Gospel: Luke 4:1-13 1st Reading: Deuteronomy 26:1-11 2nd Reading: Romans 10:8b-13
When I used to watch Saturday morning cartoons as a kid, I
remember a common image was a character who had a choice to make. On one
shoulder would be an angel, telling him to do the right thing, encouraging him,
and rooting for him. On the other shoulder would be a devil, a little red guy
with a pitchfork and a forked tail, urging him to do the wrong thing. If I
remember right, it seems that the character often chose to do what the little
devil told him to do. I don't know if that is because that is what many of us
usually do, or maybe it just makes a much more interesting story when a person
does the wrong thing and then we get to see the consequences of their actions.
We get to learn through them what not to do, and it can be funny when somebody
gets what they deserve, especially if it is just a cartoon character.
Jesus, today, is led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit,
where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. I imagine the Holy Spirit, or
a dove, perched on one shoulder and the devil on the other. Did he actually see
either of these folks, or were they voices he heard, or simply a tug in his heart
as he imagined the possibilities of what it meant to be the Son of God. We'll
probably never know, except for our own experiences of temptation. Sometimes
there are two people representing our two choices and other times it is an
internal battle.
I want to talk a little bit about wilderness. Picture a desert,
where there is no living thing, as far as the eye can see. The heat of the sun
is intense. It is deafeningly silent. The wilderness is a place that is so
quiet and empty, we can hear both the angel and devil. Maybe it isn't an actual
wilderness for most of us, although I did have a friend who after the breakup
of a 9 year relationship took a solo bicycle trip for a month through the
Olympic Peninsula and then back down to Oregon. She talked about how cleansing
it was to spend that time with her thoughts, to sort through who she was
without him and what her own dreams were for the future. That was the
wilderness for her. I guess the Olympic Peninsula is the actual wilderness, but
the wilderness for her was also the breakup. Other wildernesses might be the
death of someone close to us or an illness or simply unrest within us urging us
to change. The deafening silence is a time when we might entertain thoughts
that come from the Holy Spirit and some from the devil, and sometimes we might
not be able to tell the difference.
I guess some people might feel uncomfortable thinking of Jesus
tempted by the devil. Maybe they'd rather think of Jesus being so pure as to
never feel a tug in the wrong direction. Another way to look at this is as a
story telling us who Jesus is and and who he is not. Temptation is simply the
result of having choices. In the book of Job, the tempter is one who is like a
building inspector who is making sure everything is up to code. The devil, here, is making sure Jesus is up to
code and of course he passes every test, even really really hard ones that no
one else would pass.
Jesus passes the test because Jesus is the Son of God—so we have
just heard at his baptism and so the devil reminds him in today's Gospel. We
would think that being the Son of God would give the certainty that he would
pass the test. However, there was one other called the son of God and only in
the chapter before this in the Gospel of Luke. That is in the genealogy tracing
the lineage of Jesus all the way back to Adam. Adam is also called son of God.
But we all know he failed when he was tempted. God told Adam not to eat from
the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, and he did, and then he
blamed “that woman” for it.
These temptations would have also brought to mind temptations
that the Israelites experienced in the wilderness when they were wandering over
40 years before they came to the promised land. The first temptation is about
changing a stone into a loaf of bread. Jesus quotes what Moses says to the
Israelites when they were hungry in the wilderness. “One does not live by bread
alone.” The manna God provided wasn't the point. Filling their tummies was not
the point. The point was where the bread comes from, that God provides it. The
manna in the wilderness taught the Israelites to trust God. Jesus knows it is
God who feeds him and it isn't up to him to make bread for himself. We know he
is perfectly able to make bread, or at least we assume that is how the 5000 are
fed, later in Jesus' ministry, but he doesn't use his gifts to please himself.
That's not what they are for. They are for the good of the whole.
The second temptation is to political power. This is a
temptation the Israelites were also familiar with. They wanted to be like their
neighbors. The wanted to worship the gods of the other countries who they felt
would deliver better for them. They also wanted a king like other countries.
They wanted military might. As it turned out, most of the Israelite kings were
not so good at resisting temptation, and ended up seeking not the good of the
people of the kingdom, but only to build themselves up.
The third temptation is to see if Jesus can get a reaction from
God by leaping from a high place. In a very tricky move, the devil quotes the
Bible. Simply being able to quote the Bible is not proof that one is faithful.
I think Lutherans have always been suspicious if anyone other than the pastor
quotes the Bible very often, because we've seen the Bible used in ways that
hurt people more than we've seen used to comfort or show love. Jesus again
quotes Moses in the Old Testament. He says, “Do not put the Lord your God to
the test.” Moses said this when the people were thirsty in the wilderness. The
people asked, “Is the Lord among us, or not?” In other words, “Prove to us that
God is real by giving us what we want. We won't believe if you don't do what we
ask.” Of course the Israelites failed test after test in the wilderness. But
God is faithful and brings them through.
Jesus continued to be tested after this. Many more opportune times came in the garden
of Gethsemane when Jesus prayed that this cup would be taken from him, on the
cross when the soldiers mocked him and said if you are who you say you are,
save yourself. As I said last week he was tempted in the transfiguration to
stay on the mountaintop. His disciples
were constantly confused, and sometimes Jesus' seems genuinely fed up with
them. Demons were still inhabiting people and causing them great distress.
People were still ill—evidence that the devil is still out there wreaking
havoc. And people were always asking questions that seemed to rile Jesus up,
like, “Who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind.” Jesus was
often tempted by the powers of this world and the possible comforts.
The Israelites were definitely still tempted, and that's why we
have this reading from Deuteronomy. The temptation is to believe that this land
is theirs, that they earned it, that they don't owe anything to anyone, and it
is for them alone. However, Moses gives them some steps so they won't go down
this path. Every spring, when they harvest the grain, they take the first part
of it, the first of all the fruit, and bring it to the priest. They are to remember
the story of where this grain came from, where they came from, how they got
here. They are to remember the story of how God continues to be generous—or
they'd never have these fruits to bring. They are to remember how they aren't
self-sufficient, how they suffered and wandered, and how they called out to
God, helpless, and God answered them, delivered them, fed them with food and
with words of justice and sharing and unity and love. Then take that offering
and share it among you—not some of you, but all of you—and celebrate God's
generosity together.
This is part of the reason we begin with a land acknowledgement
statement. The reading from Deuteronomy
is the Israelite Land Acknowledgement statement. We are here on this location as a result of
many decisions by many different people, including those Indigenous people who
stewarded this land and whose creation stories tell of the life and worth of
this land to all creatures. We are here
as a result of the Doctrine of Discovery that declared that non-Christians had
no right to the land and were to be treated as less than human. We are here as a result of a settler mindset
that still causes us to think about ownership and dominion differently than God
thinks of it, in ways that isolate us from each other.
We, too, are tempted all the time. When we are, God wants us to remember who we
are. God wants us to remember the story
of our being connected to God’s generosity, to community, to all those who came
before and made helpful and hurtful choices.
God wants us to remember our story, that on the night when he was most
feeling alone and in the wilderness, Jesus took bread, first fruits of the
earth, and shared it with his friends and enemies, and asked them to remember
to love and care for the poor, to wash one another and feed one another,
because none of us is ever really alone. Jesus asked them to be the body of
Christ, to re-member him, to stay connected in order to share his message and
his love. He took the wine, and shared it with all of them, and asked them
gather and share his blood and remember him. None of us is alone. God is here
with us. And we share with all and celebrate with all the fact that God meets
us in the wilderness in all our temptations and sends the Holy Spirit to guide
us and bring us through to everlasting, abundant life.
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