February 10, 2008

Lent is the spiritual season in which followers of Jesus follow Jesus into the wilderness for 40 days. And during our wilderness days we are given time for solitude and quietness, for reflection and contemplation so we will find the strength and faith and courage and grace, not to run away from hard times in our lives, but to move through hard times. Jesus isn’t taken into the wilderness by the Spirit in order to flee hard times, but to find something for hard times. So this Lent we will be looking at hard times we face, like the hard time of temptation.

The Australian Baptist pastor Rowland Croucher writes about the wilderness experience of Jesus as “the time of trial, of temptation, and so important to God is it that Jesus was led there, or `driven’ there. (God) sees to it that we have times there also. In the wilderness illusions are tested and destroyed, true motives, real weaknesses made plain…What can we learn from (the wildernesss)?”[1]

Jesus, we are told by Matthew, was “led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” The devil “tempts,” God “tests.” And we all know what it’s like. We are all subject to temptation. It’s part of the human experience and it has been so from the very beginning.

We have two temptation stories today. The temptation of Adam and Eve, and the temptation of Jesus. Adam and Eve are tempted by one of God’s creatures--a serpent. It never says in the story that the serpent is evil or a creaturely manifestation of Satan. The serpent is one of the many creatures of God. And actually this serpent is rather remarkable creature. It’s such a crafty creature, it can talk! And when it talks it says things that sound very appealing, very tempting. I must confess that I have never been tempted by a talking serpent. My tempters come in more human forms, but with words nonetheless enticing, seductive and tempting.

Adam and Eve are tempted to be like God. They are tempted to not accept who they are as created and defined by God who brought them into being. They’re tempted to be more, to transcend their finite, human limitations and live not as a creature dependent upon God, but as one like God.

Now, let’s be clear: being God-like is a good thing. It’s what we are supposed to be and created to be, having been made in the image of God and made to reflect that God-like image. We praise and are moved and inspired by people we identify as God-like and who live God-like and treat others as God-like and who see the God-like image in us and every one they meet. But when the serpent tempts Adam and Eve to be like God, the temptation is to be like God as defined by the serpent rather than as defined by God. The serpent offers Adam and Eve in the Garden not real God-likeness, but an illusion.

And so was Jesus in the wilderness. In his baptism Jesus came to hear himself be given an identity: “This is my beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” And in the wildernesss, being the Beloved and being true to that God-given, God-anointed identity was at stake.

“If you are the Son of God…,” the tempter three times says. Either the tempter/devil wants to sow seeds of doubt in Jesus about being the Son of God, or seduce Jesus into being Son of God according to the Tempter’s terms. “Show yourself to be Son of God by doing this and that.”

Jesus is tempted to be self-serving, not other-serving. The famished Jesus is tempted to satisfy his hunger by turning stones into bread. He is tempted to do something spectacular to gain attention. ‘Throw yourself off the top of the temple and let the crowd see the angels swoop you up and those people will follow you wherever you want to take them.” He is tempted to not stay centered in God when the tempter offers him all the power he would ever want by just putting the tempter at the center. His mission is revealing and proclaiming and establishing the kingdom of God and alone in the wilderness he is tempted to use these tempter methods to bring in the kingdom as Son of God.

Why go the way of suffering and rejection and loss and disappointment and death when you can by-pass it all and take a much more impressive, convincing, fulfilling path? Jesus is tempted to achieve his God-given mission on terms other than God’s. Jesus is tempted at the core of his being--his identity. Who he is as the Son of God and he is tested to be true to who he is.

We are tempted exactly as was Jesus. The deepest temptations we face are about our identity, who we are as sons and daughters of God. We usually identify temptations with outward actions--doing or not doing certain things. That’s the tactic the devil took with Jesus. Just keep the attention on the outside actions--turn stones to bread, jump off the temple, bow down and worship. But what’s going on inside that the real temptation takes place. It’s about being true to who we are and living out the truth of who we are as sons/daughters of God.

Two temptation stories--Adam and Eve in the garden and Jesus in the wilderness. And we see two different responses in the hard time of temptation.

Adam and Eve do not resist and Jesus does. Adam and Eve succumb to the temptation and fail the test. Jesus triumphs over temptation. Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit and become like God on the serpent’s terms. Jesus stays true to who he is on God’s terms rather than fall for the tempter’s terms to use his divine power for his own advantage and benefit. He resisted temptation and so can we just as surely and truly as Jesus. He moved from being tempted to being true and so can we. His triumph over temptation gives us hope that we too can resist and stay true.

And how was he able to resist and Adam and Eve weren’t? It had everything to do with whose word they trusted. Adam and Eve trusted the tempter’s word and distrusted God’s word. Jesus trusted God’s Word, and that trust made all the difference. Jesus didn’t take the path of self-service and power as Son of God. He would be Son of God on God’s terms--the humble servant in life and death.

He found the power for resistance, not within himself but in the power of God’s Word.

One of the first books assigned to be read even before I arrived on campus when I started seminary was Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together. In the temptation of Jesus, Bonhoeffer wrote, there really remains nothing except God’s Word and promise, no native strength and joy for the fight against wickedness, only God’s strength and victory, which holds fast in the Word, and the Word robs Satan of his power. Only by God’s Word is the temptation overcome.[2]

The essence of every one of our temptations is whose word do we trust--the tempter’s or God’s? Temptation is just as strong for us as it was for Jesus, and his ability to resist was no greater than ours. He shows us the way to follow him even through temptation. Yes, sometimes we are true and sometimes we fail to resist. But his love for us never fails. To stand firm against the seductive distortions and enticements of the Tempter, we must rely on the truth and trustworthiness of God’s word.

Be true to who we are as defined by God in Jesus Christ. Be true to living out the truth of who we are according to the revelation of Jesus Christ. BE true to our sons and daughters of God identity by following and living the holy ways of Jesus. To not be true is the temptation our heart and mind and will face in decision after decision, choice after choice, demand after demand. Our faith is always being put to this test.

Father Tim is the beloved Episcopal priest in Jan Karon’s Mitford novel series. In At Home in Mitford, we find a passage where Father Tim is entertaining his new neighbor, Cynthia. She’s waiting in his study as he prepares tea. While she waits she picks up a book of lectures by Oswald Chambers, one of Father Tim’s favorite writers. Upon returning with the tea, he sees her reading and quotes to her one of Chambers’ thoughts in the book. “Faith by its very nature must be tried,” he says, and then asks, “Do you agree?” “Absolutely,” she says. “I’ve never been one for physical exercise, but what God does with our faith must be something like workouts. He sees to it that our faith gets pushed and pulled, stretched and pounded, taken to its limits so its limits can expand…If it doesn’t get exercised it becomes like a weak muscle that fails us when we need it.”

Father Tim asks a serious question aware he is smiling foolishly. “Would you agree that we must be willing to thank God for every trial of our faith, no matter how severe, for the greater strength it produces?”

Cynthia answers, “I’m perfectly willing to say it, but I’m continually unable to do it.”

In following Jesus, we follow his example in the wilderness of temptation. The ability to move with Jesus from being tempted and tested to being true is found in the power of God’s word. Rely on it and be formed and shaped by it into the image of Christ by it. Stand firm with it when the tempter comes tempting, and the devil will leave and the angels arrive to wait on us.

[1] Still Waters, Deep Waters, 260.

[2] Bonhoeffer, Life Together

[3] Jan Karon, At Home in Mitford