Wilderness wanderings

During Lent, I will preach mostly from a manuscript instead of from an outline, as I normally do. So I thought it would be nice to post each week's sermon on the Bridge/Port 'blog.

So . . . here is today's sermon, based on Luke 4:1-14.

****************

The minute I walked into his hospital room, Chris started waving the New Testament under my nose.

“Man, this ain’t the bible,” he said. “My girlfriend calls the bible ‘instructions for life.’ It’s a book of rules—don’t do this, don’t do that, but that’s OK. But this,” he said, waving the book in my face again, “this ain’t no bible. It’s a book of stories.”

I’d given that bible to Chris two days earlier when he asked me, as his chaplain, for something to read. It was his first personal copy of the scriptures, and the first time he’d read them for himself. And he was riled up.

“What’s wrong with a book of stories?” I asked. He didn’t answer, but stared out the window as his eyes filled up with tears.

“I opened to this page, right here,” he said, jabbing his forefinger against the fourth chapter of the Gospel According to Luke. “It says, ‘Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.’ I know that story—the devil out there trying to talk you into something you know ain’t right. I know that story. That’s my story.”

Chris’s first love in life had been crack cocaine, and by the time he’d left junior high he’d joined a West Dallas gang. Now in his mid-20’s, he’d spent the past year fighting for his life against both of those old friends. And they were always out there on the edge of his perception, tempting him to return. His old friends wanted him back.

And there was reason for him to return: Chris was dying of cancer, and he knew he wouldn’t survive. He felt like God had turned away. So why not return to those old friends, go out in a blaze of glory, instead of fading away in a hospital bed? We’d talked about that temptation nearly every time I visited him.

But in reading this passage from Luke, Chris found an answer. Jesus had been tempted in the desert just as he was tempted, daily, to turn his back on God and return to the gang and the crack and the violence of the streets. But knowing Jesus was tempted as he was tempted and suffered as he was suffering, led Chris to an entirely new understanding of who God is. For the first time in his life, Jesus became an ally instead of a judge.

II.

Sometimes I wish I had been with Jesus in the wilderness during those forty days. I imagine him in the heat of noon, with sweat glazing his body, eyes squinting against the harsh light; or at night, shivering in the desert cold beneath a full moon, surrounded by mountains, grains of sand settling in his wrinkled brow as the cool night wind blew in from the west and the Mediterranean sea.

Was he frightened of what he knew was coming? Did he talk to himself, out there in the night? Were his thoughts scattered and confused?

After all, he had just been baptized, the Holy Spirit descending on him and a voice declaring: “You are my son, the Beloved. With you, I am well pleased.”

Talk about disconcerting! His ministry hasn’t yet been inaugurated, the secret of his identity hasn’t been revealed to anyone but himself.

Did he struggle out there in the wilderness to understand the nature and shape of his messianic role?

And what happened to his body as he went ten days, twenty, thirty-five, forty, without food and water? How badly did his stomach cramp after forty days without food? I know how loud my own stomach can growl if lunch is an hour or two late. Did Jesus’ mouth turn to cotton, lips stuck together, tongue swollen and rubbed raw against the sharp shards of his teeth?

In such a condition, could he stand up by himself, let alone walk, at the end of those forty days? How much effort did it take to lift his hand and brush away the sand flies clotting at his eyes? Did he see and hear things that were not there?

And then, at the end of the forty days, when Jesus is at his weakest and most vulnerable, the temptations come: turn this stone into bread, become the ruler of the world, defy death in Jerusalem. The Spirit had declared: “You are the Son of God.” And now the devil has come to tease: “Do you really wish to be as God? I can make it happen.”

Make no mistake: These were real temptations—temptations out of which only good could come: Jesus had the power to turn stones to bread and feed the hungry; he had the power to become an earthly ruler of a benevolent kingdom full of justice and compassion that would end the brutal victimization of the weak that defined the Roman empire; he had the power to become the High Priest at the temple in Jerusalem and ask God to save him from a death in the Holy City. Jesus could have achieved any of these things and only good would have come of them.

And the expectant Jews waiting for the Messiah? They would have expected to see their king in any of these forms: a prophet concerned for social justice; a charismatic political leader with the smarts to unite the known world under one rule; or a priestly figure who would reinstate the glory of the temple and intercede for them directly before God.

Yet Jesus said no to all of these temptations, despite his power to make them happen and despite the Jewish expectation that the long-awaited Messiah would be a literal prophet, priest or king. He said no.

How did he do it? Did he struggle against his human ego that wanted those glorious things for himself? Was he tempted to take the quick route, to make a pact with the devil and achieve the glorious ends he was destined to fulfill, without following the hard road to Jerusalem and death on the cross?

Or was it easy for him to say no? To turn his mind to scripture and the things of God and participate willingly in the painful but holy destiny God had called him to complete?

I wish I had been with Jesus during those forty days so I might gather some wisdom for facing my own temptations, when I am at my weakest, to do good things—or even not-so-good things—to do them the easy way, to take the quickest route, to laugh at the folly of the cross and place my faith instead in my own strengths and the ways of human creatures.

III.

This encounter between Jesus and the devil in Luke has a sort of cut-and-dried feeling to it—like an old Western movie, where the good guys wear white hats, the bad guys wear black; and everything’s settled with a shoot-out at noon on Main Street. The good guys inevitably win.

Our own struggles with temptation tend to be more ambiguous. Our lives are lived in shades of grey, not black-and-white. Ever notice that the moral quality of people in the world can rarely be identified by the color of their hats?

True, few of us literally wander around in the desert for forty days. But life can sure feel like a wilderness, sometimes—like our enemies are lined up to get us; like we’re all alone and have nowhere to turn; like someone’s going to figure out I’m not who I pretend to be; like we’re on a giant hamster wheel, running and running and not getting anywhere.
Sometimes our desert looks like a dead-end job that’s the same, year-in and year-out; sometimes like an endless shuttle: to the doctor, to the grocery store, to the church, feeling like there’s no purpose to any of it; sometimes like a marriage gone flat or relationships that are empty of anything real.

And then there are the temptations.

Some of them are little: “No dear, your hair looks great,” or, “Well, no one will know I logged onto this website . . . I’ll just look around for a few minutes.”

Some of our temptations are a little bigger: “Just one more drink won’t hurt me,” or, “She doesn’t need to know how much my paycheck was, really—I’ll just stick these few dollars in my wallet,” or, “I can probably look at someone else’s test paper while the teacher’s back is turned,” or, “I’ll just hold my check back a week or so and let ’em know how I feel—and how much power I have.”

Then there are the big ones: “What can one kiss hurt; no one will know?” or, “The government gets too much of my paycheck anyway, and what they don’t know won’t hurt them,” or, “Just swallow the pills, or pull the knife, or hit the accelerator, and it’ll all be over.”

All of those temptations are within our power—and they’ll all make life feel good for a minute or an hour or a even a lifetime.

But they are temptations to forget our baptismal identity, to use power for personal gain, to be successful rather than faithful, to be dazzled by riches, to numb the pain, to compromise our faith, to avoid sacrifice or suffering, to forget the hope we have in Christ.

So how do we keep ourselves from being seduced by these temptations, these provocative opportunities, big and little, that come about almost every day?

I mean, Jesus was the Son of God; it was easy for him, right? But what am I supposed to do?

IV.

In our gospel lesson, Jesus handles his temptations by quoting scripture—Deuteronomy, to be specific. And certainly, that sort of trust and faith in God and reliance on God’s Word offers a model for how we can cope in the midst of temptation or conflict.

But Jesus wasn’t able to avoid his temptations simply because he was the newly-designated Son of God or because his faith was strong or because he knew the bible by heart. Resisting the devil had little to do with Jesus himself.

It was the Holy Spirit that gave Jesus the power to resist his temptations.

Isn’t it interesting that Luke frames this scene between Jesus and the devil by telling us that Jesus went into the wilderness “full of the Holy Spirit” and that when he returned to Galilee, he remained “filled with the power of the Spirit”?

Spirit is with him at the beginning of his desert ordeal, and Spirit is with him at the end. Jesus was never alone in the wilderness; the Holy Spirit stayed with him.

The presence of the Spirit doesn’t mean there won’t be temptations. But the presence of the Holy Spirit does means Jesus won’t face his ordeal alone. In the midst of temptation, he’ll have access to the power of God flowing through him by the presence of the Spirit. God doesn’t keep us from experiencing trials, but God does stand with us in the midst of those troubles, giving us the power and faith we need to come through them whole.

V.

So who is this Holy Spirit, this third person of the Trinity, whose presence brings so much power to Jesus in the wilderness?

The church universal has called the Spirit “the Lord and the giver of new life.” St. Augustine called the Spirit the link between God the Father and Jesus the Son—the bond of love and unity that ties Jesus to his abba. Isn’t it nice to think the Spirit binds us also in love and unity with the Creator God and Jesus the Christ?

We Presbyterians have historically been a little cold toward the Holy Spirit, leaving its presence to what we perceive as the excesses and exuberance of the Holy Rollers and the Pentecostals. Sometimes it’s just hard for us to get our old, cold Scottish bones moving.

But the Holy Spirit isn’t just about—or even necessarily about—emotional displays or fervent prayers or speaking in tongues. There are many ways of describing and experiencing the Holy Spirit.

German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg calls the Holy Spirit “the life-giving principle to which all creatures owe life, movement and activity.”

The New Confession of the Presbyterian Church in the Republic of China calls the Holy Spirit “the friend of the weak and the fighter against the oppressors and their oppressive, evil structures.”

According to the Heidelberg Catechism, the Holy Spirit “comforts me and will abide with me forever;” another church confession says the Holy Spirit “builds the image of Christ in us.”

Jurgen Moltmann says the presence of the Holy Spirit “is a new delight in living in the joy of God.”
The Holy Spirit is the presence and work of the living God in our lives, in the church, and in the world—our personal, subjective experience of the abstract idea of God.

The Spirit is with us in the form of Scripture, in the form of our tradition expressed through worship, in the real spiritual presence of Christ in the sacraments, and in our experiences of grace and empowerment that blow through our lives.

The Holy Spirit is the comforter and friend that blew into the hospital room on that afternoon when my friend Chris read the Gospel of Luke for the first time, recognizing his own story in the words of scripture—and realizing Jesus is his friend and not his condemnation.

The Spirit is with us in many ways, and it gives us the power to resist our temptations and live the way God is calling us to live.

The presence of the Spirit in our lives does not mean we won’t face trials or temptations; but it does mean that God will be with us in the midst of those troubles, providing strength, being a companion, and creating new possibilities for fresh and abundant life.

We are not alone as we wander through the wilderness in our lives. The Holy Spirit is with us as we enter our deserts, and the Spirit will be with us when we return.

To that God who is Three in One, always present and always creating new possibilities in our lives, be honor and glory, forever and ever. Amen.

Rich and poor

The United States has "failed miserably" in sharing its wealth with other people in the world, former President Jimmy Carter said at the Nobel Peace Prize Forum this week in Minnesota.

Even worse, despite a growing chasm between rich and poor, Carter suggested Americans have no desire to be more benevolent and more caring toward others. [See also this Wise County Messenger editorial about recent economic growth being built on credit-card debt.]

Wise County--with its rapid growth, expensive new housing, and high proportion of people living at or below the poverty level--might need to think and think hard about Carter's words.

We live and work and worship in a county where the chasm between the have's and the have-not's is increasingly visible. How can we promote justice in our congregation and in our communities, where so many young people are hungry and so many older people are barely scraping by and so many working folk have never finished high school?

Do we want to encourage high-end growth without addressing our low-end heritage?

"Jesus' death is not buying off God"

So says a North Texas pastor after viewing Mel Gibson's controversial film about the final hours of Jesus' life.

Three North Texas clergymen--one Baptist, one Presbyterian, one Jewish--watched the film together and comment on it in today's Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

It sounds like a lively conversation. I'll let you read it and draw your own conclusions--but here's a taste from the Rev. Steve Jester, pastor of St. Philip Presbyterian Church in Hurst:

"In the history of the church, there are four or five schools of thought on what the crucifixion means. Gibson's movie focuses strictly on vicarious atonement -- that Jesus suffers in our place because of human sin. That is one of several understandings of the meaning of Jesus' death, and I know for many Christians that would be a meaningful approach to the cross. But it isn't the primary one for me."