Church of the Good Shepherd

This morning I am going to talk about temptation.  It is the primary concept in the gospel, and it is the primary concept embodied in the artist Andy Carpentier's conception* of the gospel reading.  Temptation!

When I was a little girl, I prayed the old version of the Lord's prayer with my mother most nights before I went to sleep.  "Lead me not into temptation," I said.  I didn't know I was saying all the things the Aramaic might imply, things like, "Don't let surface things delude me" or "Do not let me enter forgetfulness".

But the words made me wonder at a God who would lead me to do things that neither God nor my parents wanted me to do.  I can remember wrestling with and wondering, "Why would God make us be bad?"

And the grown up version of this thought is the idea that God plans for the awful things that happen to us to teach us lessons.  When someone we love dies or we lose a job or we contract an illness – I cannot tell you how many times people say to me, "God is teaching me something."  Or "I must have done something terrible to deserve this."

Yet if we read scripture carefully, we find passages like this one that show us God has nothing at all to do with the temptations in our lives.  Evil does.  Satan does.  The things that agitate our souls and create distance between us and God, between us and each other are not of God or the Spirit or of Christ, they are from Evil.

Now, I know it is not popular to talk about evil or sin in the Episcopal church.  And believe me, I would much rather talk about how much God loves us, or how we are truly redeemed by Christ, and sort of skip over the parts about Evil; but, of course, scripture won't let that happen.

So this morning, and for much of Lent, we will talk about Evil and how it is Evil, not God, that causes separation and temptation and strained relationships, and revenge, and all the other terrible agitation's and disruptions of our souls that keep us from God and one another.

Evil, not God, tempts us.  But I am sure the reason God gets the blame for such temptation is because the ways of evil so closely mirror the ways of God.  Evil takes that which is right and good and Holy and gives it a little jerk, this way and that, playing on the weakness of our souls and psyches to cause us to forgo serving one another and God and serving only ourselves.

Lets look at the temptations so readily enacted by the Jesus action figure this morning.  Evil tempts Jesus with magical bread.  Bread, the staff of life.  Evil tempts Jesus with the ability to feed not only himself but all the hungry of the world by turning stones into thick slabs of hearty bread, multi-grain, high protein, low sugar, bread.

Now you and I know that we have to eat to live.  We know that Jesus had a particular preference for the poor and the hungry.  So Evil didn't tempt Jesus with something that would on the surface seem only to serve himself, but rather would serve all those he had so long cared for.   He could turn stones into bread and feed not only himself but the world.

And the cost of such a loaf of bread, of such a power?  To revere Satan instead of his Father In Heaven.  And Jesus couldn't do it.  Jesus, starving after forty days of not eating in the wilderness, forty days spent praying and recognizing his call and his duty, refused that hunger satiating bread.

See how closely Evil looks like the Spirit calling?  See how deceptively clever Evil is at making something all wrong look like something all right, look like something from God!  It takes prayerful and practiced wisdom to see through Evil.  And it takes careful and practiced wisdom to know one's self and one's relationship with God well enough to not be seduced by such Evil.

And the power Evil offered Jesus: to be the ruler of all the kingdoms in the world!  I wonder sometimes what the world have been like if Jesus had accepted Satan's way of redemption instead of God's.  Would the world of wars and territorial scrimmages have ceased with Jesus as the ruler of the entire world that day in the desert? Would the isms of race and sex and gender and class have been eliminated forever?  Likely not.  For we humans would still have been human and Satan would still have been Satan and our lusts and fears and demands would still have rebelled against even a kingdom ruled by Jesus as we tried to satiate our mortal, human desires.

Jesus was wise enough to know that a kingdom of his needed to be ruled not on earth, but in heaven, in God's time and in God's ways, not in the ways of the world.  He knew he was to serve, to teach, to give his life in testimony of that kingdom, and so he said "no" to the "easy way" Satan offered.

Finally Satan swept him off his feet and stood him on top of the temple, and promised that if he, Jesus, would just let Satan be his master and mentor, then Satan would guarantee that no stone would cause him to stumble.  He would be famous, like a first century superman, leaping tall buildings.  But such fame Jesus rejected. Instead he accepted the shame of the cross.  The only leaping he did was from the tomb, in resurrection, to show us the way to true life.  It is not some side show or magic trick, but a way of life marked by service to others, a preference for the poor and outcast, and the power of being, not a great prince, but a great servant.

God's ways are not Satan's ways in the end.  Though when we are, or even Jesus was, first presented with them, they are like wheat and tares, often too close to discern which is which.

It is no wonder the Aramaic Nesyuna, temptation, means "something that leads us into inner vacillation or agitation!"  Discerning God's holy ways from the chaff of Satan's is not always so easy.  Indeed sometimes we make choices we think are Holy when, indeed, Satan's mark is all over them.  Often, we do not see that until after we have invested our hearts and souls and minds into what we think is of God.

Hind sight being 20/20, we can go through our personal histories to find examples of such self-delusion, and with the same perfect vision, we can go through our corporate history, from the Holy wars that led Christians to fight the crusades to any "Holy war" we can name.  The marks of evil are clear.  Likewise, right now the church, the entire World Wide Anglican communion, is engaged in a struggle between good and evil.  Each side claims theirs is Holy and points to the other side as containing the Evil.  The "other" is the one lusting after power and fame and self promotion.  But this day we do not have the advantage of 20/20 hindsight; we are in the desert, Satan is standing over us, holding out those promises.  And we, we are considering the intentions of our hearts.

It is not always clear which is of Satan and which is of God.  There are not always easy external guidelines.  The marks of truth are in the hearts and souls of the followers, the intentions of our hearts.  As the intentions of Jesus' heart was to do the work God had given him to do, so it is our intention but discerning that intention is not always cut and dried.

This Lent it is my hope and my prayer that we, as a church, will take time to discern, to listen to our heart's intentions, to above all else and at any personal cost, to value the kingdom Jesus proclaims and assures us is waiting for us.  Furthermore, I hope that we will, as individuals, as a faith community, be diligent about our own prayers and fasting and discernment so that we might listen to the ever clearer directions of the Holy Spirit who is for certain calling us closer and more deeply into relationship with God.

When you are vacillating and agitated at a choice that is presented to you, know that Satan is at work.  Be certain of your choice, as Jesus was certain of his in the desert

Oh, and the inexplicable good news?  Even if you make the wrong choice, even if you're deluded by Evil and seduced by its aura of righteousness, remember, Jesus died to redeem all the wrong choices we make.  There are second chances with God.

Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd

*In front of the Altar, a three dimensional depiction of the temptations of Jesus.