First Lent

          February 25, 2007

     It was a bit of a struggle for the clergy couple, serving in their first church.  They had agreed to watch expenses until they were able to pay off a few debts and get on their feet.  That was part of the reason the husband got so upset when he found the receipt for a $250 dress his wife had bought.

     “How could you do this?” he asked.

     “I was outside the store, looking at the dress in the window, and then found myself inside trying it on,” she said.  “I don’t even remember how that happened.  It was like Satan was whispering in my ear, ‘You would look fabulous in that dress.  Try it on.  Buy it.’”

     “Well,” said the new clergyman, “You know we agreed to resist temptations by saying, ‘Get behind me, Satan!’”

     “I did say that,” the wife said, “But, then he said, ‘It looks fabulous from back here, too!’”

      Temptations do not always reveal themselves to us as an obvious decision between right and wrong.  They are not always easily defined as something good versus something bad.  Very often temptations call us to choose between something good versus the best. 

     Today we hear about the Lord’s temptations in the wilderness.  These are uniquely temptations that he alone faced.  The choices are between good things and best things.  This time of testing in the wilderness is of such central importance that Matthew, Mark, and Luke all place them at or near the beginning of the telling of the Good News of God in Christ.  This event becomes kind of like a table of contents to all the decisions, all the actions, all the teachings, and all the miracles Jesus performed in his earthly ministry.  It is here, in the very beginning, that we are given a revealing interpretation of the man and his ministry.  These temptations and the outcome of them define the path Jesus chose in fulfilling the mission and ministry that the Father asked him to complete.  The result of this time in the life of Jesus the Christ is of crucial importance in guiding the formulation of a Christian strategy in living our lives as faithfully as possible.

     The temptations, both in nature and in the response Jesus gives to each are signposts for us.  They are three in number and, if we dig deeply, three lessons can be learned.  These temptations deal with, first of all, the tyranny of things.

     Jesus refused to forsake the cross for a bake shop.  For him, the Kingdom of God could not be ordered out of a catalogue, but rather must be sough for its own sake.  Henry Drummond, one of the late nineteenth century’s greatest theologians, wrote in his book, The Ideal Man, “Seek it first!  It is not worthwhile being a Christian unless a person makes it their meat and drink to do the will of God, and help on Christ’s kingdom; and I dare say many of you have found out a further secret, not only that it is not worthwhile, but that it is a hundred times easier to seek the kingdom of God first than it to seek it second.”

     Jesus chose to live by every word that proceeded from the mouth of God.  That word falls gently on the ear at his baptism.  “You are my beloved, with you I am well-pleased.”  The call of Christ to each of us is to hear that voice, accept our baptisms as the clearest description of heavenly approval, and to trust God for all else.

     The resistance to the first temptation comes when we finally understand that we are to use the stuff of this world and not allow those things to use us, bind us, enslave us, and separate us into haves and have-nots.  The example comes from Jesus the Christ who used things, understood that they have no life except that which we choose to give them, and we are to love people.

     These temptations also deal with the shallow spectacular.  Jesus refused to prove his claims by coercing a response based on a spectacle or proving how cunning he could be.  Those were not worthy means for establishing the sovereignty of God. 

     The Gospels do indeed tell us that Jesus came suddenly to the temple.  But he came not from the pinnacle of Mount Zion where all might behold his greatness, but from the top of the Mount of Olives where he descended meek and lowly and he came one to confront the temple leadership, the religious hierarchy, who were gouging the poor and making the worship of God one strewn with manmade obstacles.  Then, in the best definition of meekness, he took a whip of cords and ran them out of the house of prayer.

     His invitation is that we lean this strange strategy of God’s method and see it as our sacrificial service.

     These temptations deal with swords and plowshares.  History had rendered, and continues to render, a verdict on the choices Jesus faced here at the beginning of his ministry.  The nation of Israel did choose to respond to Rome with the sword, and in less than forty years the nation and people and temple were reduced to ruins.  The people fled, the nation was disbanded, and the temple was torn down.  It would take close to two thousand years from some of that to be reestablished.  It remains a tenuous reality in the Middle East.

     Following the lead of the master, the Christians decided to respond to Rome by pointing to the cross.  Such a strategy was much slower and at first seemed more painful, but in less than three hundred years, had won the allegiance of the empire and forged a whole new civilization that endures to this day.  Since God in Christ relies on the renewed resolve of each generation it is up to us how long that claim will continue to be made.  Continuing arguments about who’s in and who’s out, and why, will kill it faster than anything else I might name.

     It is just as true today as ever.  The way of the cross always seems to be a strategy of weakness, but it possesses a power and accomplishes a purpose that the sword can never touch.

     For Jesus, giving in to any of these three temptations would have meant settling for an inadequate and ineffective messianic message.  In each case, he was tempted to do a good thing, but in giving in the deepest needs of humanity would have been met only at the most superficial level.  So he determined through the sweating of blood in the wilderness, in the Garden of Gethsemane, and on Calvary’s tree to give us, not what we think we want, but what we truly need.  Instead of choosing a good thing, he chose the very best thing.

     So, what about today?  If we cannot seduce or manipulate the masses by offering them bountiful prosperity or protective occupation or worldly popularity, then how will they be won?

     We may try by making fun of their deities or belittling their culture.  We may offer brides of health and wealth perversions of the Gospel.  We may continue to argue with others about how right our understanding of God is and how wrong theirs is and call it evangelism.

     But, in the end, we will find there is only one way.  It is the way of the cross of Jesus the Christ.  It is the way of self-sacrificing love and service.  It is the Way of the Cross.  It begins our in the Judean desert in a cataclysmic clash between the Way of God and the way of Satan.  It will end with a shout, “Alleluia!  Christ is risen.  The Lord is risen indeed.  Alleluia.”  Amen.