish wrong-doing. We
tend to think God is like this, that God's power is based on the
ability to punish wrong-doing.
But I believe that in Jesus Christ God is saying to us, "No! That's not
who I am. That's your
kingdoms and the power of Satan. My power is based wholly and
completely on love and so
never forces itself. My power is based not on the ability to punish
wrong-doing. Wrong-doing
ultimately brings its own punishment. No, my power is based on the
ability to forgive wrong-doing."
So what about the third temptation and Jesus' response? In a world
where we follow God's
desire to live according to love and forgiveness, we are surely to meet
resistance. We are surely
to meet suffering. To think that just because we may be doing what God
wants us to do, we
should find smooth sailing, as if God's angels were protecting us from
harm, is to fall to this
third temptation. In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus prays one last time
that God's way might
somehow avoid the cup of suffering. But, ultimately, Jesus prays that
God's will be done.
Is this what we are doing this summer as we plan to travel to a place
of suffering from physical
poverty? We do go in order to help relieve such suffering. But we don't
go expecting God's
angels to shield us from such suffering. In a world where the power of
Satan's force continues to
work, we can expect resistance to God's way of love.
So how can we make our way through a path of suffering? Once again,
because Jesus did.
Because Jesus follows God's desire, he ultimately does the things the
devil's temptations
represent, but he does them as God's way and not Satan's. Though he
refused to turn stones to
bread, he does miraculously feed the hungry with five loaves and two
fishes. Though he refused
human political power based on force, the proclamation of God's empire
of justice based on love
and forgiveness is the very focus of his whole ministry. And though he
refused to jump off the
temple to see if angel's would catch him and not let him be harmed, he
goes to the cross in
confidence that God's desire for life will trump the world's power to
execute punishment. Game,
set, and match to Jesus! Because he wins, we win, too. Amen
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Delivered at Prince of Peace Lutheran,
Portage, MI, February 21, 2010
Note
1. Lori Brandt Hale, her "Theological
Perspective" on this text in Feasting on the Word, Year C,
Vol. 2, page 46.