Jesus returned from the Jordan River full of the Holy Spirit, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. 2 There he was tempted for forty days by the devil. He ate nothing during those days and afterward Jesus was starving. 3 The devil said to him, “Since you are God’s Son, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” 4 Jesus replied, “It’s written, People won’t live only by bread.” 5 Next the devil led him to a high place and showed him in a single instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6 The devil said, “I will give you this whole domain and the glory of all these kingdoms. It’s been entrusted to me and I can give it to anyone I want. 7 Therefore, if you will worship me, it will all be yours.” 8 Jesus answered, “It’s written, You will worship the Lord your God and serve only him.” 9 The devil brought him into Jerusalem and stood him at the highest point of the temple. He said to him, “Since you are God’s Son, throw yourself down from here; 10 for it’s written: He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you 11 and they will take you up in their hands so that you won’t hit your foot on a stone.” 12 Jesus answered, “It’s been said, Don’t test the Lord your God.” 13 After finishing every temptation, the devil departed from him until the next opportunity. (Common English Bible)
Ash Wednesday 2018
It
has become a personal tradition by now, my sixth Ash Wednesday with you (it
would be seven, but last year’s Ash Wednesday came while I was on sabbatical).
In order to set the tone for a unique service that is often much more somber
than our more celebratory praise worship services of Sunday morning, I read
this short excerpt from the UCC pastor and author Lillian Daniel’s book This Odd and Wondrous Calling, as she
recounts the experience of preaching her first-ever sermon as a seminary
student performing the required field education internship that all Master of
Divinity students must complete in order to earn their degree:
I remember sitting at the
back of the sanctuary, reviewing my notes for my very first seminary-intern
sermon. It was to be a mighty word from God that would correct all the
hypocrisy, greed, and faithlessness of the local church that was, nonetheless,
supporting my education as they had supported that of so many others. As I
mustered my courage to sock it to them, I overheard one woman lean across her
walker and whisper loudly to her pew mate, “Ah, our new intern is preaching. I
see it’s time for our annual scolding.”
Later, I would pastor a
church near that very divinity school, and hear for myself a few “annual
scoldings.”
An
annual scolding is a helpfully humorous way to describe Ash Wednesday—the first
day of the church season of Lent and a day of penitence in which we confess to
God our sins and seek forgiveness both from God and from those whom we have
sinned against.
Lent
lasts for forty days—from now until Good Friday, minus the Sundays—and that
number is meant to parallel the forty days that Jesus spends fasting in the
wilderness according to Matthew and Luke before being tested by Satan, which is
Hebrew for “the Adversary.”
“The
Adversary” is an apt label for the devil in this passage from Luke, for he
verbally jousts back and forth with Jesus, tempting the Son of God with one
thing after another before finally fleeing and thus permitting angels to tend
to our Messiah.
The
first of the devil’s temptations is simple enough: ask Jesus to turn stones
into bread. As a common theme in these temptations, both the devil and Jesus
quote Scripture back at one another, and together with the first temptation, it
shows that even the most fundamental building blocks of physical and spiritual
sustenance—bread and the Word of God—can be turned into weapons with which to
do harm when put in the wrong hands. Jesus resists such weaponry, though,
despite the starvation inherent in so long a fast.
The
third of the devil’s three temptations involves Jesus throwing Himself off the
highest point of the Jerusalem temple so that angels will catch Him and prevent
Him from dying. To choose so central a point from which to jump makes the
intent of the temptation clear, albeit unspoken in the text itself: people will
see Jesus evade death through this divine intervention, and thus believe in Him
as the Son of God. Yet Jesus, quoting Scripture, again demurs.
It
is the second of these three temptations, the temptation to be given power over
all the kingdoms and nations of the earth, that I want to talk about the most
with you tonight.
I
want to talk with you about it because it is perhaps the most relevant to
ourselves in our own human condition. Yes, we crave food, but food is not by
itself sinful—we are simply admonished as Jesus says, to not live on the food
alone, and so we don’t.
Nor
must we feel terribly tempted to leap from the highest point in town to prove
our own divinity, because we each know that we are not the Messiah.
But
being tempted by earthly power? That’s right up our alley, and always has been.
Never mind the fact that, at its core, Christianity has always been a religion
about surrender—the surrendering of complete divinity that becoming human
entailed for Jesus and His surrender to the Roman Empire after the machinations
that led to His crucifixion were put into motion.
That
is not how we ourselves typically want to go. But it is the way of Jesus, and
giving up what we must in order to follow that way is not a request, it is an
expectation.
We
fail to live up to that expectation, though, each time we put our desire for
control and power over the wellbeing of another, be it another person, or
another group of people, or even an entire nation. That tendency is but another
form of selfishness, but a form that is not merely contained within our own
thoughts and feelings that we otherwise keep only to ourselves.
This
crass pursuit of transactional power—you give me influence, I give you influence—is
increasingly what American Christianity has been associated with over the past
couple of years. I say that quite confidently. We are known not for our pursuit
of self-control and surrender, but by our pursuit of earthly power, control,
and influence.
Just
hours ago today, we saw one lethal consequence of pursuit of such earthly power
and influence—although it is a consequence that we have seen on replay again
and again since the Columbine High School shooting. The Parkland mass shooting
in Florida is the latest in a long string of such attacks that, by pure
happenstance, happen in a nation with some of the most lax gun laws in the
industrialized world—laxness that exists because of the temporal power,
control, and influence that groups like the NRA have over our political
leaders.
That
influence, by the by, is in the interests not of people, but of material possessions—of
guns. Guns have no heart, no soul; as we are continually reminded by their
defenders, they don’t kill people. People kill people. But would the Christ who
repeatedly exhorted His followers to forsake material possessions make a
similar defense? The same Christ who told the rich young man who loved his
possessions to sell them and then have treasure in heaven? Or would Christ
champion the children, not the gun?
But
that is not where the locus of political power is at present in our nation. And
we are seduced by such powerful forces that promise us the means with which to
not only obtain power but also to keep hold of it. Surrendering it tends not to
be in our nature—as a nation, as a church, and as individuals. We not only want
what we cannot have, we want what we already have—desperately.
Yet,
if Christ is to be our eternal example, then our mandate is clear: to lose our
worldly power if we must, but in so doing, to gain the heavens. For every
single thing the devil offers Jesus is fleeting. Bread crumbles. A moment of
drama is but a moment. And earthly power, over generations, always is handed
over, whether by hook, by crook, or by the inevitable passage of time.
That
is the common question asked by the temptations the devil presents to Jesus: are
we willing to sacrifice eternity for what we want in the inherently fleeting
present moment? And not what we *need* in the present—but, again, what we
*want*.
The
well-deserved knock against those of us in the church is that far, far too
often—both lately and at many other times throughout our history—our answer to
that question is absolutely, we are willing to sacrifice the heavens to gain
the earth, not the other way around.
In
so doing, we do harm to one another. We do harm to God. And we do harm to
ourselves.
May
we take this season of Lent, then, as a time to turn that harm into healing, in
the hope and prayer that our renunciation of such harm, of such pursuit of
fleeting power to forsake the heavens and their creator, ends with us, and that
a new church, one surrounded by life and not by murder, and which heralds a
world of goodness rather than violence, might yet be possible.
It
is a dream I have.
May
it be so. Amen.
Rev.
Eric Atcheson
Longview,
Washington
February
14, 2018
No comments:
Post a Comment