by the Rev. Carol Horton-Howe
Please note that the following sermon text was provided prior to the audio recording. The two versions may differ substantially.
Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”
But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”
Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,
‘Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.’”
Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.
Matthew 4:1-11 (NRSV)
When I told a long-time friend that I was serving at St. Matthias, she surprised me by responding “Oh, Matthias! He’s the one that stumped us!” She went on to explain an early memory of Sunday school when they played a game called Shield. The teacher would ask all the children to sit in a circle with their Bibles in hand. She would say “Everyone hold up your Shield!” And all the children, would grasp their Bible in both hands and hold them out in front of them. Then the teacher would call out the name of a someone in the Bible, or a story or parable or verse. All the children would get busy looking for it. The first to find it was rewarded with the chance to stand in the circle and read to the rest of the class. Matthias is only mentioned in a couple verses in the Book of Acts so my friend had had a hard time finding him. That memory of Shield was still with her. This idea of the Bible as our shield would be an interesting idea to hold onto today as we look a little deeper at the gospel.
We are in the first Sunday of Lent. Lent always begins with Jesus in the wilderness. Jesus has just been baptized by John and is immediately led into the desert. The euphoria of the voice of God may still be ringing in his ears – “This is my son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” The lush riverbank is a memory, the vast expanse of desolation stretches out before him. Is Jesus wondering what exactly this means for him? He had been ordained by God in the river, but his ministry had not yet begun. And now we watch to see how God’s beloved will react to harsh extremes. Will it be like we as humans would? Or in some divine way beyond our understanding? How does Jesus deal with starvation and thirst both physical and spiritual? And what can we take from this for our own wilderness experience?
There’s something about the desert that can suck all the self-confidence right out of us. So empty and quiet, you can’t help notice how small you are. If you find yourself there, a life that seemed so certain just a short while ago is now just a big question mark. You feel so alone, wishing you had someone who understood you that you could talk to about it. Have you ever felt this? Has it gone on so long that you started to question God’s care for you and about you? That in spite of what you’ve always believed about God loving you and caring for you, you question why God doesn’t just fix everything and make the pain go away as God most assuredly is able to do.
Survivors of 9/11 suffering the effects of their injuries long after the day of the attacks were interviewed years later and expressed feelings of abandonment by God – where was God, they asked? “I’ve looked for Jesus. I’ve longed for Jesus since that day just like I’ve longed for air.” One man said. “And I’ve struggled with anger. I’d like a little of that Old Testament God right about now – punishing the evildoers, destroying their cities, their towers.”
Whether you’ve experienced a high level of trauma as he had or not, I know you’ve had your wilderness too. And a longing for God to just send a rescue team. Why doesn’t God just fix all our problems for us? I wonder if this what Jesus experienced. Notice that all the temptations that the devil offers Jesus are along the same theme – that Jesus deserves better than what God is giving him. Why should God’s beloved go hungry?
The voices of temptation don’t sound like a serpent hissing or a harsh demonic bullying. When they come, they will sound like the perfect thing to seduce you personally. They’ll appeal to your greatest strengths and seduce you in moments of profound weakness.
Temptation speaks to us in a language that is natural, that we understand, that is us. I hear temptation in “Carole-speak.” You hear it in your own language. If you are a linear person you will hear it as a series of building arguments. If you are a left brain person you will hear it as a logical, analytical thought process. If you are a right brained person you will hear it as creative thought that will tug hard at your heart strings. And it will sound oh so perfect.
So how can we test these messages? How do we figure out if they are life giving? The only true test is how it effects our relationship with God. If these ideas are based on love and draw us closer to God they are to be trusted. But if they put distance between us and God, if they have no basis in the words and teaching of Jesus, if they do not encourage us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind and all our strength they are not of God and will destroy us.
This is where we see what being children of God truly means. The temptations we face day by day and at critical moments of decision and vocation in our lives may be very different from those of Jesus but they have exactly the same point. They are not simply trying to entice us to commit one sin or another. They are actually trying to get us to turn away from God and the path of servanthood.
God’s word will uphold us. That is the best defense that we have. When we come face to face with temptation, we go to the word that empowers us, that gives us grace. We go to God who created us and gives our lives meaning.
Just last week, a few of us finished meeting together in a group called “Traveling with God.” We showed photos and memorabilia from our travels and told stories of adventures. In all the stories I noticed that what we found was usually not what we expected. And that was the best part. Without actually naming it, we were describing for each other the experience of pilgrimage.
Tourists go from place to place, sight to sight finding satisfaction in collecting those sights until they reach a final destination or a concluding sight. They have some firm expectations and what they’ll see.
Photo by FAICAL Zaramod from Pexels
But a pilgrimage is different. It’s more than a standard trip or journey. While some go on pilgrimage with a sense of adventure, it almost always begins with a sense of call or a deep yearning, sometimes even a great urgency to get up and go. Often the pilgrim is called to undertake physical travel although for some pilgrimage is about traveling inward on a journey of the heart. All call on us to be willing to try, to fail and try again. No two pilgrims have the exact same experience. But all pilgrimages call on us to be open to moving out of our comfort zone.
You may have a certain Lenten practice in mind or maybe you’ve already committed to a certain regimen. If that resonates with you, embrace it. But if along the way life happens or it loses its appeal, I hope you will be gentle with yourself. I promise you will not be the only one on Palm Sunday with a journal half completed or a book of devotions partially read. They’ll still be there for you when you’re able to pick them up again. But please be a pilgrim. Those life interruptions are precious chances to find God at work in ways that might transform you. They are chances to ask ourselves what God is inviting us to do, how we might lean on the word of God to respond to the startling and the mundane.
We know our destination with Jesus. In little more than 40 days from today it is Jerusalem, arrest, suffering, death on the cross and the resurrection that will change the world and everyone in it forever. Integral to pilgrimage is the journey home and the pilgrims’ need to integrate the life they have lived with the new insights gained as they return as changed persons.
The survivor of 9/11 put it this way: “Ultimately I want a safer world. I want a more competent God. Then I remember that God's power is not a controlling but a redeeming power and the red blood of belief begins to return to my veins. I have faith. I lose faith. I find faith again, or faith finds me, but throughout it all I am confronted with the certainty that I am in good hands; love girds the universe; God will have the last word and that word is “love” in the form of his son Jesus.”
Allow God to speak tenderly to you, lead you, reveal God’s self to you. Remember you are called to bring God’s light into the world. Hold on to your shield. And say a firm “no” to the voices that want to lure you out of the light and into darkness.
Amen.
