Temptation


Sunday, February 13th, 2005
Lent 1
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Matthew 4:1-11

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. 3The tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.’ 4But he answered, ‘It is written, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”’ 5Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6saying 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.”’ 7Jesus said to him, ‘Again it is written, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”’ 8Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; 9and he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’ 10Jesus said to him, ‘Away with you, Satan! for it is written, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”’ 11Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

‘Paso de eso” …

My friend Juan looked at me in an entirely benign manner. We’d been talking, at his initiative, about differences between the Catholic and Baptist traditions, and the differing understandings of scripture. When he came out with that phrase, it was to emphasize for me that he didn’t really believe all things espoused by the Roman Catholic Church, and yet in the next breathe, he freely admitted that, although there were aspects of the Baptist tradition that he appreciated, he could never even consider becoming a Baptist because his father would simply disown him. His parents freely admitted that even they didn’t agree with much if any of the Roman Catholic Church’s strictures, imposed on them under the nearly 40 years dictatorship of Francisco Franco in Spain, which at the time had ended a little less than a decade earlier, but nonetheless, they had made it clear to him that if he (Juan) were to join up with a splinter sect such as we Baptists were still viewed as being at the time, he would be summarily disowned. And that was something he couldn’t even consider.

‘Paso de eso” …

Literally, “I’m past that”. In contemporary language, “I’m OVER it.”

It was the phrase I most often heard in conversations with Spaniards about matters of faith while serving as a missionary journeyman there back in the 80’s. It was the single most disheartening factor with which I was confronted in the two years I was there.

Having come from a background that was grounded in faith, breathed faith, and tried to live faith, day in and day out, over the previous 22 years, it was the first time I was confronted with that radically different a world view from my own. I would have expected a gap in understanding if I would have met a person of a different faith altogether, but on some level, whether I am conversing with a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, or a Buddhist, there is a core element of faith … an awareness of the divine … granted, within that shared awareness there are VERY different ideas, but there is an underpinning of knowledge in being aware of something greater than ourselves among people of faith. That is what allows interfaith dialogues to at least begin.

This was RADICALLY different, meaning, at the very root, there was no commonality. “I’m over that”, implying that I’m beyond that, I’m above that, I’m better than that … a sense that matters of faith are all but useless, if not harmful.

Where do you begin to respond to that? Where do you begin to build a bridge that says “I know we see differently here on this issue that is critical for me, but trivial for you … lets find a way to continue to carry on this conversation and neither of us feel like we’re wasting our time.”

I remember the last conversation I had with Juan, the day before I left Oviedo. He told me he envied me the assurance I found in faith, and I told him that I wished that same assurance for him.

What was so overwhelming about that being ‘over’ it was that it was so prevalent. It wasn’t just a few people here and there, intellectuals and cynics and artists, or communist party activists or militant atheists who were saying it; it was the vast majority of the general population that I came in contact with.

Last August, when we were on vacation in Kentucky and had a chance to visit with our friend Claude, he told us about his trip to Europe earlier that summer. He told me of the people he’d met, and the conversations he’d had with friends who had moved there and THEIR friends who were from there, and at the end of it, he surprised me by saying “with all their shortcomings, I would much rather have an Evangelical Protestant Fundamentalist in power than one of the folks over there – at least THEY BELIEVE in something!”

So let’s turn to the text for a bit. I’m sure most of us have heard some message on the temptation of Christ before. It only took me a couple of minutes of searching to find the traditional interpretations of the temptations that Christ faced in the wilderness:

1. Turning stones into bread: Jesus had been in the wilderness fasting for 40 days up until that point. Being tempted to feed himself after going hungry for over a month would seem to be a low blow, but it is at out weakest that we are confronted with what most beguiles us. Jesus was being tempted to put his own needs first – to be self-serving.
2. Bow down to Satan in order to rule all the world highlights the human lust for power and dominance. Jesus knew going into his ministry that he was going to be proclaiming a Kingdom different from that which the people were expecting. Here he was turning away from a final attempt to go about his ministry in the expected fashion.
3. To jump from the pinnacle of the temple in order to be caught by God’s angels before striking his foot on the ground is an appeal to … vanity, when it comes down to it. An appeal to that part of us that longs to be noticed or valued. To get our 15 minutes of fame, as it were. Jesus knew that was all it would be; a temporary flash in the pan, and he knew that the consequences would be eternal.
We can all, to some degree, identify with each of those temptations. We’ve all experienced moments when we would’ve gladly given in, and perhaps some of us may have even YIELDED, but this is a Gospel of grace, of forgiveness, and of reconciliation.

We give in because we’re human. Though we can help it at times, we are flawed creatures, “frail children of dust,” as Bill Hendricks used to address all of his classes at seminary. We can live in regret for what we’ve done and dwell on it, or we can move on in the sure and certain knowledge that God can use us despite ourselves at our worst.

But the lesson of the gospel today also goes in a different direction. Temptation is, unfortunately, rarely as obvious as if Satan himself were standing next to you with horns and a pitchfork asking you to conjure up a Big Mac with fries and a coke because you’re hungry. Temptation rarely offers us the opportunity to discern it from the good we might do, from the good we might BE, if we choose one way or the other.

In the film ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’, Willem Dafoe as Jesus is confronted with his last temptation, coming down from the cross, marrying Mary Magdalene, and going on to live a ‘normal’ life of anonymity and child rearing, working in his carpenter’s shop and providing a quiet living for his family.

At their heart, temptations pull us away from our walk with God, this continuing relationship that develops as we each get to know each other. It is ultimately why God created us: for companionship. Our greatest temptation each day is to live the day as though God didn’t matter, to go about our regular daily activities without a hint of God’s presence or movement in our lives. God’s deepest sorrow is found when we walk away from him. His greatest joy is found when we run to him, like children eager to show our heavenly father what we’ve discovered, in creation, in ourselves, in our families or our family of faith that reflects him and his love for the world.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Simply this: it is for us to resist with all our might the subtle, silent … temptation to go through a day – or any part of a day- without acknowledging that it is by the goodness of God that we were brought into this world, that it is by the grace of God that we are being kept all the day long, even until this very hour, and that it is by the love of God, fully revealed in the face of Jesus, that we are being redeemed.

Let’s pray.