February 13, 2005
|
|
|
| Renewed
for Life: On God's Terms You just finished renovating your house – you have new furniture, windows, carpets, new paint, fresh landscaping – it looks beautiful and you are proud. But then one fine spring day while you are on your deck, sitting on your screened in porch, enjoying the product of your hard work, the sky darkens, the wind begins to blow, it blows harder, it blows harder still, you think to yourself, “is that a funnel cloud? Let’s get to a safe place in the house”. A few minutes later after the wind stops, the roaring ceases, you emerge to find destruction and chaos, and all that you have done is gone in the blink of the eye of a tornado. Jesus must have felt as if he had stepped into a tornado. No sooner has Jesus emerged from the baptismal water, no sooner has God said about him, the same words we heard last week on the mountain of Transfiguration, “this is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3.17), than he is thrust by the spirit of God into the wilderness where he is tempted by Satan. “You are my Son, you are my Beloved, you are the one with whom I am thrilled. “I want you to go into the wilderness a while. Go and prepare yourself in isolation, to learn how to stand with and to lead people from every walk of life. Eat nothing for forty days and forty nights; as you fast and feel deep physical hunger, prepare to feed people body and soul. Pray as you fast, the better to lead others to empty themselves so they can find greater fulfillment and faithfulness and prayer. Temptation comes most often when we hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. Emerging from the desert wilderness, Jesus is hungry and no doubt tired, certainly lonely, and perhaps a bit angry. No wonder the serpent in Genesis, the one who led Adam and Eve to disaster now comes in some unknown form to tempt Jesus. Was Satan a desert nomad trying to goad Jesus? Was the tempter a beautiful woman, a handsome man, a charismatic presence? Was the source of the temptation a voice in the his head, whispering to Jesus, “God is pleased with you. God calls you the Beloved Son, let’s see what you can do. It has been a long forty days, you are hungry and tired. But I can help. Your God tested you by sending you out here for all these miserable days. The testing time is over. Come on Jesus, let me show you something.” He is promised food, safety, and power; and all he has to do is turn his back on God. Bread, safety, and power are potent temptations. “If you are who God says you are, do some things for me. If you are the Son of God, turn these stones to bread (4.3). If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from the top of the Temple (4.6). “Understand, I can give you the world, if you worship me” (4.9). Beware this kind of help. It is not authentic. This is the predator who lures children to danger. This is the free gift with strings attached. This kind of help will leave you doubting who you are and what God intends for you to do. What will Jesus do? He will not let Satan set his agenda. He will live on God’s terms. “Is Jesus to use whatever powers he possesses to satisfy his own needs, or does he rely for nurture and support on divine grace? Does he dare to think that God’s word will be enough? Does Jesus need to prove himself that God really does care for him in a special way, or is he willing to settle for no public verification, no demonstrable evidence, to validate his special relationship with God? How single-minded is Jesus about the ministry Jesus wants to do? Will he compromise a bit to enjoy the headlines of power and the thrill of control, or is it God alone whom he is to worship and serve?” (Texts for Preaching – Year A Louisville, Westminster/John Knox Press, 1995, p.189-190). Here is what Jesus did. He faces down Satan to serve and worship God. Every response Jesus makes, as he meets Satan scripture for scripture, says to us that he does not have to prove anything. He will be who he is, he will live and heal, and do ministry in the name of God. Now, I know this story of Jesus and the temptations seems odd to our sensibilities. It has little to do with how we live our lives. After all, “we do not hold conversations with a visible devil, we are not whisked from place to place as Jesus is in the story. And, the temptations that Jesus faces seem very remote from those we face day by day” (Interpretation series. Matthew. Matthew RA Hare, Louisville. John Knox Press, 1993 p.26). But we understand the temptations he faced. We do not want to be hungry. We do not want to feel vulnerable, we do not like feeing as if we have no power. The temptations are real and present for us because the rewards promised are real. We are all want our hungers fed, we all want protection, and power. What are you hungry for and do you know what your hunger feels like? Is your hunger like physical hunger with that gnawing, stomach growling sensation we feel when our bodies need food? Does your hunger leave you feeling light-headed, or grouchy, or eager to enjoy what you crave? We hunger for so many things; we hunger for companionship, we hunger for education, we want to know more than anything our place in the world, we are hungry for answers. We are hungry to know that we are sons and daughters of God and to know the difference between good and evil. Can you see it? Can you taste it? Is it within your reach? But what are we willing to do to feel full in body and spirit, and to feel protected and safe? Are we willing to do cheap tricks for the sake of food? Will we do foolish things for the sake of being protected? Will we denounce God in order to feel like we have power in this world? The temptation is that we will do anything to satisfy our hungers. So we choose food and companions that are not good for us. Deprived of the education we desire, we learn to survive, but never lose the hunger for the education that would help us thrive. I talked with a woman the other day whose parents discouraged her from going to college. They told her she was not smart enough, or good enough to make it. She believed them for a while, but she never lost the desire to go, and now in her forties, she is in college. Looking for a place in the world we latch onto whoever tells us what we want to hear, and value pleasing others more than we value pleasing ourselves. We want to know that God cares, but we are impatient and so faith flees at the first sign of trouble and we are greatly tempted to follow whoever has what we need to feel content. There is the temptation of hunger, and there is the temptation that comes when we feel powerless. Do you remember the last time you felt utterly immobilized and vulnerable? Maybe it was the day you felt so utterly hopeless that you believed that you were not worth very much, after all if you were any good, your life would be so much better, wouldn’t it? The temptation is to believe that if we could just make more money which is good, or get people to like us, popularity is good, or if we can accumulate more stuff than the people next door, we will be OK. All of that is OK, but it is not all that we are and if we think it is, we will always be at the whim of others. Henri Nouwen, whose writings have given us the theme, “Renewed for Life” forespeaks of the temptation we face when we feel powerless. He reminds us that we will hear people say to us: “You are no good, you are ugly, you are worthless, you are despicable, you are nobody – unless you can demonstrate the opposite. These negative voices are so loud and so persistent that it is easy to believe them. That’s the great trap of self-rejection. Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity and power can, indeed, be a great temptation, but their seductive power often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions” (Henri Nouwen, “Renewed for Life: Daily Lenten Meditations"). Of course we want protection from danger, from hurt, from fear, and hopelessness, and when we feel vulnerable, we are tempted to reach out to anyone whom we believe will offer us the safety we seek. We have friends and family members who will stay in bad relationships because they feel safe and protected inside where it is abusive than outside where life is uncertain. Young people will bond with adults who exploit them because there is an element of protection in their company. We want to feel safe, but the promise of false, conditional protection, “if you do whatever I want, I will love you…”, is surely too high to pay, but we will mortgage our souls to pay anyway. First bread, then protection, and now the third temptation to turn his back on God. “Jesus you can have all the power in the world, all you have to do is worship me.” What do you worship? Is it efficiency, so that doing things right is more important than doing the right thing? Do you worship your favorite sports team, knowing its top athletes statistics more than you know passages of scripture? Do you worship, not simply love but worship your family or your country, or your work so that ultimate devotion belongs to them, but not to God? Do you know what the source of your hope and salvation is? Here is all the power in the world for you, no body will challenge you. The temptation to trade God for power is great, but remember that only God is worthy of our worship. “The basic, underlying temptation that Jesus shared with us is the temptation to treat God as less than God. We may not be tempted to turn stones into bread, but we are constantly tempted to mistrust God’s readiness to empower us to face our trials. None of us is likely to put God to the test by leaping from a cliff, but we are frequently tempted to question God’s helpfulness when things go awry; we forget the sure promise, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness’ (II Corinthians 12.9). Pagan idolatry is no more a temptation for us than it was for Jesus, but compromise with the ways of the world is a continuing seduction. It is indeed difficult for us to worship and serve God only” (Matthew, p.26). About forty days ago, at the beginning of this year, some among us doubted the survival of our congregation. Satan whispered in our ear for a while and tempted us to believe the best we could do had been done, that we had come to the end of the line and that rather than transformation, we would soon make the transition from full time pastoral leadership and ministry both inside and outside these walls. The voice of the tempter – Satan, the trickster, almost had us convinced that we couldn’t make it. But we prayed and worked, and talked and made some sacrifices, we stepped up; and while we still have work to do, there is a renewed sense of life and hope here. The temptation is to live in fear. We have yet more work to do, yet today we will vote on budget that will allow us to offer faithful ministry and provide us with some savings. We said, this is who we are, we are people who want this church to be a safe and welcoming place for everyone who crosses this threshold. We want it to be a place that nurtures and inspires us to go out and offer ourselves to others. We want this church to be a place where we can, with God’s help see our way through tough times and know that God is with us. But the most important thing we have done in the last few weeks is to remember that God alone gives us what we need to feed our hunger, protect our spirits, and to understand that to be worthy of our highest praise. So we will let God set our terms, not Satan. We will follow God’s agenda, God’s plan and God’s purpose. Thank God for the truth of Hebrews, “for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4.15). Thank God we can continue to look to Jesus when temptations assault us. We can find in him the bread that will sustain our spirits, the power that will help us know that our worth comes from God, and the gratitude to worship God and God only. We will struggle with temptations, we are human beings after all. But we are also God’s beloved sons and daughters, and we are Christ’s disciples, and so we look to him and follow his lead. God has set the terms of life for him and God sets the terms for us too. God’s terms of our renewal of life are about food for our spirits that satisfy our hungers, companions who love and honor, and respect us, and the ability to know that we have the power of God in us, just because God loves us. Look to Jesus who in those tempting days, knew that he did not need Satan’s power, he had the power of God in his hand and in his being. He did not yield, he did not forget who he was or what God had called him to do. And he leads us to faithful discipleship by reminding us that God has promised to be with us and God’s promises can be trusted. Thanks be to God. Amen. Dr.
LaTaunya M. Bynum |
|
Broad
Street Christian Church
|
