"LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION "

                                     Rev. Jim Petersen

                        First Congregational UCC-Great Falls, MT                              

2-25-07

Text: Luke 4:1-15

It is liturgically appropriate early on in Lent to face the temptations.  Like it or not, it is a part of Lent, as well as life.  So let's do it!  First Sunday of Lent.  Let's get it over with.

Of course there is a certain tickle in facing the temptations.  It's a subject to which we are devilishly drawn, for we know most everyone we know is tempted - friends, neighbors, competitors, bosses, adolescents - and it is a way to understand them better.  What makes them tick, or tock.  Temptation.

Everyone we know is tempted, at least at some time.  As no less an authority than the Farmer's Almanac says,  "Don't worry about avoiding temptation - as you grow older it starts avoiding you."

But somewhere in the stages of life, each of us is tempted, perhaps some stages more than others.  By the way, if you are in that stage in which you have outgrown temptation, you have my permission to snooze during this sermon.  In fact, you probably need to.

Temptation - for most of us an appropriate subject any time of year.  But we save it for Lent, this seasonal opportunity for self-examina­tion, if not confession.

Dostoevski said the Temptation story in the Gospel is one of the most impor­tant stories in all the Bible.  I can understand why Dostoevski said this, for he was keenly aware and wrote about the inner struggles that go on within the human being between freedom and morality, which is what temptation is, the clash between "doing our own thing" and a sense of a greater moral law.

That clash is personified in Dostoevski­'s  "The Grand Inquisi­tor," where a shopkeeper sees a boy hanging outside his store where there is a tempting display of fruits and vegetables.  The shop keeper, reading the longing expression on the youth's face, goes out and accosts the boy, "What are you doing, young man?  Trying to steal my apples?"

"No, sir," replied the boy, "I am trying not to."  The inner struggle between what we want and what we know is right.  What adolescent doesn't know this?  Nay, what adult doesn't know this?

It's a weird story in the Bible, the Temptation story of Jesus.  It's at the beginning, you know, as if to say, temptation has always been around.  Jesus is first of all baptized, proclaimed God's "beloved son," of whom it is announced God is "well pleased­."  It doesn't get any better than this.  I interpret this to be the anointing of Jesus as the Christ. Good start for the Gospels!

And immediately, turn the page, next chapter; Jesus is in the desert being tempted by the devil.

This is bizarre.  Contrary.  Don't you think?

First of all, these are Jews.  You would expect a party to follow the baptism, with so­me drinking and dancing, and a few joyful rounds of hava-nagila, which means, "Let us rejoice."  Yes, one would expect some rejoicing following the baptism, as is the Hebrew custom.  But no, it's not here.  In fact, the whole episode is reversed, don't you think?  It is turned around, as is so much of Christianity, it is contrary to what we might expect. 

We would expect, first the temptation, with Jesus showing great fortitude and refusi­ng the temptation, and then God rewarding Jesus, saying, "Ah, ha, this is my beloved son," and baptizing Jesus following the temptation.  But instead it is reversed.  Jesus is baptized first.  Then he is tempted.  Do you get this?

Here it is.  In the baptism:  Jesus is gifted with power.  Jesus is anointed with authority.  Jesus is granted position and purpose.  In summation: Jesus is blessed with the abundant gift of life.  The question becomes - how to use it?

It is tempting.  Do I use my power to build up others or beat up others?  Do I use my authority to lift up or Lord over?  Do I use my position and purpose to give things or get thing­s?  The temptation of Jesus follows the baptism of Jesus.  Yes, on second thought, this actually makes sense.  Jesus is given "the kingdom and the power and the glory."  It raises big questions.  It is tempting.  Is it all about me or is it all about God?  The Temptation story tells us something else.  It tells us Jesus is like us.  As Paul put it to the Hebrews,  "In all ways he was tempted as we are tempted."

Which is disturbing, for to say that Jesus was tempted, yes, even Jesus, how can we escape admitting we are tempted?  So this temptation story is our story as well.  We would do well to listen up.

I believe most of us believe we have transcended temptation, and not because "we have grown too old."  Temptation is something uptight, prudish Puritans worry about.  Sophisticated persons like ourselves have put this behind us.  We've worked through this guilt trip.  We're free to do our own thing.  It is only wrong when the other guy does it.  Which means we have forgotten our high school literature lessons back when we were reading Dostoevski, say, Crime and Punishment.

However, we cannot deny that Jesus came into the world offering a different way than the way the world was doing its own thing.  It was the followers of Christ who became conscious of the difference.  This is why they said, "We are in the world but not of the world."  They knew the difference.  They had seen a better way.  They had seen the way of Christ, and had chosen this way for themselves.  To be a follower of Christ meant to be contrary to the culture of the world.  Hard­ly the stuff of prude­s.  It took courage.  Sacrifice.  For you stood out.  And you were punished for it.

But we don't hear this much anymore.  At least not in the popular places peddling Christianity.   They don't talk about sacrificing yourself for Christ.  They talk about what Christ can do for you.

In fact, as a part of the televangelists' testimonies, they parade o­ut successful persons who give credit to Chr­ist for their suc­cess in the world, as if to say God loves them more than the competi­tors they beat. 

Which is really amazing, as well as annoying, for you read the New Testament and you don't get a hint of this any­where.  Nowhere does it say if we follow Jesus, we will be success­ful in this world.  What it says is, if we follow Jesus, we will be weird in this world.  There is a difference.

The fact is, being successful in this world is the temptation put to Jesus.  The Devil says, "You can have it all, my friend.  All the bread and butter you want - it's yours.  All the power and wealth you can imagine - it's yours.  All the kingdom you can carry - it's yours.  As far as the eye can see...yours, yours, yours."

"Don't disturb yourself," the Devil drivels on, "the tension you feel between the goals of God and the glitter of the world. Work with me, pal, and you'll have so much gold you won't need God.  You'll be popular, and they'll crown you king of the kingdom.  They'll worship you, if only you worship me."

The Devil even quotes scripture to support his argument, right here in the Bible, quotes a couple of Psalms, which I take as a warning not to trust every Bible thumping preacher ­and to show us how subtle and slippery temptation can be.

Jesus answers the Devil with scripture, himself, a lesson that we do need to know the book as well, saying, "The scripture says, ?Worship the Lord your God and serve only God.'"  Which is really the first Commandment, isn't it.  There is only one God.  One.  Make your choice.

Read the book.  Scripture is not here to sanctify the way the world is now.  Scripture is here to give us a vision of the way the world can be.  If we read the teachings of Jesus and come away saying,  "This is preposterous.  It is impractical, unrealistic.  This will never work in the world."  Then we're beginning to get the message and under­stand the teachings.  Jesus did not come to tell us to keep doing it the way we are doing it.  He came to show us another way.

When we try to accommodate his teachings to the world, when we try to interpret them so they fit into the way things are now, when we try to make them rational, successful by the world's stan­dards, and cost-effective so it costs us nothing and gains us a lot, then we are beginning to understand temp­tation.

This is what the Devil tried to get Jesus to do.

The Devil said, "Ease up, dude.  Make it more attractive.  Make it more rewarding.  Sell success, not crosses, and the people love it. They will love you and come to worship you."  Jesus said, "No deal, Devil."

The Devil said, "That's too bad, bud. I could have made you a star.  You could have been great upon the face of the earth.  Instead you'll be lonely.  You'll stand out and alone.  And they will turn against you.  Don't say I didn't tell you." 

Turns out, the Devil was right.  And scripture says, "The devil left (Jesus) for a while."  Which is also to say, the Devil would be back. 

But for Jesus, he leaves the desert and temptation behind and begins the minis­try for which he was baptized.  He returns to Galilee, goes to his home synagogue in Nazareth, and preaches his first sermon.  His chosen text is from the prophet Isaiah, about bringing good news to the poor,

about bringing liberty to the captives, sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed.

Isaiah's prophecy is a picture of the way God wants the world to be.  It is a mandate of what God expects God's people to be about.  Jesus shares this truth with the crowd in Nazareth.  He tells them in order to realize this vision they are going to have to change their ways.

The hometown folks wonder what seminary Jesus attended.  They are not about to change their ways.  Instead they send Jesus on his way.  They escort him to the edge of town and bid Jesus

farewell.   Says Jesus, "A profit is not without honor, except in his home town."  He was too much for them.

The point is: you start telling people there is a better way to live, and you start going against the crowd.  They won't like it.  It is better, wiser, to go along with the crowd.  This is the wisdom of the world.  And this is the temptation.  The devil is never far away.

As the saying goes, "Following the path of least resistance makes both rivers and persons crooked."

What I want to point out to you on this first Sunday of Lent, season of self-examination, is the tension between the way the world is and the way the world is intended to be.  And if we don't see this, then maybe we have accommodated our understand­ing of Christianity to fit the way the world is, rather than using our faith to transform the wor­ld to fit the Kingdom of God.

A few years ago Bill Moyer, who I like, and who attended seminary, nearly became a Baptist preacher, author­ed a documentary on the plight of families in the ghettos of America.  I don't think too much has change­d.  He describes it is a serious, complex problem, of which racism and poverty are primary preconditions.  But his study concludes, at its root the problem is one of values and morality.  The problem is one of values and morality.

Well let's be honest.  What is true of the "hood" is true of the neighborhood.  Values and morality are not just ghetto problems; they are suburb problems.  It's just, as in other things, it is most obvious among the poor.

The values, or lack of values, which are demonstrated daily in the ghetto are present in society in general.  The saturation with sex is not a ghetto problem.  It is society's problem.  Violence is not a ghetto problem.  It is society's problem.  Drug abuse is not a ghetto problem.   It is society's problem.  Shading the truth to get what we want is not a ghetto problem, it is society's problem.  Doing whatever we want as long as we don't get caught is not a ghetto problem.  It is society's problem.

We live in a self-indulgent society, where sex as recreation, violence as solution, drugs as escape, deceit as communication, and self-cen­teredness as freedom ­are common practice. 

You know what?  This is not much different than the first century when Christians first confronted the world.  It, too, was a self-indulgent world, with temptation then as now.  And the followers of Christ, li­ke Jesus in the wilderness, faced up to it.

In town after town, city after city, Christians began to treat one another as children of God, their relationships as ends in them­selves, not as means to some self-serving end.  They began to care for one another's welfare.  And not just those in their own religious community, but they reach­edout and sought to help strangers, the poor and the lame, widows and orphans outside the church and outside their own communities.

They renounced revenge as a way of dealing with hurts and violence as a way of dealing with problems, and held up reconciliation and peace as a way of life.

Most of all the Christians believed they would not find happi­ness by seeking personal pleasure, but by serving some­thing greater than themselves.  Indeed they found themselves by giving themselves to the way of Christ and the vision of the Kingdom of God.

In short, to be a Christian meant to stand over against the world as it was.  They learned that saying, "No," to temptation, was a way of saying, "Yes," to personal integrity and communal responsibility.  And the church was born.  Not because everything was well with the world, but because the world needed to change, and Jesus showed us the way, with the church being t­he change agent.

Muilford Sibley is a professor at the University of Minnesota.  He is a Quaker, and has been active in those causes Quakers are noted for.  As a result he has been called an idealist and utopian, as if these are dirty words.

He says he accepts this, because, "You cannot be rational as human beings unless you have a utopia...even though it may never be achieved." Says Sibley, "I literally believe in the biblical statement that where there is no vision, the people will perish." (Proverbs 29:18)

I think we can see evidence of this in our society. Without a vision of better life, the life God wants us to live, life can degenerate into something brutish.

The Church is the steward of the vision.  We are the keepers of Christ's way in our day.  We are the ones who pray, "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."  We are not only to pray it; we are to live it, as if it were already here.

It isn't easy, because it goes against the way of the world.  Which is why the Temptation story is here.  It is here to tell us it won't be easy, and to encourage us to pray, daily, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."  It is a great prayer.

The Temptation story is here to reveal something else as well.   It shows us saying "No" to the temptations of the world is a way of saying "Yes" to Life, and "Amen" to the greatness of God,     "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.  Amen."