Tempted

Genesis 2: 15-17; 3: 1-7; Matthew 4: 1-11

FPC; 2-10-08

          A few Sundays ago, Baptism of the Lord Sunday, we were reminded of that day Jesus came to the Jordan River to be baptized.  We were reminded of how the heavens opened and the Spirit of God descended and lit upon Jesus and the voice of God that proclaimed: “You are my beloved son; with you I am well pleased.” 

          As God’s beloved son, Jesus will be the suffering servant; the one who will journey to Jerusalem and taste the bitterness of suffering; the one who will be victorious over death; the one in whom humanity will find redemption.  “You are my beloved son, the one in whom I am pleased, the one in whom my soul delights.”

          The very next scene in Jesus’ life is the one we just read.  He has gone from the water of the Jordan River to the wilderness of temptation.  The Divine voice has now faded; the voice of the tempter speaks; the temptation is not to steal someone’s wallet, or to cheat on a test, or to fuel or spread a rumor. The temptation is not to misbehave.  The temptation presented to Jesus, rather, is to compromise his baptismal identity as Son of God.   The temptation is to live a life that contradicts the story line God has given Jesus to live.

          We commonly think of temptation as a desire to do something we know we shouldn’t do.  “I’ll add a few hundred business miles as a deduction on my tax return; the government will never find out”  “Suzy’s test, hmm…well, she is one of the smartest kids in the class; I’ll just glance and see which answer she has circled for number 11 and, just this once, I’ll use her answer instead of mine; nobody will know.”  Temptation is most commonly understood as a desire to do something we shouldn’t do.  But I think the deepest temptation for us, as it was for Jesus, is to be someone other than the person God has called us to be, to compromise our baptismal identity as God’s beloved children, to live life according to a script other than the one God has written for our lives.

Jesus, who is famished after having spent 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness with nothing to eat, is vulnerable.  He literally is empty, except for the Scriptures that he learned as a child and young adult.

About three weeks ago, I was part of a group of sixteen pastors that came together to look at some of the Lenten Lectionary texts.  We met with Tom Currie, who is the dean of Union-PSCE in Charlotte. He pointed out that Jesus did not argue or engage in conversation with Satan as did Adam and Eve.  Rather, Jesus quoted scripture.  But he didn’t use scripture as an armament against the tempter; rather, Jesus simply stood firmly in the scriptures; Jesus abided in the scriptures; the scriptures were Jesus’ home, a home with an unshakeable foundation.    

In 2003, Emory University in Atlanta gave an honorary degree to a man named Hugh Thompson.  On March 16, 1968, Thompson was a young helicopter pilot flying on patrol over the countryside over Vietnam.  When he and his crew flew over the village of My Lai, they saw a nightmare, taking place below them.  United States army troops in Charlie Company, under the constant pressure of danger and the madness of war, had lost control of their discipline, reason and humanity, and had begun killing unarmed civilians in the village, most of them women, children, and elderly men.   504 people had already been killed.  Thompson set his helicopter down between the troops and the remaining villagers.  At great risk to himself, he got out of the helicopter and confronted the officer in charge, William Calley.  He then airlifted the few villagers still alive out of My Lai, and also radioed a report of the scene that resulted in a halt to the action, thus saving thousands of civilian lives.

          Standing there on the platform at the university commencement, Thompson was given the microphone, and he spoke to the question on everyone’s minds.  How could he have found the moral courage and strength to what he did that day?  His answer surprised the audience of graduates, brought them to a thoughtful silence.  “I’d like to thank my mother and father for trying to instill in me the difference between right and wrong,” he began.  “We were country people.  I was born and raised in Stone Mountain, Georgia, and we had very little.  But one thing we did have was the Golden Rule.  My parents taught me early, “Do unto others what you would have them do unto you.”   That’s why I did what I did that day.  It’s hard to put certain things into words.  You’re going to have to make many decisions in your life.  Please make the right decisions…”

          Because of words taught to him in childhood, as a result of living in the scriptures, of making his home in the scriptures, Thompson stood firm in his baptismal identity as a beloved child of God.[1] 

For me, it was “Miss Louise” in the Glenn Springs Presbyterian Church and Mr. King in the Morningside Presbyterian Church, and, of course, my parents, who taught me the golden rule, the stories of the bible.  They molded the foundation upon which I stand as a child of God.  Who was or is the “Miss Louise” in your life?  Or, for whom can you be a “Miss Louise” or a “Mr. King”?

I think it is when we are most vulnerable; it is when we are famished or empty that the tempter comes and says to us and to our children, “If you are the son or the daughter of God…” (The Greek word translated “if” can also be translated “since”.)  “Since you are a child of God, what kind of son or daughter are you going to be?”  “Live this way instead of that way”, the tempter says to us.  “Let the world shape your identity.” 

The text says the devil left Jesus. But the tempter will return.  While hanging on the cross Jesus will hear similar words coming from a thief, some soldiers and religious leaders: “If you are the son of God, come down from the cross; compromise your identity, abandon the script God has given you.”             

Jesus did not betray his identity.  He did not summon angels to come and rescue him from the cross or from the wilderness of temptation.  But the text says they were there. “Angels came and waited on him.” 

          Throughout these forty day and forty nights of Lent, the tempter will come and leave and return and leave again.  With each encounter, we will be tempted to forget our identity; to live according to a script that is different from the one God has written for us. 

          But we have the scriptures (this Holy Script) to live upon and to abide within.  And the angels will come, whether we summon them or not; they will come; maybe they will come in the form of a family member or maybe in the form of a stranger; they will come and minister to us.

Let us not only survive the wilderness experience but thrive and live not as children of this world, but as children of the Living God.     

 

 

 

 

 

 

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