Being Human, Being Humble: Sermon for 1 Lent A

The first thing I notice when I read these passages every three years on the first Sunday of Lent is a comforting reminder that seems especially appropriate for our current age: even snakes and the devil can quote scripture at you and make it seem persuasive. That’s something that we can really hold on to in this time, as we see religion being used as an excuse for hatred, division, and greed run amok in our common lives together. I think that insight lying right under our noses this week can provide a lot of clarity.

But when I look deeper, there is a question that underlies the readings we heard today, and it is a question as old as time. From the birth of philosophy, one of the ultimate questions is “what does it mean to be human?” Regarding unique human characteristics that separate us from other animals, and from the rest of creation. What makes humans unique? It certainly isn’t strength, or speed, or agility—other creatures have us beat on all of those fronts. And the answers have been varied.

Reason, some proclaimed—and then we learned that dolphins, ants, and chimpanzees problem-solve and use tools. Language, others proclaimed—and then were learned about whale song and Koko the gorilla learning sign language. Memory, others suggested—and then we hear stories of elephants grieving their deceased kin, even years afterward, and loyal dogs returning to their family home after years of being lost thousands of miles away. Some claim that only humans have souls—but that takes us down another rabbit hole again, since you can’t prove the existence of a soul in ANYTHING.

Some people try to deny the humanity in others for their own benefit. In the 15th century, the Church debated whether indigenous people had souls, and were therefore human (they decided yes, but also decided that converting them justified treating them as disposable, so long as their souls were saved). At about the same time, slavery was brought to the Western hemisphere with a claim that those enslaved were less than human—about 3/5 of one. In the 20th century, Nazis famously denied the humanity of Jews, using a German term for them that translates to “beneath human.” Some people even today deny the humanity of immigrants, or of people merely suspected of crimes, much less of actual convicted criminals, and use that denial of these “othered” groups as fully human to justify denying them their rights to life, liberty, and property in one guise or another.

Rather than ever thinking we have the right to deny the humanity of others, we would do better to work on living into the humanity placed within ourselves. What does it mean to be a human? What experiences do our mammal bodies all share? We are born, we breathe, and almost immediately we get confused or scared at all the sensations short-circuiting our newly-minted minds. We cry out, we move clumsily, we seek nourishment and warmth and security. We seek companionship, love, and nurture. We listen for the familiar voices of our parents, for the people who teach us and guide us.

Along the way of growing up, which is a journey we all must take, we will encounter marvels and misadventures, times of play and times of trial. All of these experiences combine together to form us as young people. But it is the MEANING we make of our experiences—the narratives that we understand as running like a river through our lives and tying all that we have seen and learned and experienced together that makes us truly human. It is the stories we tell—the spark of imagination that ties us to being made in the image of the One who Created the Universe—that is one of the things that truly makes us human.

We hear two well-known stories in our readings today about the quest to understand what being human looks like. We hear two famous stories of the temptation. From the earliest collected scripture we hear of Adam and Eve being tempted in the Garden of Eden—and falling to that temptation. In our gospel passage, Jesus has just been baptized in the river Jordan. He was begun a new phase in his life. He is going to begin his ministry. And like all great religious leaders in scripture, he has to be centered in his heart, his mind, his body. Therefore he heads out into the wilderness, where he practices mastery over his mind and body with 40 days of fasting and tempting, seeking clarity, a vision to guide his ministry. Unlike Adam and Eve, Jesus will emerge triumphant over temptation.

Episcopal bishop and Choctaw elder the Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston describes Jesus’s experience in the wilderness as a traditional indigenous vision quest. The purpose of the vision quest was to receive a vision, and that vision was meant to be a blessing for one’s community. The quest would end with a vision that the seeker would bring back home for the help of his or her people. It would end with a narrative or insight that would provide guidance and benefit for all. In Indigenous wisdom, being human meant being willing to sacrifice for the well-being of those in your community, and to put wisdom and contemplation first in seeking a way through a challenge.

But being human is also being fallible. We can use our stories to tell truths about ourselves—or to justify wrongs we have done. Anyone who has ever raised a middle schooler has experienced that. Our readings this week seem to be pointing us toward consideration of one thing that humans definitely are really good at—and that is the subject of justifying ourselves when we serve our own interests at the expense of others.

We seem to always get off track, beloveds, when we overlook the fallibility part, and deny the responsibility part of being human in favor of the argument from exceptionalism that confers more rights on whoever we define as “us” versus whoever we define as “them.” When we define being human as something that makes us exceptional, that’s a dangerous endeavor, because it inevitably leads us to trying to justify selfishness and injustice. When we decide that we can depend more upon our own resources than trusting in God, that’s where we go wrong. Every time.

The story of Adam and Eve is at the beginning of scripture for a reason, after all. This story begins with the reminder that God had given Adam and Eve everything they needed for survival—and yet they were driven to try to take something that God said was not meant for them. I love the fact that the ancient people who first told the stories in the Torah start right out with admitting that when it comes to temptation, we humans have almost never met one we didn’t like. It’s like that great saying, “Opportunity may only knock once, but temptation leans on the doorbell.”

The temptation of Adam and Eve—and Jesus-- started out with a discussion of food, there through God’s providence—but it’s really about seeking power to free us from dependence upon God. It’s about being humble. Likewise, in the first two temptations Jesus faces after those 40 days in the wilderness, the devil tries to get Jesus to turn his back on God’s providence, and use his power for himself. The first two temptations try to play up to what in anyone else would be human vanity— “Hey! You’re God’s son! The rules don’t apply to you, and what can it hurt?” The first two try to lead Jesus from obedience to God by setting himself up over God. The third temptation drops all pretense and nakedly reveals the agenda: “Abandon God, worship me, and I will give you the world, since it’s mine.” He’s lying, of course. The world doesn’t belong to Satan—unless we hand him the keys. Ultimately, what Satan tries to tempt Jesus to do is to abandon his humanity—the point of his incarnation in the first place-- and exploit his power as the Son of God to rely upon himself over God.

And that, my friends, right there, might be the greatest temptation facing humanity in our time. We have convinced ourselves we do not need God—well, maybe to get ourselves out of hell, but after that God can just become a convenient proxy for our own worst impulses. We have convinced ourselves that we do not need to live by God’s word, or honor God’s creation upon which we depend, or limit indulging ourselves in any way, even if that hurts or endangers others or this planet. We have forgotten to be humble before God, and each other.

What we see here in looking at the parallels between our Genesis reading and the temptation of Jesus here is that the “original” sin has nothing to do with sex. It has to do with not trusting God to guide us in ways that maximize our own flourishing—being arrogant and humble enough to believe that we can do whatever we want, regardless of whom that might hurt. It’s about not trusting God’s urging for our lives to be ones of compassion, empathy, and humility in which we work for the common good. It has to do with putting the trust and faith that we should have in God in ourselves and our own judgment—even as we know that our judgment is often tainted by fear, anxiety, and feelings of scarcity.

One of the blessings of Lent is that it is a time to address our fears and free ourselves from them, by realizing that no matter what we are going through, God has gone through it. too, especially in the passion and execution of Jesus at the hands of the evil humans can create and justify when they believe themselves the ultimate authority on Earth. A time like right now.

But this time—this Lenten season especially—is a gift given to us, to confront our fears and overcome them. A theme for sermons during Lent this year could be “Fearless.” Jesus fearlessly faces his time in the wilderness because he has been led by the Spirit into the wilderness as God’s beloved Son, for the express purpose of being tested. Jesus is fearless and bold in the face of the devil’s temptation because he knows who he is, and he knows that God is with him. His ultimate trust in God means that he can’t be tested away from his faith or his obedience to the will of the Father. He is secure within the love of God. We are tempted to sin when we are afraid— afraid that we are alone in the world, despite all the promises of God that God is always with us.

If Jesus’s forty days in the wilderness is a time of self-creation, a time for Jesus to decide who he is and how he will live out his calling, then consider carefully what the Son of God chooses: deprivation over ease. Vulnerability over rescue. Obscurity over honor. At every instance in which he can reach for the certain, the extraordinary, and the miraculous, he reaches instead for the precarious, the quiet, and the mundane.

We often describe Lent as a journey, as a time of testing. May it be so: a time for us to purify ourselves and clarify our minds, to be reminded that we are called into community with each other for the blessing of the world. A time to humbly remember that what makes us human is NOT our independent streak, but our ability to trust in God and care for each other.

Amen.

Preached at the 505 on February 25 and at the 10:30 Holy Eucharist on February 26, 2023 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

Psalm 32

Romans 5:12-19

Matthew 4:1-11

Citations:

Steven Charleston, The Four Vision Quests of Jesus, pp. 22-25.

Where the Wild Things Are: Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent B

When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak. There are only ten sentences in the entire story, which is why, when the book was made into a movie a few years back, a whole lot of detail had to be invented and added in. Mark’s gospel shares that characteristic when compared with the other gospels-- although Sendak’s glorious illustrations and incredible beasts made up for the scarcity of words. Sendak also had a main character whose imagination was running wild, which got him into trouble—unusual in a world at that time of vapid, whiter-than-white and blander-than-bland Dick, Jane, and Spot.

Where the Wild Things Are is the story of a boy named Max. One evening while wearing his wolf costume, he literally goes wild. His mother calls him a wild thing, and she doesn’t mean it as a complement. He responds by threatening to eat her, and so he gets sent to bed without anything to eat at all. As the minutes and maybe hours go by, the walls of Max's room disappear and become a forest, and he wanders through it until he finds a shore and a boat that takes him sailing a long distance to the land where the wild things live. 

Max quickly subdues the Wild Things and becomes their king. He enjoys bossing them around for awhile-- but eventually he starts to miss his home, and so announces his intention to leave. The Wild Things beg him to stay, and threaten to eat him up just as had his own mom. But he refuses them, climbs back into his boat, and sails back over that long distance. Even at sea he can smell the smell of something good to eat. And when he gets back to his room, he finds his supper there waiting for him on a table, still hot. (1) 

In Mark’s gospel, we get a lot of drama happening in just these first total fifteen verses, and our gospel today includes the last seven of those fifteen verses. And just like in the children's book, a whole lot takes place in these sentences in Mark.

All this happens in just ten sentences of the children's story: Max goes from miscreant, to prisoner, to escapee, to adventurer and king all by sentence number four. In our gospel passage, Jesus goes from leaving his hometown, his baptism and theophany in the Jordan by John, his being seized by the Holy Spirit to be driven into the wilderness, his 40 days of temptation by Satan, and his return to Galilee to begin his public ministry as God’s Son, God’s healer, God’s teacher, and God’s prophet. All in six sentences. Seven verses.

Often the wildernesses of our imaginations are the most frightening of all. Yet it is at times when we are thrown upon our own resources that we learn a lot about our own strengths and weaknesses, and about who we really are.

How does Jesus end up in the wilderness at all?

In the verses just before our gospel, it is stated that John had been baptizing people from throughout the countryside, predicting the coming of one more powerful than he. And here comes Jesus, the one who was predicted, and he steps up to take his turn to be baptized. Mark explained that John’s baptism was for repentance, and that people undergoing it confessed their sins. And thus, we see connected between all three of our readings, excluding the psalm, a discussion of water as enabling the remaking of creation, of a rebirth.

But why does Jesus need to be baptized, if we understand him as being without sin? Perhaps by undergoing this baptism, Jesus publicly aligns himself with the need for repentance; his baptism story does not include any confession, unlike the others mentioned in the narrative before our reading. This act demonstrates that God’s kingdom is breaking in, as demonstrated with the heavens being powerfully and maybe even bewilderingly torn apart in our gospel today. The term for this is used only one other time in Mark—and that is at the moment of Jesus’s death on the cross. The proclamation of God’s kingdom by Jesus will prove to be a dangerous political statement in a place ruled by a puppet king within the Roman Empire.

And when Jesus is baptized, he also receives the Holy Spirit, which hovers “like a dove” over him. With the arrival of the Spirit we see represented the complete Trinity—as St. Augustine of Hippo noted, God is the Voice, Jesus is the Son revealed in the Jordan, fully human yet fully obedient, and the dove is the Spirit. This Spirit empowers Jesus to embark upon his public ministry. The voice from heaven also speaks directly to Jesus, not to those observing, and declares that Jesus is God’s Son, “the Beloved,” who has pleased God by his willingness to undergo this baptism. This reference to pleasing God reflects one of the Servant Song in Isaiah 42.

Jesus is baptized in the Jordan—a place of significance in Israel’s history. It’s the place where, Jesus’s namesake Joshua (“Y’shua” is both Jesus and Joshua) led the people of Israel into the Promised Land after their own time wandering in the desert for 40 years. Thus we hear echoes of the Exodus story in this story from Mark.

But that Spirit is not content to hover there like a pretty little bird. It then immediately takes hold of Jesus and “drives” him into the wilderness. Jesus is then (immediately, again) driven out by that same Spirit to be tempted for 40 days—always a significant number, especially when referring to time. Jesus, just like us, in plunged into the wilderness, regardless of where he might have chosen that his feet would take him. Although in Mark we get no details of the temptations themselves, Jesus himself was vulnerable to those temptations, or they wouldn’t deserve the word. But he is not defenseless during this long time of trial. God is with Jesus—just as God is with us especially in times of disorientation, pain, and even suffering. Even tight-lipped Mark includes the reassurance that angels and wild beasts are “with” Jesus while he is in the wilderness, with the angels actually serving Jesus.

And that turn of the phrase is interesting, though if you slow down and look at it. Angels? You would expect them to wait upon Jesus, especially if you have read Psalm 91. But wild beasts? Less so. In most stories from ancient times, wild beasts were expected to live in the wilderness, which is a large part of what makes the wilderness dangerous. These wild beasts behave more like Max’s Wild Things, acknowledging Jesus as being at one with creation, in harmony with their wild, free hearts.

And of course, that is a great reminder to us. We are far too prone to try to “tame” or “domesticate” Jesus. Too many people try to make Jesus into a prop for their partisan philosophies by stripping out the absolutely radical political message of love, community, and resistance to oppression that Jesus brings to earth. Stripping out the wild, radical nature of Jesus’s gospel makes Jesus into a two-dimensional prop, when we all see over and over again that he lives in at least FOUR dimensions. It makes him palatable and toothless. It’s a point C. S. Lewis made in his epic allegory, the Chronicles of Narnia. When first asked to describe Aslan, the great character representing Christ, Mr. Beaver, one of the Narnian creatures is very clear about the wild, powerful heart of Jesus:

“Aslan is a lion- the Lion, the great Lion.”
“Ooh,” said Susan. "I'd thought he was a man. Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion…” and she trails off
"Safe?" said Mr Beaver... “Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.” (2)

And so where does this lead us? As we enter more deeply into the season of Lent, we too are being encouraged to enter into the wilderness of our own souls. Not to domesticate them. But to do something far more dangerous: to open them to the unpredictability and yet the glory of life in the Spirit of God. A life that will not necessarily always take you where you want to go. But then again, we often prove ourselves to be spectacularly bad at choosing our own paths—perhaps because we try to hard to pay it safe, to maintain our own independence, to deny our dependence upon anyone, much less God.

With so many of us living lives shut up in boxes all day—houses, skyscrapers, classrooms, offices, even our cars are really just sealed moving boxes in which even the air is filtered and stale-- we need desperately to let go and enter into wilderness places that remind us of our wild beating hearts. Hearts that are called to connect to each other, to God, and to all creation and recognize our essential unity and solidarity. Lent calls us into that wilderness alongside Jesus, to confront all that might try to pull us away from God: our arrogance; our greed; our hard-hearted denial of any claim of our neighbors upon us—as we see tragically playing out right now in the crisis in Texas; our worship of money and the power we think it gives us, making it a god rather than a tool for good; our destruction of the natural world in pursuit of immediate comfort at the expense of the health of the planet for our children; our scoffing at science which is actually a scoffing at the Creator herself.

It is when we open ourselves to the dangerous beauty of the wilderness within us that we see that we are all only as safe as the most vulnerable among us. To understand, as this pandemic continues to prove to us, that we are only as healthy as the most ill person among us. That we are all bound together—and to rejoice in that rather than respond with denial that only makes us more vulnerable. To enter into what the agrarian essayist and poet Wendell Berry describes in his beautiful poem, “The Peace of Wild Things,” which has even been set to music for choral voices by choral composer Jake Runestad (3):

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. (4)

As our gospel, and Wendell Berry’s last line reminds us, the foundation of the wilderness places is not fear, but grace. No matter what wilderness we may be plunged into, God is there with us, just as the Spirit and the angels and the wild beasts were there with Jesus as he endured the temptations we’re just left to guess at in Mark’s spare telling. To enter into the beautiful, creative darkness so that those day-blind stars are revealed to our hungry eyes once more, reminding us that the ages of humanity are but a flicker in the eternity of God’s creation—and yet God seeks us out again and again, calling us back to covenant and relationship. To lean into the beauty of Lent and the beauty of life without being blinded to the beauty of NOW by the “forethought of grief.”

Our gospel today reminds us that even when you are in the Promised Land, you are never far from the wilderness. Yet that is a gift, for the wilderness keeps us honest and fully alive. As Anglican theologian N.T Wright notes, the way of pilgrimage is the way of risk. 

“In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.” (5)

May we embrace the wilderness journey alongside God this Lent. May we remember our essential unity with all creation. May we lie down in peace with all wild things, and embrace the wildness of the spirit that God seeks to awaken in us.

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 online service at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO on February 21, 2021.

Readings:

Genesis 9:8-17

Psalm 25:1-9

1 Peter 3:18-22

Mark 1:9-15

Citations:

1) Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are (1963).

2) C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950), p. 79.

3) Jake Runestad, "The Peace of Wind Things," from American Triptych, recorded by Conspirare and Craig Hella Johnson, on the album The Hope of Loving (2019). See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CseiIKJC7wo .

4) Wendell Berry, "The Peace of Wild Things" from Openings: Poems (1968).

4) N. T. Wright, The Way pf the Lord: Christian Pilgrimage Today, (1998), p. 32.

Images:

1) Alessandro Bonvincino, Christ in the Wilderness, 1515.

2) Maurice Sendak, from Where the Wild Things Are, 1963.

3) Sir Stanley Spencer, from his series Christ in the Wilderness, 1954.

4) James Tissot, Jesus Ministered to by the Angels, (1886-1994).

Fearlessly Human: Sermon for the 1st Sunday in Lent, Year A

From the birth of philosophy, one of the ultimate questions has always been, “What does it mean to be human?” It’s an attempt to define those unique human characteristics that separate us from other animals, and from the rest of creation. What makes humans unique? 

We start with eliminating things. It certainly isn’t strength, or speed, or agility—other creatures have us beat on all of those fronts. No, it must be something else. Over the centuries, the possible answers have been varied. Reason, some highlighted—and then we learned that dolphins, ants, and chimpanzees problem-solve and use tools. Language, others proclaimed—and then were learned about whale song and Koko the gorilla learning sign language. Memory, others suggested—and then we hear stories of elephants grieving their deceased kin, even years afterward, and loyal dogs returning to their family home after years of being lost thousands of miles away. Some claim that only humans have souls—but that takes us down another rabbit hole again, since you can’t prove the existence --or not-- of a soul in ANYTHING. 

There are things that unite us as creatures: a desire for growth, breath; a need to communicate and be understood; a drive for assuring the survival of our offspring; a longing to be fed, nourished, watered. Hungers and needs met. These are some of the basics of existence—and we are even learning that about organisms we once arrogantly assumed lack awareness. Trees sing to each other, and eavesdrop on each other through their roots. The dance of the honeybee communicates where to find water and pollen to their hivemates. Yet are they as free as human beings? 

What DOES it mean to be human? Perhaps it is bound up in the misuse of the freedom that is our inheritance. Sadly, often those who have asked that question have done so in order that they can exclude some OTHER group, and justify taking something from them or using them as objects rather than accord them dignity and rights. 

We seem to always get into danger when we overlook the responsibility part of being free humans, in favor of the argument from exceptionalism that confers more rights on whoever we define as “us” versus whoever we define as “them.” When we define being human as something that makes us exceptional, that elevates us above the balances built into creation, that’s a dangerous endeavor, because it inevitably leads us to trying to justify satisfying our wants throug selfishness, violence, and injustice. Like all creatures, we are driven by hunger, but God holds us accountable for how we assuage it. 

In the 15th-19th centuries, many Europeans denied the humanity of Africans so that they could be enslaved, abused, and killed. In the 20th century, Nazis famously denied the humanity of Jews, using a German term for them that translates to “beneath human.” And right now, we see some loudly deny the humanity of immigrants, or people of color, or LGBT people. We see people even now, through fear and prejudice, deny the humanity and right to life of people merely suspected of crimes, much less of actual convicted criminals. 

That denial of these “othered” groups as fully human is used to justify denying them their rights to life, liberty, and property in one guise or another—to justify the filling of one person’s hunger for status by denying someone else’s humanity. We run the terrible risk of privileging our own freedom and our own surrender to hunger until it morphs into the mistaken belief that it rests upon the necessity of others’ oppression. 

I was thinking about this question of humanity and exceptionalism as I pondered our readings this week. There IS one thing that scripture mentions that makes us different from other creatures—the fact that we have been specifically charged to be obedient to God. That's not because we are special-- it's because we HAVE to be told. Faithfulness comes naturally to the other creatures, but not to us—it’s part of the other side of our freedom. Our stories this week are about our temptations to place our freedom, our hunger and the materialism that together they spawn ahead of our faithfulness and trust in God. 

Our readings seem to be pointing us toward consideration of one thing that humans definitely are really good at—and that is rationalizing sin and disobedience. Ultimately, one of the hallmarks of humanity is our ability to sin, our ability to know right from wrong, and to do the wrong thing anyway. 

As our readings from Genesis and Matthew point out, the root of sin is unchecked hunger—of pridefully “independent” people surrendering to the fear that we will lack something or be denied something we want. It is that ability to choose the expedient or the pleasurable thing over the right and honorable thing that lies at the heart of the excuse “Well, I’m only human, right?” when we get caught doing something wrong.

The story of Adam and Eve is at the beginning of scripture for a reason, after all. This story begins with the reminder that God had provided Adam and Eve everything they needed for survival and even comfort—and yet they were driven to try to take something that God said was not meant for them. I am always struck by the fact that right after God supposedly makes humans the lords and masters of the rest of the creatures, humans are depicted as misusing their freedom and thus risking throwing away our privileged place where we imagine ourselves to be most beloved of all of God’s creatures. 

I love the fact that the ancient people who first told the stories in the Torah start right out with admitting that when it comes to temptation, we humans have almost never met one we didn’t like. It’s so incredibly honest. It’s like that great saying, “Opportunity may only knock once, but temptation leans on the doorbell.” 

The placement of that story as the first with human characters is an important and honest admission – that from our earliest knowledge of ourselves, our ability to sin is bound up with our freedom. Part of the creaturely condition is a desire and hunger for freedom. But God gave us as humans the freedom to choose, and we live in a time when people often lose sight of the fact that freedoms must be balanced in the name of justice and the good of those around us. 

God knows that’s absolutely not a popular message today. But especially with a backdrop of a fears of an epidemic and climate catastrophe looming before us, I think it bears repeating that especially for us humans, freedom comes not just as a privilege, but also as a responsibility. 

In the story from our gospel today, we get another story of temptation, but with a far different result. And just to make it clear that the result is bound up with freedom, Jesus faces not ONE but THREE temptations. And this time, Jesus in his full humanity—he is famished after all, just as all of us would be. So up pops the Devil, just as crafty and cunning as that snake in the Garden of Eden. And then we get to watch a little game of “dueling scriptures:” 

Devil: (in wilderness) You’re hungry; 
I dare you to turn stones into bread. 

Jesus: Deuteronomy 8:3 says no, 

God is sufficient.     

Devil: (on top of temple) Yeah? Well, 
Psalm 91:11-12 says you are bulletproof. 

Jesus: Deuteronomy 6:16 says no, 

God should not be tested (Irony!).

Devil: (on high mountain) Okay, just 
worship me for political power, then. 

Jesus: Deuteronomy 6:13 forbids it, 

and commands worship of God only. 

Once again, the parallels jump out: the temptation of Adam and Eve started out with a discussion of food, there through God’s providence; in the first two temptations, the devil tries to get Jesus to turn his back on God’s providence, and use his power for himself and deny his humanity. 

 The first two temptations try to play up to what in anyone else but Jesus would be human vanity— “Hey! You’re God’s son! The rules don’t apply to you, and what can it hurt?” The first two try to lead Jesus from obedience to God by setting himself up over God. The third temptation drops all pretense and nakedly reveals the agenda: “Abandon God, worship me, the God of the Belly.” 

What we see here in looking at the parallels between our Genesis reading and the temptation of Jesus here is that the “original” sin has nothing to do with sex. It has to do with not trusting God. It has to do with putting the trust and faith that we should have in God instead in our own arrogance and our own judgment—even as we know that our judgment is often tainted by fear, anxiety, and feelings of scarcity. Focusing on our hungers makes it impossible to have true peace and contentment. 

Our original sin is to let our hunger for more, which is inwardly focused, override our true calling to love and generosity which is outwardly focused.

We are often drawn into sin when we try to escape the hunger and longing that lies at heart of our existence as humans. That’s why giving up something for Lent CAN be instructive—IF it leads us to sit with our hungers and our longings as a way of getting to know ourselves better. Our longings can be blessings or curses, depending upon whether we master them or whether we let them master us. When we let our hungers master us, we fall into greed, selfishness, anxiety about perceptions of scarcity that our fears persuade us are fact rather than perception. 

Christian educator Debie Thomas notes that temptations can also been seen as invitations to lean into our relationship with God and our understanding that we don’t have to grab everything we can get our hands on, especially if that comes at the expense of others. She says this, and it pierced my soul so much I wanted to share it with you: 

Hunger in and of itself is not a virtue, it’s a classroom. To sit patiently with desire — to become its student — and still embrace my identity as God’s beloved, is hard…. But this is the invitation. We can be loved and hungry at the same time. We can hope and hurt at the same time. Most of all, we can trust that when God nourishes us, it won’t be by magic. It won’t be manipulative and disrespectful…. And through us — if we will learn to share — it will feed the world. (4) 

It’s absolutely vital that we understand Jesus as being BOTH fully human and God’s son—an understanding that Jesus demonstrates during his temptations. Jesus fearlessly faces his time in the wilderness because he has been led by the Spirit into the wilderness as God’s beloved Son, for the express purpose of being tempted to deny his humanity. Jesus, in facing down these particular temptations, redeems and reclaims the full goodness of humanity that some, like Paul, have claimed ended with Adam and Eve’s downfall. 

And what can we learn from this? Jesus is fearless and bold in the face of the devil’s temptation because he knows who he is, and he knows that God is with him. And we can do the same, if we trust that God is with us, too. Jesus’s ultimate trust in God means that he can’t be tested away from his faith or his obedience to the will of the Father. He is secure within the love of God, which satisfies far beyond any bread made from stone. We are tempted to sin when we are afraid— afraid that we are alone in the world, that we will never have enough, despite all the promises of God that God is always with us. 

Jesus shows us how to sit with being hungry, yet still and nevertheless faithfully, fearlessly human—and part of that lies in not being afraid to rely upon God. To put our trust in something beyond ourselves. That’s what it means to be fearlessly human—to be strong enough to be vulnerable. To be generous and openhearted, even when there are hungers for “more” beating out a cadence in each heartbeat. To be strong enough to depend on God, and depend on each other. To be fearless, because no matter how much we fall into temptation, through God’s grace, we are still beloved.

Amen.

Preached at the 505 on February 29, and at the 8:00 and 10:30 am services on March 1, 2020, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.


Readings:

• Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
• Romans 5:12-19
• Matthew 4:1-11
• Psalm 32

Sources:

1) James Tissot, Jesus Being Ministered to By Angels, Brooklyn Museum of Art.

2) "Adam and Eve Eating the Forbidden Fruit," Detail from Ste. Chappelle, Paris.

3) James Tissot, Christ Borne Up unto a Pinnacle of the Temple, Brooklyn Museum of Art.

4) Debie Thomas, "Tempted," in Journey with Jesus, February  23, 2020

5) James Tissot, Jesus Tempted in the Wilderness, Brooklyn Museum of Art.

Prayer 2466: Lord's Prayer Cycle Prayer 7- Deliver Us From Evil

Our Father in heaven,
loving Parent and Creator,
tender Mother,
deliver us from evil,
for we depend upon You wholly
when our courage falters
and our integrity is challenged.

Strengthen us in faith, 
O Shield and Refuge of Refugees,
that we may renounce the sin
of claiming helplessness
rather than acknowledge our participation
in systems of oppression and inhumanity.

O Lord Our Banner,
Opener of Blind Hearts,
enlighten our hearts and minds
that You may set us free
from the miserliness of spirit
that besets us in the face of fear and division.

Teach us to walk humbly
in the Way of Jesus,
that we may seek to perfect our devotion
even when it is inconvenient.
Instead, may we ever embrace those fleeing evil
just as You embrace and sustain us each day.

O Loving One, hear our prayers 
and grant your benediction and grace 
to those whose needs we now raise before You.

Amen.

Prayer 2465: Lord's Prayer Cycle Prayer 6: Save Us From the Time of Trial

Our Father in heaven, 
loving Parent and Creator, 
tender Mother, 
save us from the time of trial, 
for we are prone to wander 
and lose our way. 

Make us stronger in our faith 
and more willing to wrestle with the angel of doubt. 
Guide us into living and loving more fully 
according to your precepts. 
Help us turn aside all vain ambitions 
and concentrate fully upon your Word. 
Give us courage to make our hearts bigger, 
even if that makes them bigger targets, 
for love is always the answer. 
Help us to persevere 
through the difficulties of life, 
knowing that You are always with us. 
Give us the sight to see hope amid darkness. 

O Loving One, hear our prayers 
and grant your benediction and grace 
to those whose needs we now raise before You.

Amen.

Tempted: Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent C

Once upon a time, a terrible flood swept through a county after devastating rains. County officials sent deputies out to encourage people to leave, and most did, but a few decided to hang tight. The water rose so high that it reached second floors, and so the holdouts had to climb onto their roofs.

Old Mr. Schmidt was one of them. Up there on the roof he waited, and after a couple of hours, a johnboat came by with firemen and some of his neighbors in it. They urged him to get in the boat, but he refused, and finally they had to leave before the current got worse. 

Still the waters rose, and now it lapped the gutters. Still Old Mr. Schmidt sat there on the roof.

A bit later, a helicopter hovered overhead and they shouted at him to get in the basket they would lower and come on board, but Old Schmidt stubbornly refused. “God will save me,” he said.

Sadly, it did not end well for Old Schmidt. The water rose higher, covered the roof, and swept him away.

He woke up outside the gates of heaven, and he went up and rang the doorbell. St. Peter greeted him and let him in, exclaiming only that he was surprised to see him so soon. 

“Say,” said Schmidt. “What gives? I put my faith in God to save me from that flood, and here I am now in heaven!”

“Why, what do you mean, Schmidt?” responded St. Peter, perplexed.

“Weeelll,” replied Old Schmidt, “I obviously drowned. God didn’t act to save me!”

“You’re wrong, son,” said St. Peter. “Three times God tried to intervene, and three times you turned down each one.”

“How so?” exclaimed Schmidt, astonished.

“I think I would remember God trying to save me.”

St. Peter put his hand on Schmidt’s shoulder. “Listen, God sent you those deputies to tell you to leave, and you said no. God sent you that johnboat, and still you said no. God even sent a helicopter, but you said no!”

“But I was expecting a miracle!” Schmidt protested.

“The miracle was in the deputies, and the johnboat, and the helicopter, son—and God giving you the reason the be able to see that. But come on in anyway,” said the saint, and he led Schmidt through the gates.

Temptation is a funny thing. It works differently on everyone. In our gospel reading today, starting off Lent, we get an account of Jesus being tempted, and I don’t know about you, but I have always found that comforting. Just like with Old Schmidt, sometimes our greatest temptation is not to recognize God’s providence in our own lives—to realize that God’s grace works in and through others, more often than not, which doesn’t make that saving help any less sacred or holy. The converse of that is to then enjoin us to remember that we are called as disciples to work and act to help others as a way of making manifest God’s saving hand in the lives of those around us.

Old Schmidt may not have realized it, but he was putting God to the test in a way that our gospel strongly warns all of us against. Our scene picks up right after Jesus’s baptism. He is filled with the Holy Spirit, who sends him into the wilderness to encounter temptation. For 40 days—always a significant number in scripture—Jesus fasts and purifies himself. Specifically, the parallel here is the Israelites’ exodus journey in the wilderness after they escaped slavery in Egypt.

The temptations that the Evil One lays before Jesus are related to this tendency of independence in all of us. Three times, the Evil One tries to get Jesus to put God to the test. We also get a picture of the Evil One trying to use scripture to get Jesus to act in ways that denied God’s providence, and Jesus quoting scripture—specifically the book of Deuteronomy-- right back at him each time. Let’s examine each temptation for a few moments. 

After 40 days of fasting, Jesus is close to starving. Thus the first temptation is eminently practical—tempting Jesus to assuage his hunger and turn stones into bread. Here the temptation is for Jesus to put his powers to work not for others but to satisfy his own self-interest. Remember that Israel hungered in the desert, and complained to God and Moses about it quite ungratefully--and God provided manna and quail.

Second, Satan makes an offer of political power. He tries to tempt Jesus to use his powers to gain earthly political power, and fulfill the role of Messiah that the people wanted, instead of the role of Messiah that God had intended. In its ancient history as attested by scripture Israel had constantly sought to play God’s power off against the gods of their neighbors, and frequently fell into the habit of worshipping other gods, such as Baal, Ashtoreth, and Molech. For Israel, God WAS their ruler in the desert, and worshipping other gods was most certainly a political act. They turned away from acknowledging God’s sovereignty over them when they demanded a king, just like their neighbors had, after they were settled. Jesus’s refusal reminds us that God is our true ruler, the one to whom we owe our allegiance rather than setting ourselves up as the only kings we recognize.

Third, Satan tries to lure Jesus into testing the love and protection of God for Jesus. Satan quotes verses from our same Psalm we heard just a few minutes ago, too. This temptation attempts to get Jesus to manipulate God by testing his care over him, just like Old Schmidt. And the problem with that kind of thinking is that it diminishes God and attempts to make God our servant, rather than reminding us that we serve God. Israel did this as well in Exodus, when they demanded water in the midst of the desert, and God used Moses to make water flow out of the rock.

Psalm 91 IS a powerful act of thanksgiving for God’s continued love and care over us. But the promises in this psalm—especially in the verses 9-12 -- are also a temptation. They tempt us to try to manipulate God, to use God as a lucky rabbit’s foot (and if rabbit’s feet are so lucky, what about the rabbit who has provided these little charms? I imagine he doesn’t feel very lucky, hobbling around on his little crutches, poor thing). Satan uses verses 11-12 to tempt Jesus into manipulating God into fulfilling the promise quoted in this section.

And this is where I think many of us feel some connection to our own lives, if we are honest. It IS so very tempting to attempt to shrink God down into something we have control over, something we can understand. 

This is our arrogance that God is not necessary for salvation—that somehow WE can save ourselves, and that blessings we receive comes through to us through our own agency rather than through the loving-kindness of God. We WANT to believe that, “If I do X, then God will have to do Y,” but that is not how the world operates. 

This type of thinking is usually created when bad things happen even when we are being good, in our estimation, and wonder why we are being “punished,” or think that if we just pray hard enough or make a deal with God we will get what we want. There is an assumption there that God owes us something, and that we are blameless. We want to think that ultimately we are in control.

So we see today’s reading as a fitting start to Lent for us to ponder. There is a blessing here too—knowing that God is with us no matter what befalls us, and calls us to return again to God’s embrace again and again and again, no matter how often we fall short. We place ourselves under the discipline of Lent not as a way of punishing ourselves or testing ourselves, but of putting our trust a little bit more in God.

As we are invited into 40 days of reflection, repentance, and renewal, may we never forget that the point is not to be shamed or scared, but to grow deeper into our trust and faith in God. 

Amen.

Readings:
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm 91: 1-2, 9-16
Romans 10:8b-13
Luke 4:1-13


Preached at the 505 on March 9, and at the 8:00 and 10:15 services on March 10, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

No Shortcuts- Speaking to the Soul, February 14, 2016

Temptation is testing. There are some famous points in the Bible that deal with temptation, the most obvious being Adam and Eve in the Garden. Now what’s interesting is that in Luke, right before this reading we have this week, Luke lists the genealogy of Jesus, and it ends with Adam. How did Adam deal with temptation? He failed, decided he knew better than God, and was expelled from paradise. Jesus, who is sometimes termed “the new Adam,” is not going to fail, and through this victory, humanity is going to be redeemed.

The obvious parallel to Jesus being tested for forty days is the Israelites being tested and punished for 40 years in the wilderness. So wilderness would be the next key symbol. And this is consistent with the comparison between Jesus and Moses that is a feature of Luke. Moses’ leadership was tested in the wilderness; Jesus’s fitness to be the true Messiah will be tested.  Here the wilderness is where you can not only meet God but meet Satan. John lived and preached in the wilderness. So the wilderness is a place of trial—and temptation.

All 3 synoptic gospels record this temptation—it is found in Matthew 4:1-1, Mark 1:12-13, and even Hebrews 4:15. In the gospel stories, the temptations all occur at the start of Jesus’ public ministry, which makes sense. You wouldn’t sell a prototype aircraft unless there had been testing to make sure it is safe and performs according to expectation. What makes Luke’s account different? Luke begins and ends the action of his gospel in the Temple, and that is also where Jesus’ temptations ends up, after Satan whisks him away to the top of the Temple. There are no angels ministering to Jesus here. Also Luke does not have Jesus taken up to a mountain to see all the kingdoms—in Luke, mountains are where one meets God, not Satan.

So why were each of these things so tempting? A temptation only works if it is something we would actually be able to do. Jesus COULD turn stones into bread. Jesus COULD have seized power as an earthly ruler—and in fact, that’s what many of his disciples, including possibly Judas, expected him to do—and they were gravely disappointed when he refused the role of political revolutionary against Rome. Jesus COULD have done tricks with the expectation that God would save him from harm.

Those three temptations the devil is going to present Jesus with are three alternative histories or paths, shortcuts which would appear to be capable of being used to achieve great good. Feeding the hungry by making loaves of bread pop up out of the stones scattered about? Having God’s son exercise political power and drive out all oppressors with their false gods? Having God prove himself? Wouldn’t all of these things be amazing?

But these are not what God has planned. God’s kingdom on earth will be established through different means—not according to what WE would want, but by establishing that “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Jesus turns aside each temptation with scripture, including the temptation drawn from today’s psalm, and even the devil quotes scripture in a great game of Biblical one-upmanship. Jesus’s source is Deuteronomy. In response to the temptation of bread, Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 8:3—“He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”

            In response to the temptation of political power in exchange for worshipping the devil, Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:13—“The Lord your God you shall fear; him you shall serve, and by his name alone you shall swear.” 

            In response to the temptation to test God, the devil quotes today’s Psalm, 91:11-12, the very words that ancient Jews inscribed on magic amulets used by people in danger, particularly pregnant women—“For he will command his angels concerning you
 to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up,
 so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.” Jesus responds with Deuteronomy 6:16—“Do not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah.”  This refers to the incident in Exodus 17 where the people murmured against God, and God had Moses make water flow by striking a rock with his staff.

The devil gives up temporarily here, but not for good. As we enter Lent, we have to remember that temptation is all around, and seduces by offering the easy way, the shortcut. It’s not the big things that usually tempt us—it’s the little ones. We are tempted most when we rationalize taking a shortcut as a way to make things easier for ourselves, even if others would be hurt. All it costs us is a little piece of our integrity. All it costs us is deciding that we know better what is good for us in the short-term versus sacrificing now for the sake of the long-term. Lent calls us to trust God to be God—and to know that God is with us through trials and temptations. Deliver us from shortcuts; save us from the time of testing.

(This was first published on Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul for February 14, 2016.)