| "Lent is a forty day period of penance and grace when we children of God are invited to reflect on our sin and mortality and to receive from Jesus our Messiah, our Christ, the creative and re-creative power that can transform and save us. Following Jesus's baptism, he spent forty days in the Judean wilderness. During that time, Christ our transformer went head-to-head with the one who is our tempter. So when Jesus later taught his disciples to pray saying, "Lead us not into temptation," he was fully aware of that about which he spoke. Still, though tempted in every way as we are, Jesus remained without sin and became for us our Christ, our Messiah, our source of grace and transformation. In the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, the 19th-century Irishman Oscar Wilde claimed that "The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it." Perhaps he was basing that claim of his on a reading of this morning's First Lesson, the account of the woman and the man in the Garden of Eden. Wilde's contemporary, the American Mark Twain had a slightly different take on temptation. He observed that "There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice." Fortunately for us, neither of these two gentlemen need be our primary instructor in this matter. At least, I hope that each of us would accord that role to Jesus. And from Jesus's life, we learn that the way to get rid of a temptation is not to give in to it or to shrink from it but to face it down by trusting completely in God. In the story set in the Garden of Eden, the woman and the man are given a vocation: to be the stewards of the beauty and fruitfulness of God's creation; and they are given a permission: to eat freely of the trees in the garden; yet they are also given a prohibition: to eat freely of all the trees in the garden EXCEPT one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, the primal sin of the woman and the man in the garden is this: when push comes to shove, they do not trust in God and God's word. They do not trust that God has established the rules of the game of life with the best interests of humankind at heart. And in the world of today the primal sin of you and me is the very same as theirs: we still do not trust in God and God's word. We still do not trust that God has established the rules of life with our best interests at heart. So instead of trusting in God's will that human life be bounded by certain limits, we, like the first man and woman, push the envelope. We go in quest of a freedom that is fully autonomous, denying our need to trust in God and to accept limits on life. We, too, are seduced by the serpents of our world-seduced into believing that we can live well apart from God and apart from fulfilling God's will. At the very end of Jesus's forty-day sojourn in the Judean wilderness, he experienced precisely this temptation, the temptation not to trust in God and God's word. And this temptation assaulted him not just once, nor just twice, but three times. And by holding fast to his trust in God, by completely rejecting each temptation, Jesus showed us how to do the same. Looking closely at these three temptations, we see that each of them invites Jesus to abandon his trust in God and in God's word, invites him instead to make his own star-like appeal to the people by dazzling them with bread, circuses, and political power. And in each case we see the strength of Jesus's trust in God. For in each case we see Jesus refusing to ask for any miraculous exception to the limitations on human life. At the height of Jesus's hunger, he is invited in the first temptation to rely on his own power to provide bread from stone rather than to trust in God's promise to provide what is needed. But Jesus faces down this temptation by meditating on God's word and trusting in it. He focuses on the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 8, verse 3, and he recites: "One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God." By saying this, Jesus expresses his trust that the vocation to which God has called him is not so much about performing miracles as it is about proclaiming God's word. In the second temptation, Jesus is urged to test whether God is truly with him, to test that by jumping off the highest tower of the temple and forcing God to send angels swooping down to save him. Jesus is tempted to renegotiate the terms of his trust in God by forcing God to provide some miraculous sign that God can really be trusted. Well, a second time, Jesus responds by meditating on God's word and trusting in it. Once again, he focuses on the Book of Deuteronomy, this time chapter 6, verse 16, and he recites: "Do not put the Lord your God to the test." By saying this, Jesus affirms that he is beginning his ministry with a complete trust in God. No special sign of any kind is necessary. Finally, in the third temptation, Jesus is asked to become the Son of Satan rather than the Son of God. He is invited to trust in a source of power other than God. After all, Satan is offering the power and glory of ruling a vast empire while God is offering only the promise of suffering and a cross. Again, Jesus responds by meditating on God's word and trusting in it. For the third time, he focuses on the Book of Deuteronomy, again chapter 6, now verse 13: "Worship the Lord, and serve only God." By saying this, Jesus affirms his trust in God's future and chooses God's way of the cross rather than Satan's way of power and glory. In the novel The Last Temptation of Christ, the 20th-century Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis imagines that the temptations Jesus experienced during his ministry were not confined to the wilderness. Like us, he faced temptation throughout his life. Even when Jesus mounted the cross on Golgotha, he had to struggle with temptation as well as with pain and death. For as Christ cried out "Eli, eli, lama sabachthani," "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me," one final temptation came into his fevered mind. At the moment of that cry, the Evil One planted in Jesus's thoughts a deceptive vision, a vision of the calm and happy life he could have led had he avoided the call to walk with God, had he chosen the smoother, easier road most people follow. As Kazantzakis imagines this last temptation, Jesus saw himself in that vision as an old man, sitting on the threshold of his house and smiling with satisfaction as he recalled the longings of his youth, his happy marriage, his many children, and the love and respect of his neighbors. "How splendidly, how sensibly he had acted in choosing the road of [other] men!" What foolishness it would have been to engage in the Spirit's struggle with the flesh. "What insanity to have wanted to save the world! What joy [it had been] to have escaped the privations, the tortures, and the Cross! "This was the Last Temptation which came in the space of a lightning flash to trouble the Saviour's final moments. "But all at once Christ shook his head violently, opened his eyes, and [snapped out of this deceptive vision, returning in his consciousness to the reality of Golgotha]. [Ah], he was not [after all a coward,] … a deserter. He had [indeed] accomplished the mission which the Lord had entrusted to him. "Content he closed his eyes. And then there was a great triumphant cry: It is accomplished! "In other words: I have accomplished my duty, I did not fall into temptation. . . ." [All the quotes on this page come from the author's Prologue to the novel.] It is in the example of Jesus's life-long struggle with temptation and his life-long overcoming of it-yes, even on the cross-that we can find the strength to sustain us in our own life-long struggle to resist temptation. In a remarkable prologue to his novel, Kazantzakis describes his own experience in writing his book in this way. Listen: "I never followed Christ's bloody journey to Golgotha with such terror, I never relived his Life and Passion with such intensity, such understanding and love, as during the days and nights when I wrote The Last Temptation of Christ. While setting down this confession of the anguish and the hope of [hu]mankind I was so moved that my eyes filled with tears. I had never felt the blood of Christ fall drop by drop into my heart with so much sweetness, so much pain. "In order to mount to the Cross and to God, Christ passed through all the stages which [everyone] who struggles passes through. That is why his suffering is so familiar to us; that is why we share it, and why his final victory seems to us so much our own future victory. That part of Christ's nature which was profoundly human helps us to understand him and love him and to pursue his Passion as though it were our own. If he had not within him this warm human element, he would never be able to touch our hearts with such assurance and tenderness; he would not be able to become a model for our lives. We struggle [with temptation], we see him struggle also, and we find strength. We see that we are not all alone in the world: he is at our side. "Every moment of Christ's life is a conflict and a victory. He conquered the invincible enchantment of simple human pleasures; he conquered temptations, continually transubstantiated flesh into spirit, and ascended." [Again, all the quotes on this page and the one above come from the author's Prologue.] It is in these words that Kazantzakis expresses his own profound reflections on the temptations of Christ, reflections born of writing his novel. Jesus-tempted in every way as we are, yet triumphant. This Lent, as we journey toward the cross of Christ, may we in some small measure come to share in Jesus's victory. May we come to choose the more difficult road-the road of discipleship, of trusting in God and of fulfilling God's word and God's will. This Lent, may we fulfill our vocation as children of God, our vocation as women and men who are to strive inevery thought, word, and deed-as women and men to striveto be united in trust and love with God. Let us pray: Amen |
Return to Sermon Archive