Sermon for February 25, 2007

WAS JESUS REALLY TEMPTED?

by

Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz

Scripture: Luke 4:1-15

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, ² where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. ³ The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread." ⁴ Jesus answered him, "It is written, "One does not live by bread alone.' " ⁵ Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. ⁶ And the devil said to him, "To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. ⁷ If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours." ⁸ Jesus answered him, "It is written, "Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.' " ⁹ Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, ^10 for it is written, "He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,' ¹¹ and "On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.' " ¹² Jesus answered him, "It is said, "Do not put the Lord your God to the test.' " ¹³ When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time. ¹⁴ Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. ¹⁵ He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.

In this reading for the first Sunday of Lent, Jesus faced some real temptations and had some actual choices to make. We will see his humanity here and in some of the other stories for the six Sundays of Lent.

Church folk have had trouble really believing that Jesus was human like us; this has been true for at least 1900 years since leaders affirmed both the humanity and divinity of Jesus. I think those of us in the church have more trouble with believing he was human, and folks not in the church have more trouble believing that God was uniquely at work in Jesus. The proof of his divinity has been the Easter event that we are now moving toward. No one else in history has their followers fired up after a humiliating death saying, death was not the end—he is still alive and at work.

Do you believe Jesus was really human? Did he believe, like others in the first century that the earth was flat and was the center of the universe? Did he ever have a failure of memory? Did he get tired and snappish and frustrated with his good friends? Did he ever waver in his mission and say to God, I sure would like to get out of this if I can? Did his understanding of his mission grow and develop and change just like your life mission has developed and changed as well?

It is that last question that is covered in the story of Jesus fasting in the wilderness for a long time: forty days. This is right at the beginning of his itinerant ministry. Do you remember what happened to him immediately before this experience? He had gone to be baptized by his cousin John the Baptizer. Jesus had identified himself with John and John’s movement of renewal and baptism and repentance. One scholar thinks Jesus may even have started out as a student of John’s—that will be a surprise for some and make you wrestle with Jesus’ humanity because if he was human, he too was on a learning curve and he could have learned from his older cousin.

Immediately after that baptism by Cousin John, three of the gospels tell about him going to the wilderness for what is essentially a “Vision quest”—a time of fasting, of discerning what God wants him to do next.

I said three of the gospels tell this story. One does not. Do you know which one does not include this story? It is John’s gospel, the latest one and the one that shows Jesus as less human, in my opinion, than the first three.

The spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness, one gospel says, and it was a true wilderness—barren, windswept, ominous. It would be easy to see this as a place for a vision quest. And like the practice in other cultures that encourage a visioning time, Jesus fasted during this time. He was exercising the discipline of his body, a good thing for us to begin during Lent especially if you, like me, have put on a couple of pounds over the snowy winter.

Luke tells us that the devil came to tempt him. People can read this story differently. You can believe in a literal personage called the devil or you can believe in this as a representation of the power of evil. The Bible has a complicated history of portraying a personage called in Hebrew “ha-satan”, the adversary or the accuser, and I have placed a two page article on the sermon wall from one commentary about the evolution of the idea of the devil in the Bible if you want to read more.

The point is that Jesus had some choices to make about his mission, about the kind of Messiah he would be. He faced some real temptations just like you and me. I want to look at these three temptations with you. The first was to turn stones into bread—not only for himself, but for others as well. This would have been a wonderful thing—to provide food for very hungry people. Most of the population was poor. Many of them were hungry. When Jesus teaches us in the Lord’s Prayer to pray for our daily bread, the people who heard those words first really worried about having enough bread, enough food each day. It would have been very tempting for Christ to hear that invitation from the tempter to become an economic messiah who provides only bread.

How does Jesus respond? He responds by quoting scripture: one does not live by bread alone. He quotes Deuteronomy, from the Bible he knew so well.

There are two other temptations. One is a temptation to power, to exercise temporal rule over the entire world. The devil says that he has the authority to give that power, that he is in control of all the kingdoms of this world! Jesus rejects that as well by quoting Deuteronomy again: Worship and serve only the Lord your God. That quote is from the Ten Commandments, of course.

The third temptation is to be a miracle worker, a magician to impress people. The devil takes Jesus to the highest point of the Jerusalem temple and tells him to throw himself off so the angels can catch him. The devil quotes scripture to prove his point which shows that even the devil is able to quote scripture out of context!

Jesus refuses that chance to impress people with miracles as he does more than one time later on in his ministry when some Pharisees ask for a miracle and he refuses them.

These three temptations are not evil in themselves. It is a good thing to be able to provide food for people. It is a good thing to have enough influence and power to bring change to the world, if we use that power for the good of others and not just ourselves. It is a good thing to be able to perform miracles of healing and restoration.

What makes these choices—real choices for Christ—what makes them evil is elevating them to the ultimate, substituting the good for the best. Someone said the good is enemy of the best. These were not the best way Jesus could serve God and God’s mission and so he rejected them. They were good, but they were not the best.

Our temptations are like this often as well. What tempts you the most? What pulls you away from being the best person you can be? It is often not something evil in itself. It is something that is less than the best. One Bible scholar says that the three idols, the three temptations in our culture are affluence, appearance, and achievement. These are not evil in themselves. There is nothing evil in having money as long as we do not worship money, as long as we use it to do good. There is nothing evil in looking good as long as that does not become our idol, our god, that we pursue at the expense of everything else. There is nothing wrong in achieving the best we can achieve as long as that does not become an obsession and as long as our identity is in who we are as a child of God and not in what we achieve.

Many temptations are like the ones Christ experienced—good things elevated to be the ultimate when only our loyalty to God is the ultimate loyalty.

Jesus made some real choices, and he would have other choices to make including the one on that Thursday night in Gethsemane when he prayed in his humanity, Please God, if it is possible, take this cup of suffering away from me. I think there was a long pause in his prayer before his next words. BUT—it is not what I want but what you need me to do to be faithful. That is what counts.

On that occasion just as the one in the Judean wilderness, Jesus took a long time in prayer. He took time to discern what God needed him to do. That is one learning for us in this holy season of Lent, to learn from Christ the importance of prayer as he began to move toward the cross.

The cross is our focus in Lent. 300 of us left here Wednesday with ashen crosses on our foreheads. It was a dramatic sight. We said that the cross means for us a posture of humility, of sacrifice, of serving God and others, of subsuming what is convenient and comfortable for us to what God needs us to do.

That life of humility and unselfish service is what our new members are signing up for this morning. It is what our beginning confirmation students are signing on today at noon for as they begin their journey toward confirming faith in Christ. It is what we are reaffirming as we volunteer to give our time and our money to build a home for a family who needs a home.

It is the life of following Christ, moving from being spectators and admirers to being followers.

The story of Jesus in the wilderness says after these three temptations, Jesus was very tired and that the devil left him—for how long? Until a more opportune time. There would be other choices to elevate something good into being something ultimate. There will be other choices for us also. May Christ be our teacher and example in this story for the first Sunday of Lent.  Amen

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