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The Devil Biding His Time |
Luke 4: 1-13
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© John Ewing Roberts |
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INTRODUCTION - A JOURNEY TOWARD THE POTATO SALAD PROMISE Lent is a journey of 40 days, a journey with Jesus who set his face toward Jerusalem where there was a cross awaiting (Luke 9: 51), a journey to a place where death awaits. Lent is a time for Christians to contemplate the fact that one day we will die. Some of us know this better than others; some of those know that the fact of death is a reality because we detect signs of it in our bodies; some of us know the reality of death because we see it in the lives of those we love very deeply. Others just hear these words, look out at the bright sunshine and think, "Yeah, I'll die one day, but no time some." A pastor of a black Baptist church in Philadelphia was concerned about this last group, the people who know they'll die but refuse to think about it. He stood up in the pulpit and offered this blunt, abrupt beginning of his sermon: ...you may not think you're going to die, but you are. One of these days, they'll take you to the cemetery, drop you in a hole, throw some dirt on your face and go back to the church and eat potato salad. (quoted in "The Potato Salad Promise," by Susan R. Andrews from Tony Campolo, Perceptions, Maxie Dunnam, p. 25, in Lectionary Homiletics, David B. Howell, editor, March 1998, Vol. IX, No. 4, p. 7) This idea is the springboard for a sermon titled "The Potato Salad Promise, " the promise that one day we are all going to die. The issue is not, "Will we die?", but "Will we die before we have figured out what our lives are all about?" If we fail to deal with this last question, we violate the integrity of the meaning of our lives by our evasions. TEMPTATION ON THE JOURNEY AND THE PAYOFF I read a true story about temptation on the journey and the payoff at the end. A man in Massachusetts won $4,200 in the daily numbers game in the state lottery. He got in a cab to go and collect his winnings. On the way it occurred to him that if he paid the cabby $200 to go into the lottery office and collect his winnings, the Internal Revenue Service would never find out that he had won the money. He could avoid paying the taxes on his winnings - too bad for the cab driver! Neither the lottery winner nor the cabby knew that Massachusetts has a program which placed the lottery in partnership with the Department of Social Services. The lottery computer noticed that the cabby owed $4,000 in back child support payments which it withheld for the cabby's ex-wife. The cabby and the lotto winner were left to fight over the remaining $200 Temptation on the journey was followed by the "payoff" at the end - "as certain as death and taxes." SEXUAL TEMPTATIONS Sermons on temptation sooner or later zero in on that area of temptation which preoccupies our media, sexual temptations. In looking over previous sermons on temptations to make sure I did not repeat an illustration, I came across something which I decided to repeat after all this morning. Here it is, with no comment other than it was based on a conversation with our son when he and I were watching a man for TV movie while he was still in middle school. The movie was on the life of George Washington. The script writers drew on the speculation of historians who have examined surviving correspondence between George Washington and Lady Fairfax, the wife of his Virginia neighbor and friend, Lord William Fairfax. Some have ventured that the father of our country was tempted by Lady Fairfax's great beauty and charm. In the film George Washington was portrayed by Barry Bostwick; Jacquelyn Smith played the tempting Lady Fairfax - great casting! The film fairly crackles with sexual energy when Jacquelyn Smith visits Barry Bostwick during an illness. There is clearly a strong attraction between them; there is temptation to act upon it. But the behavior of each is completely honorable and under control. Temptation is resisted! At the end of the scene when there was a cut to a commercial, our seventh grade son said, "It's a good thing President Washington behaved himself; he could have really messed up our country right there!" So much is at stake in all temptations - the present moment to be sure, but also our fidelity to our past and to all who shaped us, those who trust us, those who believe in us. Our future is at stake as well. The whole of our lives is at stake - past, present, future - in a word, our integrity is a stake, not simply our sexuality, as important as that is. JESUS' TEMPTATIONS Luke ends his account of the temptations of Jesus by saying that the Devil was biding his time, looking for the right moment to tempt him again. It's worth reminding ourselves that Jesus really was tempted. That fact is disturbing to many conservative Christians who mistakenly believe they are somehow honoring Jesus by down playing his humanity. Three gospels tell us Jesus was tempted (Matthew 4: 1-11; Mark 1: 12-13; Luke 4: 1-14), and Hebrews (4: 15) says "he was tempted in every respect as we are, yet without sinning." That does not mean Jesus was tempted to read Penthouse or to smoke marijuana. That does mean that Jesus was tempted at every point of his human integrity, just as we are, but he held fast and true to the Spirit which had hovered over him at his baptism, the Spirit which drove im into the wilderness, the Spirit which would be with him always, the Spirit which is available to us when our integrity is on the line. The temptations were ongoing. Whenever there were hungry people who wanted just bread, whenever there were people who wanted a revolutionary ruler to kill Romans, whenever there was a temptation not to accept the cup of obedience and courage set before him, there was one more temptation for Jesus to face until the last temptation on the cross to call down legions of angels to rescue him. (notes from sermon on Luke 4, February 17, 1991, Pastor Barrie Hibbert of Bloomsbury Central Baptit Church, London, England) The tempter is always biding his time for all of us; the tempter reappears all through our lives; we know that. Unlike Jesus, we cave in, often repeating the same sins over and over. We wonder why we engage in such repetitive wickedness and foolishness. So did Paul. With profound insight into evil and into human psychology, he wrote: I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want...in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me...I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me....Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from the body of death? (Romans 7: 1520, 24) Paul's answer to his own question about "who will rescue me from the body of death?" came in the last week of Jesus' life, the week at the end of the Lenten journey, the week we call "Holy Week." The answer to "who will rescue me from the body of death?" is Jesus Christ through his death and resurrection. These mighty deeds are symbolized in this room. We have a cross, a table, and a baptistery, all reminding us of Jesus' death and resurrection. In Romans 6 Paul said that when we go under the water in baptism, it's as if we have joined with Jesus in putting to death our old sins; it's as if we are dying with Jesus on the cross and thereby are accepting the meaning and power of his death for our own lives. And we come up out of the water and can breathe again, it's like being raised with Jesus in newness of life. The answer to sinful, contradictory, wicked behavior, the answer to the question, "who will rescue me from the body of death?" is Jesus Christ through his death and his resurrection, symbolized by the table and the baptistery. CONCLUSION I hope you will think of Lent as a journey toward Jesus, a journey with Jesus, a journey toward his death and resurrection. I hope every Christian in this room will take Lent as an occasion to revisit and renew your baptismal vows, your initial Christian commitment. I hope that the people in this room who have not yet been baptized will think of this time as a journey for you, a journey when you reflect on the exposure to the Christian faith which you have had in this place and in your home, and decide what you are going to do about Jesus Christ. There are people here who need to make a Christian commitment, who want to make a Christian commitment, and who are struggling with the right time and the right way to do it. Wouldn't it be wonderful if all those people chose to be baptized on Easter Sunday! But there is the temptation. T. S. Eliot says in Murder in the Cathedral that "the last temptation is the greatest treason - To do the right thing for the wrong reason." To choose to be a Christian and to affirm that decision in baptism is the right thing to do, but there are wrong reasons for doing the right thing. Don't be baptized just because it's the first Easter in the new sanctuary. It would be wonderful to be baptized on that great day in this lovely room, but that would also be doing the right thing for the wrong reason. Don't be baptized just because the minister puts pressure on you. Don't be baptized just to please your parents, as important as that is. Don't be baptized just because your peers are, even though it is wonderful when many are baptized. The right reason for making a Christian commitment and for affirming in it baptism goes back to the issue which is at the heart of temptation, your integrity. You should make a Christian commitment because you want to settle the basic issue for your whole life and for the wholeness of your life. Baptism is a way of showing to every one that you have settled that issue for your life. Think of all the rites of passage in life: - Christian commitment in baptism is more important than the first day of school. It's more important than entering high school, more important that getting a driver's license, more important than getting your college admissions settled. - Christian commitment in baptism is more important than making a career choice, more important than deciding if you will marry and if so, whom, more important than your first pay check, more important than your wedding and wedding reception. - Christian commitment in baptism is more important than your first house or your last house, more important than your first social security check and your pension plan. - Christian commitment affirmed in baptism is at the heart of what your life is all about.Declaring yourself to be a Christian is doing the right thing for the right reason. Christian commitment settles the issue of integrity. It brings you the joy that comes from choosing freely what your life will be about. It means making the journey of life with integrity, a life where there is a cross, but where there is more, a life in which we are buried with Christ so that one day we may rise with him. [This sermon is for circulation within the Woodbrook congregation and may not be reproduced without permission.] |