Episcopal Church of the Messiah

Worship Service Sermons

February 10, 2008

 The Reverend Carolyn Estrada

Jesus has just been led – Mark says "driven" – by the Spirit into the wilderness for a period of fasting and temptation. At the end of 40 days, when he is famished – at his most weak and vulnerable – the tempter comes to him, offering him food, power, and the opportunity to prove God’s love and care for him – to risk, with no consequences.

Food.

Power.

The love and protection of the Father.

It sounds reasonable: isn’t that what God would want for his Son? A reward at the end of his trials? Nourishment, refreshment, a coming-into-his-own as God’s Son, reigning over the kingdoms of the world?

Isn’t that what we want? Food, power – at least a sense of control over our own lives – and a sense that God will protect us? The devil’s offers are attractive…

I don’t know that you and I are so much led or driven as we are born into our temptations… Frequently we don’t even recognize them as "temptations" – they are so much a part of our environment that we become inured to their seductive power. We are assaulted on all sides with messages about food, power, protection; receiving and incorporating into our lives needs we didn’t even know we had, so that our "needs" and "wants" become indistinguishable.

We may or may not have heard of the "Prosperity Gospel" – "God wants you to be rich and successful" – but we certainly live in the evidence of such values, buying and replacing and accumulating at an unprecedented rate. (I read recently that the amount we spend annually on garbage bags alone in this country is more than the average citizen in the majority of the world has to live on in a year, and that storage facilities in the U.S. are now a multi-billion dollar business.)

For most of us, food is not sustenance, but pleasure; the abstinence from or lack of it in our lives neither fasting nor poverty nor famine, but weight loss.

While we may not consciously put God to the test, our responses to events in our lives certainly reflect a litmus test of sorts: Our success is an entitlement – we’re high functioning and in control, after all! – but a downturn in our "luck" may well jeopardize our faith in God, leaving us with a feeling of abandonment.

Jesus went into the wilderness to shed himself of distractions: to strip away all that might come between him and God, that he might discern what it meant for him to be God’s Son, the Beloved, the Messiah.

Lent is our opportunity to do something similar – on a much smaller scale, since that nibbling craving for chocolate or a glass of wine pales in comparison to the ravages of hunger after a forty day fast. But the PURPOSE is nevertheless the same: who are we, as Christians, as children of God and as followers of Jesus, and what are the implications of this Christian identity for how we lead our lives?

The interconnectedness of our global economy, our relative affluence as Americans, and the "post-Christian" culture in which we live, can easily blind us to the Way of Jesus, clouding our vision, and causing us to "lose our way" in the Christian life. Our journey into the wilderness of Lent is a conscious stripping away of some of what comes between us and God – the distractions of "living by habit" – so that we might pay more attention to what is real in our lives, to who God wants us to be.

In Kazantzakis’ novel Report to Greco, a young man, Nikos, arrives at a monastery in Sinai to make a retreat, hoping to hear the voice of God. The Abbot cautions him: "All voices can be heard here in the desert. And especially two which are difficult to tell apart: God’s and the devil’s."

All voices can be heard here in the desert. And especially two which are difficult to tell apart: God’s and the devil’s.

How do we tell the difference?

How do we know that what we aren’t hearing isn’t simply a projection of our own needs, desires, fears? An affirmation of what we have already decided we want to do or be?

How did Jesus tell the difference?

There is a human tendency to "create a checklist" – to make labels which say "good", "bad"; "God" and "Satan"; to generate rules to establish the mind of God – as though we could! And yet we recognize those rules are the very "bit and bridle" the Psalmist warns us against in this morning’s lesson: there is a qualitative difference in a relationship freely chosen, and one which is coerced.

But we also know that it is hard to live with the uncertainty and ambiguity of our freedom to choose God, to choose how we live in relationship with God.

We remember the hostility of Dostoevsky’s (The Brothers Karamazov) Grand Inquisitor when he contemptuously says to Jesus: "instead of taking possession of men’s freedom, you increased it, and burdened the spiritual kingdom of mankind with its sufferings forever." And we recognize how many churches have tried to fill the void created by that freedom with their own rules and certainties.

What we need are not rules, but some guidelines to help us use our freedom appropriately as we seek the mind of God in our lives.

Returning to this morning’s text, we can readily identify Jesus’ use of Scripture in response to the devil’s proposals:

But we also know that the devil used Scripture in his temptation: "It is written," he said, "’He will command his angels concerning you,’ and, ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’" And in our own history we have seen how Scripture can be used selectively to justify any number of conflicting positions: for or against slavery, or homosexuality, or divorce, to name just a few areas.

Jesus’ use of Scripture is in the service of something more fundamental.

What is the "plumb line" that enables Jesus to discern the devil’s voice – and to respond accordingly?

I think it is Jesus’ relationship with God.

That relationship is a connection nourished by time and attention, and the love and intimacy which develop as a result.

It is Jesus’ experience of God’s love: that it is unqualified, freely given, and all-embracing. It is neither coerced nor restricted.

It is the recognition that means are as important as ends: God isn’t some prestidigitator in the sky, waving a magic wand, but desires that we be partners with God to achieve God’s ends in the world. And it is understanding that the means we use to achieve God’s ends must be consonant with the ends themselves!

That plumb line functions for us today, as we seek to discern God’s voice in our lives, and what it means to be a Christian in today’s world.

Imagine: cultivating the kind of relationship with God which internalizes that plumb line, making it an intrinsic part of who we are!

Imagine: orienting our daily actions against such a plumb line!

Imagine: making our choices and shaping our responses against such a plumb line!

May our Lenten journey help us peel away the distractions of this life and draw us closer to the God who loves us, that we may ever recognize God’s voice, and allow it to be the guiding principle in all that we say and do.

Amen.

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