Date: Feb. 10, 2008 Lent I

Scriptures: Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Matthew 4:1-11

Sermon: Tried, Tested, and True

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         What would you do...if after grocery shopping, you got home only to find that some of the groceries you paid for had not been bagged and sent home with you? Then about a month later, buying groceries at the same store, you realize that the cashier gave you $10 more in change than you had coming to you?

         What would you do...if you remembered – after you’d just completed your good copy of your income tax form (by hand), that you had forgotten to claim an extra large mount of income, a sizable gift of money that had been given you?

         What would you do...if the class trouble-maker (who normally seems to get away most times without being punished) was accused of steeling someone’s Ipod, but you know--for certain--that she didn’t take it?

         In answering any of these questions, we might begin to explain our response by saying, “I’d be tempted to...”

         Temptation happens to all people, from Adam and Eve to Jesus.

         Temptation occurs under all conditions, from garden paradise to desert wilderness.

         Temptation is not something that ends once one reaches a certain stage or age: Jesus was tempted in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry and again in the garden of Gethsemane near the end of his life.

         We’re all faced with our demons – even Jesus.

         I’m struck though, that Jesus didn’t have to tell a soul about what happened to him at the end of his fasting in the desert. After all, he was alone there, remember? But obviously he must have told someone about this aspect of his spiritual autobiography, otherwise, how could it have come to eventually be recorded in three of the four gospels?

         Jesus dares to be vulnerable and honest with his disciples about being tempted by the devil, the tempter, Satan (the writer of Matthew’s gospel uses all three terms for the power of evil).

         But wait a minute, scripture says that God’s Spirit was the one who sent Jesus into the wilderness in the first place to be tested by the devil. What’s going on here? Was the Holy Spirit forming an un-holy alliance with the devil in order to tempt Jesus? Not at all!! But “by definition God tests (intending to strengthen the believers’ moral character) and the devil tempts (intending to destroy the selfsame character).” Paradoxically, the same set of circumstances can be taken as either a test or a temptation depending on the response. And Jesus responds to this paradox by relying on scripture. Jesus does not take shortcuts to victory but instead follows the path of discipleship and obedience. [Leader magazine Winter 2007-2008, “Pondering the Word: A Lenten journey”– June Mears Driedger]

         God’s testing strengthens character. While testing seems like an odd thing for God to be doing, and a bit unfair at that, if we think about an athlete: training, lifting more weights, running or swimming longer or harder does strengthen him or her for the race ahead. And Jesus’ life and character needed to be strengthened for the mission ahead of him.

         So, while God intended the experience to test or strengthen Jesus, Satan worked his best (or was it his worst?) to tempt Jesus. At the beginning of the sermon, I asked you to ponder situations in which you’d be tempted to choose between good or bad, right or wrong. It seems though, that the tempter was trying to force Jesus to choose between what is good and what is right.

         Wasn’t it ‘good’ for Jesus to turn stones into bread, to eat? After all, the fast was over, and furthermore, Jesus was famished! Think of all the other hungry people Jesus could feed!

         Wasn’t it ‘good’ for Jesus to throw himself off a high place at the temple? His heavenly Father wouldn’t let him so much as stub his toe when he landed. And what a way to ‘leap,’ so to speak, onto the public stage and gather an attracted following!

         Wasn’t it ‘good’ for Jesus to have all of the kingdoms of the world claimed for himself, wasn’t that a goal of his coming?

         All of those offers were ‘good.’ But none of them was ‘right.’ They weren’t right because “each of those temptations attacked Jesus’ relationship with his heavenly Father [while] each response of Jesus honours this relationship” [even among these rocks: a spiritual journey by Steven D. Purcell, (U.K.: Piquant, 2000), n.p.]

‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’

‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’

‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’

  A relationship with the trinity shows itself in total obedience.

         We may have heard a child tell a babysitter or another adult, “You’re not my Dad! I don’t have to do what you say!” What that child means is, “I listen to my Dad because he and I have a special relationship. You and I don’t have that sort of relationship. Therefore, I don’t have to obey you.” The life of Christ was the life of obedience to his Father.

         “To speak positively of obedience today is to be profoundly countercultural. I found this out the hard way when I told someone recently that the theme of obeying God seemed to be a constant one in the Bible. The person’s face became cloudy and right away he described when he was a youth and seeing his minister pound on the Bible while commanding, “Obey.” “Obey.” “Obey.”

         Any talk about obedience to my acquaintance was grounded in his experience of authoritarianism. He is far from being alone in that experience. For him and so many others, “obedience is confused with ‘blind obedience,’ and with conformity. But obedience really means responsiveness. Obedience is not the surrender of responsibility but the acceptance of responsibility for what we respond to and how. Indeed, we must refuse to conform in order that we may obey” [“The Pursuit of Holiness,” Richard John Neuhaus, Freedom for Ministry (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1979), Ch. 11].

         A number of decades ago, if one moved in Catholic circles, hearing the phrase, “custody of the eyes” would have been understood right away. It’s not practised strictly now, nor talked about much. What it means is that a woman in a religious order would keep her eyes lowered when out walking. That meant that she didn’t look into store windows, nor into men’s eyes. I suppose the idea was that she wouldn’t be tempted by what she saw.

         I wish that we could re-claim and re-form that expression, not so we’d keep custody of our eyes, like blinders on a horse, but so that we would give custody of our eyes (and why not our ears and heart too!) over to God in Christ. That way, our responses to choices would be obedient to and consistent with our relationship to God. They would be right and we would know how to answer: “What would you do if...” and we’d do it.

         When we are tempted to obey the deceptive voices in our world that scream at us to Buy! Spend! Earn! Vacation! Get ahead! Bulk-up! Slim-down! we have to listen with God’s ears for the One whose truthful voice leads us not into temptation, but delivers us from the evil one: “Let there be light...Go...Come...Repent...Believe...Be still...Be healed...

               Get up...Ask...Love...Pray....”

Let us pray: [Hymnal: A Worship Book # 738, (Scottdale, Penn.: Mennonite Publishing House, 1992)]

God be in my head

   and in my understanding;

God be in my eyes

   and in my looking;

God be in my mouth

   and in my speaking;

God be in my heart

   and in my thinking;

God be at my end

   and at my departing. Amen.