Sermon – Matthew 4.1-11, Genesis 2.15-17, 3.1-7, L1, YA, March 5, 2017

Tags

church, corrupt, disciplines, doubt, evil, God, goodness, identity, insecurity, Jesus, Lent, question, relationship, repentance, Satan, Sermon, sin, temptation, trust

On this first Sunday in Lent, I usually like to talk about Lenten disciplines.  The season of Lent is one of the few times in the Church that we take a hard look at our faith life and then actually commit to doing something tangible to strengthen our walk with Christ.  When I hear about your disciplines, I get some clue as to what feeds each of you spiritually – whether you long to connect with Holy Scripture, or hope to deepen your prayer life; whether you know that denial of certain parts of your life will create a needed discomfort or disruption, or instead find taking up something to create needed transformation; whether you are motivated by something fun and engaging (like Lent Madness), or you prefer something more philosophical (like our Lenten study group focusing on the spirituality of the Eucharist).  Lenten disciplines also give me a tiny clue about what sinful behaviors have been pulling you away from God.  As we prayed the Great Litany today, there were countless options:  pride, vainglory, hypocrisy, envy, hatred, malice, desires of the flesh, and hardness of heart.  Or, perhaps you are inspired to help one of those we prayed for in the Litany:  the lonely, the sick, the homeless, the imprisoned, broken families, the oppressed, or those suffering injustice.  There really is no wrong way to approach Lenten disciplines – that we are taking them on demonstrates a commitment to enriching our faith and growing closer to God.

Given the beginning of those practices, the text of Jesus’ temptation every year on this first Sunday in Lent has always seemed most appropriate.  How better to encourage us to engage in repentance and reformation than to remember that Jesus too was tempted – tempted to ease the discomfort of hunger, tempted to test God’s loyalty and support, and tempted to take on power – even if ill-gotten – for the greater good?  And even better that this year in Lent, we get that powerful lesson from Hebrew Scriptures of Adam and Eve’s temptation – the temptation to eat beautiful fruit, to learn what God knows but won’t tell us, to take control of our destiny.  And all of those temptations would be plenty.  But what has been striking me more powerfully this year has been what is at the root of the temptations of Satan.  You see, in all of those tests for Jesus, and even in the simple offering of forbidden fruit, Satan does something even more insidious.  Through his temptations, Satan works to undermine our relationship with God – to sow the seed of mistrust that promises to unravel the very foundation of our faith.

We can talk all we want about deepening our faith, working on our sinful behaviors, or becoming better Christians in Lent.  But much scarier to talk about is the power of evil to undo our faith altogether.  Many of us know the darkness of this power from Satan.  If we have not had a spiritual identity crisis in our lives, someone we know has.  Enough people around us die, enough suffering happens in the world, enough pain comes our way that slowly we begin to wonder if God cares at all.  We watch what Christians do to one another or how they fail to care for one another, we see the misdeeds of the Church, or the Church’s clergy disappoint us, and slowly, slowly, we begin to doubt God is even present.  As I have been watching the news, as our country becomes more deeply divided, as suffering seems to be epidemic, and as we dehumanize one another, sometimes institutionalizing that dehumanization, I see the power of evil planting seed after seed of mistrust.  Who hasn’t asked, “Where is God?” in the last year?  Who hasn’t thought, “Maybe I should stop trusting God, and start taking care of things myself.”?  Who hasn’t wondered if God is slipping into irrelevance as the world falls apart around us?

As I have pondered the temptations of Adam, Eve, and Jesus, the power of evil to corrupt has been much more powerful, potent, and pressing this year.  The “crafts and assaults of the devil” and the desire to “beat down Satan under our feet”[i] we heard in the Great Litany are much more powerful in our current climate.  I am much less worried about Adam and Eve’s original sin than I am worried about their original insecurity.  The serpent comes along and sews mistrust among Adam and Eve.  He starts out with a simple question, “Did God really say…”  And so begins the serpent’s assault on their relationship with God – misrepresenting and undermining God’s instructions, suggesting God is keeping something from them.  And as scholar David Lose suggests, once this primary relationship is undermined, Adam and Eve are “susceptible to the temptation to forge their identity on their own, independent on their relationship with God, and so take and eat the forbidden fruit… [They] forget whose they are and so lose themselves in the temptation to secure their identity on their own.”[ii]  Though Adam and Eve’s sin is grave, how the serpent gets them there is much scarier to me.

Satan attempts to do the very same thing with Jesus.  “The devil also tries to undermine Jesus’ relationship with God by suggesting [the relationship] is not secure, that he should test [the relationship] by throwing himself off the mountain, or that he should go his own way by creating food for himself, or that he should seek the protection and patronage of the devil rather than trust God’s provision.”[iii]  Satan is good!  He even tries to twist Jesus’ use of scripture to convince Jesus of God’s unworthiness of trust.  What is frightening about Satan’s tactics is that he is not just about tempting us to do bad things.  He is meddling in our relationship with God, sewing distrust, confusion, questioning our identity as beloved children of God.  And that kind of meddling leads to much worse problems than poor behavior.  Satan tries to upend who we are.

Last week, we baptized two members into the household of faith.  We talked about how baptism marks for us who and whose we are.  We gave thanks for the reminder and celebrated as a community.  We were not unlike Adam and Eve, who upon their creation, God says it is very good.  We were not unlike Jesus, who at his own baptism, which occurs immediately before his temptation today, God says, “This is my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”  But Satan takes goodness and blessedness, and tries to taint that goodness and blessedness with doubt, mistrust, and insecurity.  He tries to confuse us, making us forget who and whose we are.

Several years ago, the movie The Help debuted.  In the film, there is a maid who cares for a child who gets a lot of verbal abuse from her mother.  In several key scenes, the maid takes the child aside and teaches the child a mantra of sorts.  In her rough grammar, she reminds the child, “You is smart, you is kind, you is important.”  Eventually the maid is fired, and the audience is left hoping that the mantra she taught the child will remind her that no matter what verbal abuse she receives, she can remember who she is – smart, kind, and important.

We do not always have caretakers in our lives who will instill in us a mantra that holds us in the face of adversity.  But we do have a church.  We have a church that will tell us we are made in the image of God, that our very creation is rooted in goodness, and that we are beloved children of God.  When we begin to be assaulted by the power of evil, which would rather us question our identity, the church reminds of us of our baptismal covenant, our identity-making set of promises, which tells us we are enough, there is plenty to go around, and we need not live in fear.  While the forces of evil will try to isolate us and send us into questions of identity, the church comes together every week to remind us that we are beloved children of God – a people of value, worth, and purpose.[iv]

I do not know what spiritual discipline you are taking up for Lent this year.  But if you do nothing else this Lent, come to church.  Come gather with the community that reminds you who and whose you are.  Come be with a people who are also assaulted by the doubts, questions, and fears of the day, but who ground themselves in their identity, and find meaning, encouragement, and purpose in this place.  Come.  Together, we will stamp down Satan under our feet as we shine light on our God who redeems, reveres, and renews us.  Amen.

[i] BCP, 151-152.

[ii] David Lose, “Lent 1A:  Identity as Gift and Promise,” February 28, 2017, as found at http://www.davidlose.net/2017/02/lent-1-a-identity-as-gift-and-promise/ on March 2, 2017.

[iii] Lose.

[iv] Lose.

Sermon – Luke 4.1-13, L1, YC, February 14, 2016

Tags

clergy, death, dependence, faithfulness, formation, God, Holy Spirit, hope, Lent, presence, Satan, Sermon, temptation, transition, wilderness

The irony of this being the first Sunday in Lent after the week we have had is not lost on me.  By now our parish should have received a letter from me explaining how I have accepted a call to a new position in Williamsburg, Virginia.  The letter has been met with a variety of reactions, from surprise to disappointment, from understanding to hurt, from confusion to anger.  But no matter what the initial reactions have been, the primary question from all has been, “What does that mean for St. Margaret’s now?”  That question and the news of coming change alone would have been enough for the week.  But then on Friday we lost one of the patriarchs of St. Margaret’s.  Though any death is hard, as a founding member and a perpetual evangelist, Chet will be deeply missed.  Given the week we have had, I cannot think of a better Sunday to talk about the wilderness.

In Luke’s gospel today, Jesus goes from the high of his baptism, where God proclaims Jesus’ identity as God’s son, out to the wilderness where he will be tempted for forty days by Satan.  The people of God are no strangers to the wilderness.  Before the people of Israel entered the land of promise in our Old Testament reading today, first they wandered for forty years in the wilderness.  Those years typify what a wilderness experience is all about:  confusion, fear, wariness, hunger, dissatisfaction, mourning, regret, anger, jealousy, and impatience.  In the wilderness, the people of Israel wondered why they had ever left Egypt, even though Egypt had been a place of slavery.  At least in Egypt they knew from where their next meal would come.  In the wilderness, the people of Israel whined about everything – a lack of food, a lack of water, a lack of direction.  They lost hope in God to provide for them so, in a moment of weakness, they had their priest construct a golden calf for them to worship.  They behaved so badly that a whole generation did not get the chance to see the promised land.  For Jesus, the wilderness is no different.  The wilderness is marked by scarcity and temptation.  Voices try to sway Jesus away from God.  And when Jesus was at his weakest, Satan himself came to tempt Jesus to take matters into his own hands instead of trusting God to stand with Jesus.

Of course, St. Margaret’s is no stranger to wilderness times.  Before we had parish status we went through several vicars, experiencing one transition after another.  When the twenty-year tenure of our first rector ended, many wondered how we would survive.  Clergy transitions can feel much like those wilderness moments for the Israelites.  On the one hand, transitions are full of promise as we imagine what new life a different clergy person might breathe into our community.  On the other hand, there are days when we glorify Egypt, when although our time in Egypt was not perfect and maybe had even become stale, at least we knew what to expect or had the stability of Father so-and-so.  Likewise, we have been through many parish deaths.  Each one hits us in a unique way, and each one makes us wonder what we will do without the person we have lost.  Who will be our warden, our treasurer, our coordinator of ushers, or our major donor?  How will we sing in the choir, laugh at coffee hour, or balance the budget without them?

That is the scary thing about the wilderness.  The wilderness tempts us into thinking and doing all sorts of things.  Although the three specific temptations of Jesus that Luke describes are certainly challenging, what is more unsettling is the underlying nature of temptation itself.  As one scholar argues, “…temptation is not so often temptation toward something – usually portrayed as doing something you shouldn’t – but rather is usually the temptation away from something – namely, our relationship with God and the identity we receive in and through that relationship.”[i]  What the wilderness has the chance to do is undermine our confidence in ourselves and in the community God made us to be.  That is what Satan is trying to do to Jesus:  erode Jesus’ confidence in his identity, in his security, and in his worthiness before God.  Satan did the same thing to the people of Israel for forty years, and Satan will do the same thing to St. Margaret’s if we let him.  Satan will try to erode our confidence that God is still acting and moving in this place and will continue to make this community a place of sacred encounter and experiences with God and God’s people.

As I was thinking about the wilderness of Lent, transition, and death, I kept coming back to the Holy Spirit.  You see, when Jesus goes into the wilderness, he does not go alone.  The text tells us that the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness.  The Spirit does not just drop Jesus off to fend for himself.  “…the Spirit continues to abide with him, enabling him to grow stronger through this season.”[ii]  Being filled with and accompanied by the Holy Spirit is the only way one gets through the wilderness.[iii]  The Spirit stays with Jesus in the wilderness because being chosen and anointed for one’s mission is not enough.  Jesus must be tested, being led to places of hunger and despair.  Only then does he learn dependence on God, who graciously provides for all our needs in all of life’s seasons.[iv]  The Holy Spirit enables Jesus to journey through the wilderness so that Jesus can learn that lesson about dependence upon the Lord our God.  The Holy Spirit’s company allows Jesus to see the powerful presence and abundance of God in his deepest need.

Thinking about the Holy Spirit this week has shifted my energy.  Instead of thinking about the wilderness with a sense of dread and familiarity, instead of bracing myself for impact, and instead of erecting soaring walls of protection to keep pain out, I found myself asking a different set of questions.  Where have I experienced God’s faithfulness in the wilderness?  How has my relationship with God been transformed?  How strong are the temptations of returning to old ways – to ways of relying on myself?[v]  Somehow, shifting the questions from where has God been absent in the wilderness to where has God or the Holy Spirit been present in the wilderness gave me a sense of hope.  Instead of looking for the bad – the dreariness of Lent, the burden of transition, the grief of death – I found myself wanting to look for the good – the blessing of time set apart with God, the opportunity for new life and growth, the reminder of resurrection promised for us all.

I will not tell you that the next forty days or even forty weeks will be easy.  In fact, I know that many of those days and weeks will be very hard.  But having been through Lents, transitions, and deaths before, and having watched Jesus held up by the Spirit, I can tell you that we have all experienced God’s faithfulness in the wilderness.  Though none of us likes the wilderness, the wilderness is a necessary part of our formation in Christ – like the necessity of wildfires to restore health and wholeness to ecosystems.  Just like those fires can contribute to overall forest health, the wilderness can contribute to our overall spiritual health.  In these next forty days, I invite you to not turn inward toward fear, protection, and isolation.  I invite you to turn to one another for strength and companionship.  I invite you to come to me as we all process what this change means for St. Margaret’s.  But mostly, I invite you to remember the Holy Spirit who is keeping vigil with each one of us.  The wilderness of Lent this year may be more palpable than in years past.  But I invite you to hold on to the hope of God’s promise to be with you in the midst of the wilderness.  Amen.

[i] David Lose, “Lent 1 C: Identity Theft,” February 9, 2016, as found at http://www.davidlose.net/2016/02/lent-1-c-identity-theft/ on February 11, 2016.

[ii] Jeffery L. Tribble, Sr., “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 44.

[iii] Karoline Lewis, “Filled With the Holy Spirit,” February 7, 2016 as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=4291 on February 11, 2016.

[iv] Tribble, 44.

[v] Kimberly M. Van Driel, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 47.