In our Advent and Christmastide Book Group, we read John Dominick Crossan’s The Greatest Prayer about the Lord’s Prayer and its origins, its sources and its meanings. If you read the inside cover of your service leaflet this morning, you’ll see that we’re using the Lukan version of the Lord’s Prayer during Lent this year, in part, due to what we learned in our book group.
In the book Crossan, deals extensively with the scene we see unfolding in our gospel reading this morning. It is, after all, the first Sunday in Lent, and our focus for these next 40 some days will be on sin and temptation and repentance. It makes sense, then, that as we begin to look at our own sinfulness and need for repentance, we look to the example Jesus sets for us in dealing with temptation.
Here’s a hint, he handles it a lot better than we can ever hope to.
Jesus is led into the wilderness by the Spirit. This journey occurs immediately following Jesus’s baptism in Matthew’s account. It’s as if Matthew is saying that trial and temptation are to be part of the life of faith for baptized Christians. It seems as if, for Matthew at least, this is part of the proving of our faith, its tempering and strengthening.
Jesus journeys in the wilderness for 40 days fasting, at the end of which he is famished. Sure enough, Satan appears and tempts Jesus to turn the stones into loaves of bread. Crossan points out that both stones and loaves are plural. Why so many loaves for just one person? A single loaf would be bread enough and then some for one man. It was an expectation in the time of Jesus that upon the dawn of the messianic age, that God would miraculously provide food for everyone, through the offices of the Messiah. As in the desert of Sinai, all Israel would be fed with bread from heaven.
And it’s worth noting the parallels between the trials of Jesus and Israel in the wilderness. 40 days for Jesus, 40 years for Israel. Both become hungry on the journey, so hungry, in fact that the faith of the nation of Israel wavered until God delivered the manna from heaven. Not so Jesus’s faith. He needs no miracle to reinforce it. And he notes, quoting for Deuteronomy, that it is God’s Word that feeds us, that is essential for our lives, not bread alone.
From this private temptation, we move to a very public one. Satan tells Jesus to throw himself from the pinnacle of the Temple, because, it is written, God’s angels will rescue him and preserve him. But Matthew and Jesus both know that the way in which Jesus’s life will unfold is not the way of grandiose demonstrations of his authority, sure to marvel the whole nation. Nor is it to prove his authority through acts of folly.
Jesus’s way is the way of the cross, of humble suffering, even unto death. Of small miracles that feed not a nation, but a few thousand who have given their ear to an itinerant rabbi and carpenter. Small miracles like the healing of the mother-in-law of his disciple, the raising of Lazarus, the brother of his friends Mary and Martha.
Jesus saves on a personal level, not a national one, or even a global one, as we shall see. He heals by touch, by contact with those who suffer. And though those who witness these interventions are often brought to faith, that’s not the point. Rather, they are caring, loving, person-to-person acts of mercy for those who suffer. Little moments of grace. These are not billboards or ad campaigns or membership drives, they are plates of food for the hungry on Saturday nights, and warm beds for homeless men, and companionship for the lonely.
Since tempting Jesus with the acclaim of a nation doesn’t seem to work, Satan offers Jesus the whole world. Notice here how there is no dispute over who is, to quote Leonardo DiCaprio, ‘the King of the World’. The kingdoms of the world are in Satan’s gift, his to administer, it seems, and he tempts Jesus with all the power and glory that, in Jesus’s time, was enjoyed by only one earthly person, the Roman emperor. But Jesus refuses it, and sends Satan away.
Following these temptations, Jesus will call his disciples; teach them about the justice of the kingdom of Heaven in Matthew’s extended Sermon on the Mount. Then he will teach them how to pray, telling them to pray that God’s kingdom may come, and God’s will be done on earth, as it already is in heaven.
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In the Lukan version of the Lord’s Prayer that we’re using in our liturgy this Lent, we say, “save us from the time of trial”, rather than “lead us not into temptation.” I must say, I don’t much like the idea of a God who leads us into temptation. But in Matthew’s gospel this morning, that’s exactly what the Spirit of God does to Jesus, leads him into the desert to be tempted. But even so, it is Jesus himself who teaches us to pray that such will not be the case of us, that we will be spared temptation and the time of trial.
But I don’t think that we can. We are in this world and subject to the temptations that this worldly kingdom so readily offers. I took a break from writing this sermon yesterday, to read the NY Times. We’re Weekender subscribers in our house -- that’s the cheapest way to get the online version of the Times, by the way, so we get some of Sunday’s sections a day early. In this Sunday’s Times, there’s a special section with Sherlock Holmes on the cover. And by Sherlock Holmes, I mean, of course, Benedict Cumberbatch. It’s the semi-annual men’s fashion magazine, and I glanced through it while ‘working on my sermon’. There are articles and ads that feature shirts that cost hundreds of dollars, pants that cost thousands of dollars, and in one feature, a watch that costs more than $50,000. I would imagine if you kitted yourself up for Spring upon the advice of the NY Times you’d need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more. Such are the temptations of the world we live in.
Yesterday, as some of you know, was International Women’s Day. I remember another International Women’s Day 10 years ago, when some colleagues and I were visiting refugee relief programs in Sierra Leone. In a refugee resettlement area near Koidu, Sierra Leone, International Women’s Day was celebrated with a ‘march-past’, a British locution left over from colonial days meaning a parade. The devastating regional war fomented by Liberian despot Charles Taylor had not long been ended, and there was a great effort afoot to rebuild civil society.
(Folks, I want to give you a bit of warning... This next part is a bit hard to hear.)
As is often the case in wars -- in every time and place, not just recently in Africa -- gender-based violence exploded during the conflict. The march-past on this International Women’s Day was focused on combating gender-based violence.
The lead banner urged both men and women to work together to create a peaceful society in Sierra Leone that revoked the license to rape, abuse, and exploit that had been granted, it seemed, during the days of chaos and violence just ended.
In such an atmosphere, young women, girls really, often became pregnant against their will at too young an age to successfully bear their infants. And in such a place, they had no other choice than to carry these pregnancies to term. Often these girls were injured in childbirth. The injury they were most prone to was a tear in the barrier between the utero and urinary tracts, resulting in great pain, and an inability to control their bladders. Other women, who had been particularly brutally raped during the conflict suffered similar injuries, with the same painful result.
The reason this particular part of Sierra Leone had been a target of Taylor and others is because it is rich in diamonds. The kind of diamonds you might find in a $50,000 watch. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the cost of the watch in the Times fashion section today could have provided the surgery I described for more than 300 women, and there were many more than 300 in need of it.
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The temptations of this world are myriad. And as I warned you, Jesus does a better job at resisting them than do you or me. I most certainly am guilty of enjoying more than my fair share of bread, and well, just about any carb. And who among us wouldn’t mind the angels rescuing us from our follies. Some of us might even aspire to the kind of power and glory that comes to emperors and rulers.
But we follow Jesus. And Jesus rejects the temptations of this world. Jesus rejects the kingdoms of the world. He rejects the throne of an emperor for the cross of a savior. He rejects the kingdom of $50,000 watches and women and girls as the spoils of war; probably because he understands the ways in which the two are linked.
We can’t hope to be as resistant to worldly temptations as Jesus is, but we can try. We might try to carry out a simple kindness or two, or seize an opportunity to practice small mercies and person-to-person graces, in imitation of him. Or we might have contact with, or just give an ear, to the voices of those who suffer. We won’t save the world as Jesus did; we probably won’t even change it. But perhaps those who see our good works might give glory to our Father in heaven. Perhaps someone somewhere might come to faith or a deeper faith through our imitation of Christ, pale as it must be. Perhaps that someone might even be ourselves.
Thy Kingdom come, they will be done. +Amen.
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