2nd Lent
Mtt.4:1-11, Gen 2:15-17, 3:1
The phone rang. The voice on the other end of the line inquired for the pastor. I replied that I was the pastor. “Oh” she said and then she started in to her well rehearsed appeal. I’m a single mother and I was evicted from my apartment and I’m here at this motel but I’ve run out of money and I need to stay here just three more days till I get a check from workers comp from an injury I got at my last job. Can you pay for three more days at this motel.. Can you help me.” Well where are you? The answer comes back, “Palatine”. How did you get our name? “I’ve just been calling everywhere I know and I thought you could help me.” The story continues getting ever more desperate and complicated. To my inquiries of “Have you tried this or that there’s always an excuse for why that wouldn’t work.” When I explain that we don’t have funds to hand out over the phone she gets angry and retorts, “If you were really Christian, if you were really Christian you would help me out.” Inside I cringe just a little bit. These calls come more often that you would expect. Nila and I affectionately refer to them as dialing for dollars. I worry sometimes that I am turning down some legitimate need but I have come to understand that there are a few unscrupulous people who make their way through life putting the touch on churches. It offends me mightily that individuals would trade on the natural desire of churches to help. “If you were really Christian…”
In our gospel lesson today Jesus is tempted by the devil. Twice the devil says to him, “If you are the son of God. If…Prove it to me by turning these stones into bread. If you are the son of God then throw yourself off this tower of the temple. Show me a miracle. Use your power. If you are the son of God, then do what I expect a son of God could do. And obviously if you don’t do it then you are not the son of God. Prove it. The temptation is not so much with what the devil wants Jesus to do as it is in questioning and challenging the relationship that Jesus has with his father.
It is no accident that in the gospel of Matthew this lesson follows instantly on the heels of Jesus baptism where dripping from the waters the voice of God proclaims “You are my Beloved Son, with you I am well pleased.” Without a breath from that event we hear that “Then Jesus was led up by the spirit into the wilderness where he fasted forty days and forty nights. In the arid wilderness the water of that baptism would soon have dried and the voice of God would be harder and harder to recall. Out there, away from any supportive community, it would be easy to question the validity and reality of the relationship of love that God has established.
Adam and Eve aren’t in a wilderness they’re in the garden. Adam and Eve haven’t been fasting; they’ve been enjoying the bounty of bright fruits and vegetables. In the Garden they walk and talk with God regularly. God has told them they can eat of any tree but one and that has posed no particular hardship. But then the wily serpent comes along questioning the first couple about what God has said. Eve says “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it” (notice how she exaggerates) or you shall die.” Now the serpent replies “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” The temptation is not in the fruit, luscious and juicy as it may be, the temptation is to change their relationship with God, to become independent of God.
This story makes some assumptions about the human condition. Humanity is designed to be in relationship with God, who gives life and breath, with the creation over which they are placed as stewards and caretakers and with each other. Secondly humans are inherently relational. We are inescapably interdependent. We cannot go it alone. Adam and Eve, driven by an insecurity the serpent plays upon reject this dependency. They reject the one who gave them life in the first place. Before long you see them turning on each other, placing blame; Adam says, “the woman you gave me made me eat, Eve explains “The serpent tricked me.” The ailment plaguing Adam and Eve is not so much pride as it is insecurity. They are confused about their place in god’s creation and so they attempt to establish themselves independently of the one who gave them life and breath.
In the garden life is such that we forget there are limits to what we can do for ourselves. Everything seems so infinitely possible; within the reach of our own intellect and technology.
Out there in the wilderness when we are famished and empty and afraid its easy to feel the temptor’s harangues, “If you are …then prove it.”
How many times do we hear those words? If you are such a tough guy, then prove it to us: how much beer can you hold? If you are the All-American girl, then get the body to match. If you are a good mother, then don’t have any needs apart from your family. If you are a real man, then hide what you feel. Go on, if you really are who you say you are, prove it.
The great preacher Anna Carter Florence says “The biggest temptation is to forget the Jordan when we are in the wilderness.
We start to wonder Is God really in control? Does God love me any more? Am I who I thought I was? The biggest temptation is to let go of what we know by heart. And with the temptor’s help that unconditional promise “You are my beloved”—gets replaced with a conditional sentence: “If you are beloved, then prove it. Earn it. Show you deserve it.”
We are at the beginning of the Lenten season. This is an especially dangerous time for us because we get all confused about the “sacrificial life”. We think it’s all about trying harder; more prayer, giving something up or
This is the sin that haunts the Church: to let the temptor convince us that love is conditional, not unconditional. To let the temptor convince us that beloved is something you prove, not something you are.
It all comes back to this story: the great temptation, that we must prove---to others and to ourselves—what we already know: You are my child, my beloved. I am so pleased with you.
Amen