Sermons Archive

The First Sunday in Lent
The Rev. Janice Robinson
February 10, 2008

Every year, as we enter the Lenten wilderness we have held up to us the inevitable human struggle, of whose will we will follow, our own, or God’s. In today’s gospel story of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness, we are once again confronted with making this decision. It is one that we will have to make again and again, just as we must make the decision to be a Christian on a daily basis.

We meet Jesus, now a grown man, having been baptized and about to begin his public ministry. The same Spirit who had pointed to him on the banks of the Jordan River as “My Beloved in whom I am well pleased.” now leads Jesus into the wilderness; this place of barrenness, of dry heat and freezing cold; of wild beasts and scrub grass. Here, at his most vulnerable time, having fasted for forty days and nights, and being “famished”, Satan comes to press the inevitable question upon Jesus. Whose will, will Jesus choose to follow?

Satan recognizes who Jesus is and uses that to bait the temptations. Satan tries to entice Jesus both on the basis of his divinity and his human weakness. He shows Jesus a variety of ways for him to get his ministry going and to make it a “success”. However, each option calls for Jesus to act in ways that would make huge exceptions to the limits of his authentic humanity.

Making bread from stones, while making quite a splash and garnering people’s attention, it would focus Jesus’ human desire for material things before the Word of God. It challenges the notion that if you attend to God’s will to serve, that your needs will not be neglected. It challenges both God’s promise to provide for our needs, and it exploits our fear- based assumption of scarcity which denies the abundance that God has provided. Jesus reminds his adversary, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

To have all of the authority over the nations of the world, and the pomp and circumstance to go with it, would certainly place people in awe of Jesus, and quite possibly create fear in every human heart. People would become obedient to Jesus’ leading, however, the cost of such a means would be to place all allegiance in Satan and not God. This ploy plays to our human desire to control people and circumstance to offset our fear and uncertainty, and/or our desire for recognition and adulation. It is also true that after awhile fear wears thin in the face of continuing oppression, the deep desire and need for freedom presses for satisfaction. Besides, the exercise of free will is God’s will. Further, Jesus responds to Satan, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him’”

Jumping from the pinnacle of the Temple without injury, would certainly have the people flocking to follow Jesus. Like the people who followed Jesus after the feeding of the five thousand, hoping to learn how to repeat that “trick” that they might not be hungry again. The same principles would apply, if they could go through life without ever becoming injured and feeling pain, why not learn that “trick”. They focused on the wrong hunger. Jesus was not about “tricks”, nor was he about being other than who he was, a human being. Jesus answers this, “It is said, ’Do not put the Lord your God to the test’”

None of these options will enable Jesus to live into his call to the ministry of reconciliation of humanity to God and to itself.

Satan’s temptations would have people focus on the miracles and not on the meaning to which they point. Jesus performed a number of miracles, but he also preached, taught and healed. We too often get caught up in trying to understand the mechanism of how a miracle worked, or whether it actually happened at all, e.g. the feeding of the five thousand with five fish and two loaves of bread; the healing of the paralytic; healing the woman with the issue of blood.

In searching for the proof of these things we miss, that Jesus was a listening presence to those he encountered; he was responsive to their needs; he made them know that they were of great value and worthy of his concern, and to live most fully into who God called them to be. In all of this he enabled them to experience God’s love for them, in the face of human rejection. By making the miracles of the greatest importance we easily make excuses for ourselves for not being present and available to others by saying, “Oh he [Jesus] was God so he could do that.” We delude ourselves into thinking we are off the hook. We however, are accountable.

Remember, Jesus told his disciples who were so impressed with the miracles he had done, “Greater things than these you will do.” As human beings we have the God-given potential to live most fully into what it means to be human; to have accomplishments resulting from the use of our intellects, our physical strength, and our emotional and spiritual strength as well. All is possible with the grace of God. We make choices about how to use the incredible gift of our humanity, whether for good or for ill, to help or to harm.

In science we now are able to regenerate a human organ from our own stem cells. We have the ability to harness the power and energy of the sun to warm and illumine our homes, the power to manipulate atoms and molecular structures to provide energy for illumination, or for destruction in the form of weapons, the power to feed all of the people of the earth today and in the future, and finally, to use the power of the indomitable human spirit to fight for justice and overthrow apartheid in the USA, and in South Africa, to topple oppressive regimes in the former Soviet Union, in Nicaragua, El Salvador, in Cambodia, and in East Berlin.

With God’s grace there is nothing that is impossible. The power to do these things is within human capability. The question we must answer is how we will use this capacity, to enable our brothers and sisters here at home and all over the world, to live most fully into their human potential, or will we be content to limit ourselves to having used our capabilities for the personal needs and comforts of ourselves, our families, our congregation, our community, and our nation alone?

Jesus, in his wilderness struggle, made choices. His were ones that lined up with his humanity, and his living faithfully as a servant of God and of his sisters and brothers, both Jews and Gentiles. He made no appeal, in fact he rejected the temptations to make use of anything that would make an exception to his limits as a human being. His journey demonstrated the breadth and depth of our full humanity empowered and supported by God’s Spirit.

Jesus’ commitment was clear and focused, and each time he was tempted to find the easiest and most “efficient” means of doing his ministry, he chose ones that fully embodied God’s love for all, even to allowing himself to be killed at the hands of his brothers and sisters. Yet, even on the cross Jesus understood our human fears and frailty so much that he prayed, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Living most fully into our humanity, our weaknesses, our “ups and downs”, our altruism turned to selfishness, our hopes overcome by fear, our envy, our greed, our pettiness, our anger, and our lust do sometimes get the better of us. But, we also have strengths to offer, those times when we put the needs of others ahead of our own; when what we have, while it may be modest, we share and find ourselves so much richer; when someone who is distraught catches our attention and we reach out to help them deal with their pain; when seeing another struggling under the weight of their problems, we offer to help carry their load.

From our frail humanity have come Peter and Paul and the other disciples, Mary and Mary Magdalene, Galileo, Michelangelo, Martin Luther, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. Oscar Romero, Tim Li, Oi, Jonathan Daniels, and hundreds, thousands, and millions of others whose names we don’t know, in every people, race, and nation, who have believed the Word of God and the divine promises of help it holds. They sought no miraculous exceptions to their human limitations, but sought to live into their humanity as fully as did Jesus. They sought not to trade upon the divine connection humanity has with God, but emptying themselves made room for God’s grace to strengthen and support their power to act.

We begin Lent, entering the wilderness as Jesus did before he entered his public ministry. He had to wrestle with his own demons and temptations and the choices he would make. Jesus had to come to grips with his human limitations, as well as his God-given potential, to know what resources he had to offer those to whom he would minister. Jesus chose to use his life to serve God’s will and to share his life with others.

This season of Lent provides us with an opportunity for self-examination, self-denial, and repentance; time to search out how we have used this gift of our humanity thus far – whether we have been encouraging and supporting of others to live full into their humanity, and how we might use it in the future. When people are hungry, without shelter, are victimized, oppressed, alienated (from themselves and others), shunned or are otherwise devastated, they can’t fully live into the depth and breadth of their humanity.

How might we use our humanness to mitigate these life-threatening circumstances? I will not reel off a litany of ways to do this, for I know that each of us, wiling to use our hearts, minds, and spirits can think of things to do, or to refrain from doing, in order to help. But you know me I can’t resist making a suggestion. How about becoming involved with the Millennium Development Goals, set by the United Nations and adopted by most of the nations of the world, and by most religious traditions, including the Episcopal Church. To learn more about them, speak to our brother John Mahler. Working together, in co-operation with our Creator, we can produce thirty (30) fold, sixty (60) fold, a hundred (100) fold.

We have choices to make in this Lenten wilderness we have entered, and I pray that God’s grace will be us as we too wrestle with our demons and temptations.

Amen!