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March 9, 2014, The 1st Sunday in Lent

Matthew 4:1-11

Confession time: I play the lottery . . . not just any lottery, but the big jackpots. Winning a million or two - meh. Im going for hundreds of millions. And even though the wiser part of me recognizes that, statistically, I have an equally small chance of winning whether or not I actually buy a ticket, I still play. Maybe this time God will smile on me. Maybe Godll be moved by all my good intentions. Listen Lord. Im not going to run out and buy a Bentley (although a tricked out new pickup would be pretty nice . . . and maybe just a little bit bigger boat). Im going to give a lot of my winnings to charity - starting with a knock-em-dead new church for us right here, and maybe a gym and swimming pool and scholarship funds for the kids on Edisto. In fact theres no end to the magnificent good things Ill do with the big bucks, so God, since I really mean well here, how about helping me out? I hope youll give me some slack about this grandiose thinking, that youll think, well thats only human. Who doesnt at least sometimes entertain some wild dreams like that? Who doesnt hope for a truly special blessing from God? Of course God doesnt really have anything to do with it. God doesnt pick lottery winners any more than God chooses whose virtues merit an Olympic medal or whose sins are marked by starvation or disease or oppression. Im not a big fan of athletes thanking God for their success. Their intentions are probably noble - proclaiming their faith, perhaps even attempting a little humility (albeit in an ironically grand fashion). But, despite what they intend to communicate, arent they saying that as God smiles on them, God frowns on whoever lost? And isnt that equally true for any of us when we thank God for some small favor? Do we have in mind all those who lack such favor? Do we remember how God loves all Gods children? Temptation. I think were as tempted by whats seemingly good as whats clearly evil . . . that thats what the great theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer had in mind when he famously quoted Martin Luther that The curse of a godless man can sound more beautiful in Gods ears than the hallelujah of the pious. I recently heard a wonderful sermon by Callie Walpole, riffing on Jesus charge to the disciples to be perfect. Perfect isnt keeping the code, she preached, its keeping unity, not uniformity . . . oneness, not rigidity . . . oneness with the word of God and with each other. Perfect is doing the work God has given us to do.

And that brings us to todays Gospel - what could be seen as a story about that kind of perfect. The story is about Jesus and temptation - how, after his baptism, he retreated into the wilderness where he was tempted not just by a sense of the riches and power and glory that were his for the asking but by all the good things he could do with them. It tells how Jesus resisted temptation by holding fast to his faith in God. The tempter was Satan - the devil - who, after his temptations failed, left Jesus, making room for the angels to come and minister to him. Thats the story. We all know it well. But whats the message? What are we meant to take from it? Surely at least a couple of things: first that Jesus is the gold standard - so secure in his faith, so of a piece with God the Father, that the temptation to turn away from God and his ways holds no sway with him, not even when theres so much that he could have accomplished. All the Gospels proclaim that Jesus isnt just another prophet or saint; that he is, in truth, the Son of God, the personification of God in human form, the Incarnation. Here Matthew, addressing his message to a Jewish audience, continues to build his case that Christ is the Messiah foretold in

Jewish prophecy. Jesus resists temptation where the other heroes of the faith - Adam and Abraham, Moses and David - all had their moments of weakness and failure. But that isnt the storys only message or even, Id contend, the most important one. Whether he intended it or not, the story Matthew tells ends up reaching out to a much wider audience than some 1st Century Palestinian Jews. In the fullness of time, the message always has been, is and will be for us, for every person fortunate enough to have been introduced to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The temptations that beset Jesus are, essentially, the same temptations that we encounter all the time. And, as was the case long ago out there in the wilderness, how we respond to our temptations will have consequences both within our souls and psyches and far beyond the boundaries of our singular lives. We can respond to Jesus exactly because he is, at least in this instance, us. Matthew personalizes temptation, calling him Satan, or the devil. I dont know about you, but I have a hard time relating to that image. Even if I can get beyond the caricature of some fearsome, red, horned guy with a tail, cloven hooves and a pitchfork, I can get lost in philosophical arguments about whether or not theres such a thing as pure evil - a metaphysical existence that defies any human understanding. Im not so sure about any of that. I gravitate more towards towards an image I mentioned a year ago - of Jesus sitting in contemplation on a rock in the desert while the tempter, sitting right next to him, appears as exactly the same figure, only a bit less substantial. I look at the context of Jesuss temptation as essentially the same as ours - a battle between competing parts of our natures . . . our dueling selves. Christian orthodoxy states that Jesus was born pure and spotless and that he spent his incarnate existence in that sinless state. But again, Im not so sure. I think the implications of that Christology not only cast both humanity and divinity in a simplistic, almost magical light, they seem to me to trivialize just how magnificent and real and inspiring his earthly pilgrimage was. If Jesus was all that innocent, then whats the big deal about this temptation story, or, for that matter, his lifelong suffering and death? Why did he need those angels ministering to him? Was his struggle just for show - a kind of classroom drama - or was he truly wrestling with the same demons that beset us? I think we have a tendency to over-sentimentalize innocence and spotlessness. The cliche for newborn infants is that they come out of the womb totally virtuous and only gradually learn to corrupt that virtue. Hah! That just isnt so. You know that saccharine image of Jesus smiling at the little drummer boy? As warm and cuddly as it can make us feel, I dont buy it for a second. Babies are born sweet, but theyre also born aggressive and narcissistic. They need to be in order to survive, and every parent in this church knows it because weve seen it . . . in spades. And if those babies are going to go on to live good and faithful lives, its going to be a constant battle - not only with the world out there but with their inner world. So what does that say about a savior our theology proclaims as not only fully divine but fully human? Just how human could he be if his only battle is with the tainted world around him and not with the devil inside him? The reason I think this is so important is because of what it means for us. I think one of our greatest temptations is to minimize Christ by inflating him . . . by envisioning him as someone larger than life. What a paradox! To be larger than life is ultimately to be less than alive, less than real.

When we define Jesus as not just divine but superhuman, our faith can go astray in several ways. First, doctrinally. Since this is confession time, I have to tell you that Im no fan of the creed. Let me be more specific. I think our faith does need some guideposts, something around which we can be unified if not uniform, and as far as that goes, the four centuries of disputes and lawyering and politicking that gave us the Nicene Creed ended up with a workable doctrine. But the caveat built into it is how it depersonalizes not only our God who chose to be incarnate, but those of us who recite it.. We can all recite the creed by memory, by rote; but who can relate to it? My former bishop, Jack Spong, is fond of saying that the most radical difference he sees between the Old and New Testaments is when Jesus calls out to Abba, which is usually translated Father but is more correctly heard as Daddy. This isnt some superman speaking; its someone, like us, crying out in need and in love. God isnt a mechanical definition or a distant apparition; God is an intimate presence. Another shortcoming I see in the image of SuperJesus is how it dumbs us down. More confession: I never really understood Christian Economics - the formulation that says that Christ is a ransom for us all, the payment for our sins. My skeptical mind wont let go of not only wondering how that works but why its necessary. Is our salvation from the sting of death akin to paying down the national debt, or is that image more a reflection of our limitations in conceiving God and tolerating the mystery inherent in all relationships? I think that when we acknowledge that the divinity in Christ may have been innate from the start, or it may have reflected a life divinely lived, or it may have something to do with all the above or something else entirely . . . when we allow ourselves the high ground of not knowing, then we put ourselves in a deeper, more profound posture before God than one in which it was always understood that he rides off into the sunset at the end. And not only that, allowing ourselves the gifts of mystery and uncertainty and curiosity about who Jesus is in relationship to the Father equips us for more fully living into the grace of our relationships with each other . . . and with ourselves. And that segues right into a third way that the theology of a man magically immune to any inner demons ill serves us. Because the more we can relate and identify with just how profound, real and human his struggles are - not just in an iconic scene in one story but in a life that was characterized by suffering and sorrow - the more we can see his struggles representing Gods entering fully not only into his life but ours, the more we can fulfill our mission to love our neighbors as ourselves. SuperJesus is a caricature, and if we believe in a caricature, how fully can we see ourselves and each other? Jesus Christ, the Son of God and, as he frequently refers to himself, the Son of Man, is the antithesis of caricature. He is Love itself, and love too is real - a mystery and a struggle and sometimes even a failure - but real. God doesnt pick lottery winners. God take no sides but Gods own. God doesnt curse anyone with sickness and pain. No matter what youve heard, God isnt jealous or vengeful. Its our temptations, our sometimes demonic inner natures hoping to bring God down to our level, often by the caricature of a SuperJesus . . . its those temptations that keep us from more fully living into our faith and reaping the fruits of Gods love and our own. Amen.