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Sunday, March 1, 2020 – Lent 1
“Then the devil left him, and angels came
and waited on him.” That’s the end of
the story. Put yourself way out in the
desert in Jesus’ shoes. Instead of it
being Jesus, it’s the same story, but you’re the one who’s out there.
You’ve
fasted to the point of being utterly famished, no food for 40 days. The devil comes when you are at your
weakest. What’s God doing to help you
through this impossibly hard trial? You
gut it out. You stay faithful to
God. You stay true. Finally,
the devil gives up for the time being and departs. And then the angels come with assistance. If it were me in Jesus’ place, I would have
wanted help much earlier.
Following Matthew’s story, we have
just seen Jesus raised up out of the waters of the Jordan river. Dripping wet from his baptism, he then saw the
Heavens opened, the Holy Spirit came down, and a voice from Heaven, God the
Father, said, “This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased”
(3:17).
This
did not happen when I got baptized. Do
you remember your baptism? Mine came in
summer of 1981, and in my memory, it has a mystical quality, but nothing like
what we see in Matthew 3. The Holy
Spirit and the voice of God the Father combine to validate the arrival of God
the son. It’s a trinitarian moment and
an incarnational moment all in one!
But then, the Holy Spirit leads
Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. No navy SEAL training can compare with the ordeal
Jesus had to endure in preparation for his ministry. Forty days of fasting left him famished. Add to that that he was way out in the
wastelands. Out there, you need
sustenance so you have the energy to make the grueling hike back to
civilization. He didn’t soften the edges
of his life to make the extreme fast more bearable. He didn’t situate himself in comfortable
surroundings. He fasted to the point of
collapse while desert walking. At his
weakest, that’s the point the devil showed up.
The devil’s temptations of Jesus recall
the serpent’s visit to Eve in Eden, found in Genesis chapter 3.
The serpent asked Eve, “Did God
really say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’” (3:1)? From that very minute she was in trouble
because of what she didn’t do. She did not
say, “Hey, God, help me here. I don’t
know this serpent and He’s calling your promises into question. What do I
do?” She didn’t do that. She looked at that serpent and she thought,
“I got this.”
She explained to the serpent that
God gave plenty of fruit trees and that they were only to avoid the one in the
center of the garden for if they ate from that one, they would die. The serpent said, “You will not die.” Again, Eve didn’t say, “Hey, God, help
me. This thing just told me something
different than what you promised.” She
didn’t do that. Instead, she started
thinking about the serpent’s ideas. “Your
eyes will be opened. You will be like
God. You will have knowledge of good and
evil.”
On her own, apart from God, Eve
decided to deal with the serpent’s temptation.
Before long, she was thinking the serpent’s thoughts. She didn’t tell him how things were in the
garden and in the world. She saw how
good that fruit looked and she took a bite.
As the juice ran down her chin, she discovered what people have
discovered ever since. In temptation,
there’s some truth. Her eyes and
Adam’s eyes were opened, just as the serpent said they would be. However, the man and the woman gained their
new knowledge apart from God. They
immediately saw each other in new ways.
In communion with God, they saw one another as beautiful creations there
to be loved. Acting apart from God, they
saw in each other a nakedness that needed to be covered up, hidden. Then, they tried to hide from God. They had never felt the need to do that
before.
That serpent didn’t do anything
special. He just told half-truths that
lured the first humans away from God’s full truth. Their own lack of trust in God did the rest. Eve, didn’t trust God’s word enough to resist
the lie embedded in the temptation.
Adam and Eve were living in
paradise, Eden, when they fell. Jesus, ravaged
by unbearable hunger, found himself in desert wastelands. He would later on say these words to his
disciples in Matthew 7, “Is there any among you who, if your child asks for
bread will give a stone? Or if the child
asks for a fish will give a snake? If
then, you who are evil, know how to give good things to your children, how much
more will the Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him” (v.9-11). He trusted that God would provide him what he
needed.
The devil’s first temptation is “if
you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread”
(v.3). We just heart at the baptism
which happens right before this hungry desert sojourn that a voice from Heaven
declared him to be God’s Son. The devil
calls that into question and then tells Jesus to do what Eve did: act apart
from God. He didn’t tell Jesus to ask
God for food. He told him to command the
stones to become bread. Jesus trusted that his father would give good
things. He declares he needed the word
of God for life as much as he needed food in his belly.
Next, Jesus allows himself to be
led. The Holy Spirit had led him out to
be tempted. So, Jesus faces the temptation. The devil leads him to the highest point in
the Jerusalem, the hilltop where the temple sits. Jesus is told to fling himself off the
pinnacle of the temple, a suicide jump.
Quoting Psalm 91, the devil tells Jesus angels will save him. It’s not a complete a lie. As we already read, at the end of this story,
angels do come to help him. But not
yet!
The devil is using scripture for his
own means, something we do all the time.
In political arguments or in church conflicts, we see our opponents as
God’s opponents. It’s “them” vs. “us,”
and we always cast our side as the side of scripture. We totally ignore the fact that our opponent
uses the same Bible to defend a position opposite ours. We’re not supposed to use the
Bible. The devil did that with this
second temptation. We are to submit to
the God we meet in the pages of the Bible.
The Bible is not here to support our positions. The Bible is to be a way the Spirit forms us
in the image of Christ. Jesus knew he
was in the desert to be tested. He
wasn’t there to test God. He trusted God
and resisted the devil.
In his third effort, the nefarious
tempter brought Jesus to the top of a high mountain and from there gave him a
vision of all the great kingdoms of the earth.
If Jesus bowed in worship before the devil, all these kingdoms would be
given to him. Whether the devil could
deliver on such an absurd offer is beside the point. Jesus knew the first commandment: we shall
have no other gods before the Lord our God.
We worship him alone. There’s
nothing the evil one could offer that would deter Jesus from his singular
devotion to glorify God. He trusted that
worshiping God is better than possessing power.
Note too, God had given Jesus a
mission – to die for the sins of the world.
Jesus would eventually be recognized as king of kings and lord of
lords. But first, he had to save the
world. The devil had him skipping the
cross and going straight to the throne.
Jesus rejected this deception trusting that God’s story is the better
story.
Finally, the devil left the scene,
and then the angels came to take care of all Jesus’ needs. As I said, were I in Jesus’ shoes, I would
have been just as happy to have the angels show up at the very beginning. Jesus modeled confidence and faith in God’s
plan even when trust appeared to be difficult.
In baptism, we are adopted as sons
and daughters of God, and the Holy Spirit takes up residence in us. Do we believe this? If we say we do, then do we also believe this
is for the best? Do we trust this story
for our lives is true and do we trust that it is best life we can have?
In the desert, on the hillside,
Jesus put all his trust in the heavenly father.
We might think, ‘well he, he’s Jesus. We’re not.’
That’s true. But we have this
advantage. We know where the story
leads. He defeated the devil and
resisted temptation. Later on, the night
that he knows he will be arrested, the devil tempts him again. Jesus is the second person of the Trinity,
God the Son, in human flesh. Being fully
human, the abandonment by his disciples broke his heart. The coming trial and crucifixion scared
him. The devil played on this and in
anguished prayer, Jesus asked for another way.
We know God did not offer another way, and so Jesus went to the cross to
take our death on himself.
We also know a few days, later,
resurrected, he walked out of tomb. On
the cross he defeated Satan and sin. In
resurrection, he defeated death. Just as
he took our death on himself, he shares his resurrection with us. We can be strengthened by this promise when
the devil comes to tempt us, if we believe the story and trust that the Holy
Spirit is with us.
That’s where the trust Jesus
demonstrated transfers to us. In this
crazy political season, Democrats and Republicans are trying to sell a number
of different narratives to the American public.
Advertisers sell narratives which put the product or experience they’re
selling at the center of the story. All
these peddlers of stories want you to believe that the story they tell is the
one you need to be in. You need to
adjust your life to live out that story.
What I’m suggesting is that Jesus,
even flattened by hunger as he was, rejected the devil because he rejected the
devil’s narrative. He did that because
he trusted that God’s story is the better story. As we close, I invite you to think about
this. For your life, is God’s story the better story? Do you believe your hope for a happy, blessed
life will be found walking the pathway of Jesus? One thing is clear. It can’t be both. We cannot walk the way of the politician or
the way of the propagandist or the way of the advertiser and walk the
way of Jesus? We have to decide which
narrative we’ll embody.
Don’t
come and say all the ways the way of Jesus is opposite of the politician you
oppose. Notice all the ways the way of
Jesus opposes the politician you’re voting for.
Then you’ve really cast your lot with the Savior. You can still vote for whomever. As citizens, we should participate in our
democracy. We do it remembering our
eternal destiny is to live as subjects in the eternal kingdom of God under the
merciful, just rule of King Jesus. That
story defines us and determines how we live.
Decide
which narrative is yours, the story will you live into. Take this time to pray, asking God to help
you trust the story he has for you.
AMEN
