Sunday Sermon -The Rev. Dr. Hillary Raining

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Jesus, sam. [00:01:04] Speaker B: The holy Gospel of our Savior, Jesus Christ according to Matthew. [00:01:09] Speaker A: Glory to you, Lord. [00:01:12] Speaker B: After Jesus was baptized, he was led up by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted 40 days and 40 nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, if you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread. But he answered, it is written, one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, if you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, 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. Jesus said to him, again it is written, do not put the Lord your God to the test again. The devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. And and he said to him, all these I will give you if you will fall down and worship me. Jesus said to him, away with you, Satan. For it is written, worship the Lord your God and serve only him. Then the devil left him and suddenly angels came and waited on him. The Gospel of the Lord. [00:02:57] Speaker A: Praise you. Children ages 3 through 10 are invited to join Caitlin Fernando for story time and prayers. They'll return at the peace. In the name of one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. Please be seated. On this first Sunday in Lent, the lectionary is pulling a through line of sin, temptation and the tempter himself, the devil. Now, we might be skeptical about stories of the devil. With our modern view, it can be hard to take seriously the demonic portrayal of a little guy with red horns and such. So instead today let's take those modern lens off for a moment and see this as an invitation to use ancient stories as a tool to explore the human heart. Especially since we are certainly forced to see the realities of evil all around us every day. And it's not always holding an obvious pitchfork. In the biblical tradition, it is clear that Satan, the personification of evil, is not just a little cute guy in a costume. Rather, Satan seems to show up in the biblical tradition in moments of great decision, when people are about to use their free will in life defining ways. He does his best work with not obviously bad things. Murder, war, abuse. Very few of us would be tempted into those sorts of evil things because we can see them for what they are the relationship destroyers that they are, they're kind of obvious rather. Evil makes its case to us in the tradition chiefly with fear and temptation by taking something that's good and distorting it ever just so. There lies a subtlety about Satan in the Bible that many of us can miss if we only think of evil in stark good and bad obvious terms. Here's what I mean. In the Hebrew scriptures, the Satan was not seen as a fallen angel. The Satan in Hebrew was actually more of a title, almost like a legal position translated into the accuser. In Job, for example, he's actually said to be a member of God's divine council. Satan wasn't exactly neutral for sure, but his whole job was to make you look at the world and all its complexities to see what your true desires are are not when the choice is easy, but when we're in a gray area or there's an easy justification to be made. Satan evil would not arrive as just obvious adversary though. More like a devil's advocate, pardon the pun. To whisper to us all when we should be overly cautious for ourselves or self serving for our own needs to really get to the heart of our desires. This testing sometimes gets confused in modern theologies with suffering. But that's not the same concept in the Bible. We aren't tested or tempted because we're bad. It's not punishment. Even Jesus is tempted in the gospel today. Suffering is not the point Christ like growth is. But in order to grow, we need to be able to see where we can change. The problem is we can go our whole life living into the limiting patterns of destructive habits without even knowing that our choices are causing the patterns. To quote Carl Jung, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate. So temptations and the choices we make in the face of them can actually be an occasion to make the unconscious within us, our shadow sides visible to us if we're wise enough to see them that way. That's easy to see in Jesus story today. Look at the exact words of how the text then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the devil. Jesus didn't just decide to go into the desert to put his feet up for 40 days and take some time off. He was led there right after his baptism, before his public ministry by the Holy Spirit, intentionally, for the express purpose of being tested by the devil. That's why he's there. None of the things that Satan tempts Jesus with are obviously bad, like wanting bread after 40 days of fasting is not wrong. I mean, come on, I want bread after 40 minutes of not having it. It's not even that Jesus would have to work a miracle to get that bread. That wouldn't have been a problem since he will multiply the loaves and fishes later again in his own ministry. And the devil's second temptation offered to put your trust in God even if there's a chance of harm. That's not an evil thing. I mean, Jesus will certainly do that so faithfully that it will bring him to the cross and resurrection. How about the third one? Letting Jesus have control over all the powers and kingdoms of the world? That actually seems like the least evil thing I can think of. How we describe heaven. None of these are inherently evil choices in their own it's the way the devil is asking Jesus to make them for the wrong reason that's the issue. Notice he even uses scripture the whole time to try and make his case. Why would Jesus go looking for this test? One reason certainly is that through these temptations, Jesus will learn what his biggest obstacles are within himself. That would keep him from living out God's plan for him. That would stop him from putting one foot in front of the other even though he knows he's walking to his death. It turns out for Jesus, it wouldn't be the lack of funds or revenue that would stop him. There's no retirement plan for Messiah. It's not the the Rome Roman citizens or the empire, or even the temple authorities or anything external that's going to stop him. What he learns from his temptation is that it's going to be the use of his miraculous power for his own gain. That might be a temptation for him that might stop him. Or it might be the desire to have this cup of pain, as he calls it, pass from him and run away. That might be a temptation for him. Or perhaps it would be the desire to have the whole world bow to peace by whatever means necessary, even if it meant taking away our free will for our own benefit. He needed to see those shadows within himself to learn how to rise above them, to actually live as the Messiah for the whole world. He chose to live a mature life of faith, one that doesn't turn to magical thinking of just fate or the Devil made me do it, but one that boldly takes an unflinchingly honest look at what was really in his heart. To use his shadows as a teaching tool, to practice making the right choices for the right reasons so that he could do it again at the right Time, then the scripture says that he sends the devil away or he rebukes them. In other translations in the New Testament, rebuke is a really important word. It's used over and over again. And it means to strongly correct or sternly warn someone regarding their behavior or faith to promote spiritual growth. It's a form of loving discipline, a necessary tool of love to bring hidden faults to light for the purpose of spiritual maturation. It's rooted in the Greek word epitemia, to place a value upon or to censure. So a rebuke is not simply a mean spirited act, but rather something that helps bring a person back to righteous, whole hearted living. And Jesus will do it again and again and again in his ministry. He does it with spiritual healings. When he rebukes illnesses and demons. Jesus rebukes the wind and the waves to be calm in the storm. He has to rebuke his disciples sometimes when they try to keep him from living out his whole life's work. And he does it here for the very first time in his ministry to set the tone for the rest of it. Now that might be fine for Jesus, but what about us? We who dwell with fear and ambiguity all the time? We who think the best we can offer most days is just choosing between the lesser of two evils? Well, the good news and bad news for us is that we have the exact same ability as Jesus to make these choices. The good news is we have the ability. The bad news is we got to use the ability. We've all been made children of God. We've all been given the same baptism. We've all been given the same Holy Spirit. We've all been given the exact free will as Jesus. And we have the exact opportunity with every decision to use that free will as he did. We're asked to really pay attention to this deep work. In Lent, it's the season when we are called upon to spend 40 days with acts of charity, prayer and fasting. These acts aren't just about self improvement or giving up sweets. They're allowing us to make a desert pilgrimage to boldly take that same unflinchingly honest look at what's really in our hearts. To use our shadows, our personal demons, as teaching tools. To practice making right decisions for the right reasons so that we can make them again at the right time. This is a lifetime's worth of work, so don't expect me to have a perfect little formula for this. I'm trying to work it out every day myself. I can only tell you this. Most of the times when I've even been able to see a glimmer of that kind of spiritual maturity within myself, it's when I've consistently put my soul in the posture of least resistance to God. By that I mean doing what Jesus did, being led to the Spirit, by the Spirit, to a place within myself where I can actually start to notice my devils, my demons showing up to try to tempt me. But instead of just wrestling with them, I try to do what Jesus does to let them sit there, to let them show me what it is that's happening within me. My spiritual director says it's like bringing your demons and letting them sit down for tea next to you. Whatever it is within yourself that keeps tempting you in a time of prayer, think about letting them sit there and be as healed by God's spirit as you are being in that moment. Not to shame you, but rather to become und. To become detached from them, to be able to let them be healed by God. When I do this, when I've tried this, what I find is that I can actually start to rebuke them a bit, to let them not have as much sway over me, to simply let them be healed by Jesus, by the Spirit. And when I don't do this style of prayer, I can tell you it's much harder to make good decisions. All of us can do this. It's a way of confessing to God our weakness, our temptations, our fears, our sins before they get the better of us. That's what a Lenten discipleship discipline is there to do. I imagine Jesus needed that same kind of practice here at the very start of his ministry, for he faced the many more fears and temptations that he would have in his journey, like using his power for personal gain, maybe even raising an army of zealots. Heck, just running away. But what he shows us is that following God's call rarely leads to just a kind of respectable comfortability that society tells us should be our desire. Rather, it helps take our heart's desire towards a deep commitment to not be afraid, to give up whatever that ideal is for you. Nice as it might be, good as it might be, so that we might instead have a heart tuned to true sacrifice, one that is Christlike, one that can shine forth, love this Lent, we are called by the Holy Spirit to meet with our own personal demons, to let ourselves become familiar enough with our shadow sides that when they come calling, we can know who they are, name them, rebuke them, and send them on their way. The desert and temptations aren't simply obstacles, but opportunities for growth, trust and God discovery Within ourselves, we will all face those moments of decisions when we must choose who we want to be. The invitation is not just to admire Jesus example in the face of the devil, but to claim our own belovedness and resist the voices, internal or external, that tell us otherwise. This Let us bravely and wisely walk into the wilderness with courage, being led by the Spirit, ready to see the devil's tired old tricks, and choose again and again to live as beloved children of God. Amen.