Forty Days

Scriptures:         Genesis 2:15-3:17; Romans 5:12-19, Matthew 4:1-11

Today is the first Sunday in Lent, that forty-day season of repentance and spiritual renewal.  Lent began last week with Ash Wednesday, when we remember that “dust we are, and to dust we shall return” – that is to say, we remember our mortality, our frailty, our moment-by-moment dependence on God.    

 

It should be recognized that the season of Lent is not in the Bible.  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph didn’t go to Mass on Ash Wednesday to get their ashes.  Lent is a creation of the church.  While the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of Paul, Peter, James, and John tell of the bold witness of the early disciples to the gospel of Christ – a witness that cost nearly all of them their lives - in the centuries after this first generations of Christians had passed away, and especially in the years after the Roman emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of his empire, church leaders came to recognize that Christians had become too comfortable, had become, as the saying goes, “fat, dumb, and happy”, had become too acclimated to the ways of the world, that many Christians made little distinction between being a good Christian and a good citizen of the Roman empire.  The bold witness, the sacrificial love of neighbor, the willingness to lay down one’s life for the sake of the Gospel, had nearly vanished.  Jesus called on his followers to be salt and light in the world, and among many Christians, the salt had mostly lost its savor, and the light of the gospel was flickering and about to go out.  And so in creating Lent, the church remembered the story of Jesus’ preparing for his ministry by spending 40 days in the wilderness, and drew on that story to create an annual 40-day season of spiritual renewal.  The idea of giving something up for Lent is both a reminder of Jesus’ 40-day fast in the wilderness, and an invitation to lay aside anything that stands between us and God. Lent is a time of preparation – historically it was a time in which adult converts to Christianity received instruction in preparation for baptism.  In our Adult Forum following worship, we’ll be honoring this tradition by using our denomination’s confirmation class materials to look at some of the basics of the Christian faith.

 

In creating Lent, the church drew on the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness.  Matthew tells us that immediately after Jesus’ was baptized by John the Baptist, immediately after that moment when the Spirit came down on Jesus like a dove and a voice was heard from heaven, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with Him I am well pleased”, Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where he spent 40 days in fasting and prayer, likely pondering his calling, trying to discern what his ministry would look like, what God was calling him to do. And, Matthew’s gospel reminds us, at the end of it, Jesus was very hungry.

 

And so, at the moment when Jesus is most vulnerable, the devil comes to tempt Jesus.  Three times the devil proposes temptations, the first two times beginning with the words, “If you are the Son of God….”  The point in each case is to try to get Jesus to doubt his identity and calling, to drive a wedge between Jesus and God the Father.  The devil is in effect asking: Had Jesus really heard that voice from heaven calling Jesus God’s Son, the Beloved, or had Jesus just imagined it?  Had Jesus perhaps just heard the sound of distant thunder, or for that matter the sound of his own stomach growling. And here is also where our own temptations begin, when we begin to doubt God’s faithful love for us, when we forget our own baptismal identity as children of God, disciples of Christ, and members of Christ’s church.  Jesus will again hear these words, ‘If you are the Son of God” when he’s on the cross, when the religious and political authorities say, “If you are the Son of God, save yourself.”  The words “If you are the Son of God” that the devil uses in questioning Jesus’ identity is the same “If you are followers of Jesus” question that we face in our daily walk as Christians. 

 

The devil concludes the first two temptations, in effect, by saying, “If you are the Son of God, prove it to me.”  “If you are the Son of God, turn these stones into bread.  If you are the Son of God, leap off the pinnacle of the temple to show your faith that God will save you. The devil tempts Jesus a third time by offering him all the kingdoms of the world, if – there’s that word again, “if” – if Jesus will bow down and worship the devil. 

 

Remember the context: Jesus has been wrestling with the question of what God is calling him to do.  And three times, the devil tries to get Jesus to take shortcuts, and in effect to distort and shrink his ministry.  Ultimately, each temptation is an attempt to get Jesus to bypass the cross, to skip the pain of Good Friday to get right to the glory of Easter.  And in each case, Jesus responds with words from scripture – specifically from the book of Deuteronomy, in which Moses speaks of Israel’s 40-years in the wilderness. 

 

Jesus could indeed have turned stones into bread – indeed, the Gospels tell us of Jesus feeding the multitudes – but at that moment the devil was tempting him to shrink his ministry to feed just himself – “Jesus, party of one”.  In a larger sense, Jesus was being tempted to use his powers to provide for his own comfort, rather than rely on God’s care and protection.  But Jesus responds to this temptation with words from Deuteronomy:  “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”   

 

In the same way, Jesus could have thrown himself off the pinnacle of the temple and been saved, but this would have distorted Jesus’ ministry by making it about spectacular but pointless displays of power – in essence, it was a temptation to turn Jesus’ ministry into a magic show.  Jesus did indeed do many signs and wonders, but always it was in obedience to God’s will, and always to help the sick, the possessed, the poor and hungry, those in need – and he nearly always told those he helped, “don’t tell anyone”.  And so Jesus again dips in to Deuteronomy once again, and responds with the words, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”  The third temptation – that of selling his soul to the devil in exchange for all the kingdoms of the world – is a temptation for Jesus to exchange God’s power for worldly power. In effect, Jesus is tempted to become a politician rather than a Savior. And once again Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only Him.” 

 

These temptations may seem remote to us.  Likely none of us is hearing voices telling us to turn stones into bread, or making plans to rule the world.  And if you’re feeling tempted to jump off a tall building, Pastor Dave says, “Don’t do it!” But the temptations faced by Jesus are temptations we in the church face every day, just packaged differently.  Jesus’ temptation to satisfy his hunger by turning stones into bread translates into the church’s temptation, and that of us as individual Christians, to turn inward and focus on our own needs, rather than caring for those outside the church – a temptation that nearly all churches, including Emanuel Church, cave into with some regularity.  And it’s a temptation encouraged by many TV preachers and public religious figures who preach the prosperity gospel, bypassing the cross.   Jesus’ temptation to jump off the Temple and let God catch him translates into many present-day temptations – the temptation for the church to make its work about flash and dazzle rather than about nonflashy,nondazzling, but faithful witness and service, and also the temptation of churches and individuals to indulge in magical thinking, to indulge in foolish and negligent and self-destructive behavior on the premise that “no matter what we do, God will step in and save the day.”  We are not to put God to the test.  Magical thinking is not the same as faith in God; we as Christians are to be fully grounded in reality, while remembering that God is the ultimate reality.  Jesus’ temptation to gain all the kingdoms of the world for himself translates into the church’s temptation to acquire worldly power for itself and rule, rather than serve.  Throughout the centuries, perhaps beginning with Constantine’s alliance with the church in 313 AD, the church has made unholy alliances with political power, and in every case pretty much without exception, rather than the church exercising political power in a godly manner, political power has corrupted the church, until its priests and pastors are little more than political hacks.  Now, make no mistake – the church cannot shut itself off from the needs of the world, and the church has a calling to make prophetic witness against society’s injustice – and this inevitably has political implications.  The church can’t live in its own bubble.   But standing outside the system to speak against injustice is very different from running the system – and we as Christians are called to witness and to serve, not to throw our weight around.  We are not called to be successful in a worldly sense, but to be faithful to God, and to the Gospel.

 

After his baptism, Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness grappling with his sense of vocation. .  In response to every temptation, Jesus drew on Scripture and on God’s grace.   In resisting the devil’s tempations, Jesus showed himself to be prepared for the calling to which he was called.  In these forty days of Lent, may we, as individuals and as the gathered congregation of Emanuel Church, “lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:1-2)  Where Jesus leads, may we follow. Amen.