Forty Days

Scriptures:       Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Romans 10:8-13,  Luke 4:1-13

Today is the first Sunday in Lent, that forty day time of self-examination and repentance leading up to Easter.  The 40 days of Lent remind us of the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness in prayer and fasting in preparation for his earthly ministry – and that, in turn, may remind us of the 40 years Israel spent in the wilderness before entering the promised land.  During the 40 years Israel spent in the wilderness, Israel was repeatedly challenged to rely on God, and repeatedly failed.  During the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness, as Jesus sought guidance from God in preparation for his earthly ministry, Jesus also received “guidance” – false guidance, or rather, temptation, from the devil.  But unlike Israel, Jesus steadfastly relied on God – and at the end, the devil departed, and angels waited on him.

It’s striking that the devil does not tempt Jesus with actions that are blatantly wrong, with actions that almost anyone would see as sinful.  The devil doesn’t, for example, try to tempt Jesus to go out and kill people or rob people or commit adultery.  Rather, Jesus is faced with much more subtle temptations – temptations to do things that, on the surface, seem fairly innocent, but that would cut corners and, in so doing, would have shrunk and limited the power of Jesus’ ministry. 

Jesus, who had gone without food for forty days and was incredibly hungry, was tempted to use his powers to turn a stone into bread.  On the surface, it seems like an innocent temptation – Jesus was desperately hungry, and who could blame him for doing what he had to do to eat.  But Jesus, the Word made flesh, came to earth to experience the full range of human suffering – and had he used his powers to turn stones into bread, he could have used his powers in other ways to avoid the full human experience of suffering – perhaps, ultimately, using his powers to avoid the suffering of the cross.  But Jesus knew he had to drink the full cup of human suffering, that whatever power he had was to be used to serve others, not himself – as Jesus did later in his ministry when he multiplied the loaves and fish to feed the multitudes. And so he responded by quoting from Scripture, “Man does not live by bread alone” – the rest of the verse says, “but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” – a reference to the lesson that God’s provision of manna was supposed to have taught the Israelites in the wilderness. 

Jesus was next tempted with the offer of political power over the whole world, in exchange for worshipping the devil.  For the Lord of the Rings fans among us, this is the temptation of the ring of power, that corrupted anyone who tried to make use of it.  In the Lord of the Rings trilogy, there was no way the ring of power could be used to bring about good – the only thing to do with it was destroy it.  On a more practical level, we have only to look around us to see the extent to which political power can corrupt even the most ethically sensitive of political leaders – and, indeed, most politicians aren’t known for the purity of their ethics.  Power changes people, and rarely for the better.  Power also changes groups, and nations.  As the saying goes, “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  The devil offered Jesus an option of ruling by force, but Jesus was called to inaugurate a different kind of reign in which people are motivated by love, not force.  To give into the devil’s temptation would have left Jesus not as Lord and Savior, but as just another dictator, another Hitler, another Stalin, another Franco, another Pol Pot or Pinochet – and the world already has plenty of these, no others need apply.  Jesus knew that no good could come of the power of the domination system that the devil offered, and so Jesus responded again by quoting Scripture: “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”

But the devil can also quote Scripture for his own purposes!  He next took Jesus to the top of the temple and tempted Jesus to throw himself off and let God save him, quoting words from Psalm 91 – words which we sang today in the hymn “On Eagles Wings”.  Had Jesus give into this temptation, he would in effect have been using God to promote his own popularity and success, and his ministry would have become a series of media spectacles.  We might think of the flashy TV and megachurch ministries, where everyone is dressed to impress, and everything is done for the cameras.  Jesus knew that wasn’t the kind of ministry to which he was called, and so he responded again by quoting Scripture:  “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”  We’re told that at that point, when the devil had finished every test, he departed from Jesus until an opportune time.

During his time in the wilderness, Jesus had to confront the devil’s temptations to shrink and limit and distort his ministry.  During this time of Lent, we, too, are invited to look at the shadow side of our own lives, to look at the darkness within us, to repent and ask God to deliver us from it.  The temptations Jesus faced may seem remote, but they are with us.  Jesus was tempted to turn stones into bread to feed himself rather than others – and here in America, with our ready availability of processed foods, cheap but often unhealthy, many are eating themselves to death – I offer my own bloated carcass as Exhibit A – while others starve, around the block and around the globe.  

Yesterday I was at a seminar on peacemaking and the environment, held at Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church in a very blighted neighborhood of Camden, across the river.  At the seminar I was reminded that we humans by our use of science and technology have given ourselves the power to destroy ourselves and render our planet uninhabitable to most forms of plant and animal life, both by war – especially the use of nuclear weapons - and by continued destruction of the environment.  Now, I have complete confidence that, in the end, God’s will be done – but to continue on our current course to surrender to Jesus’ temptation to jump off the Temple so that God would save him.  To continue on our current course is to put the Lord our God to the test, to act in self-destructive ways in order somehow to force God to jump in and save us from ourselves.  Indeed, some horribly misguided Christians actually want to promote conflict in the middle east in order to set in motion political forces leading to Armageddon – the great battle at the end of days - in order to accelerate the second coming of Christ.  But to pursue such madness – to do evil that good may come, to sin so that grace may abound - is to put the Lord our God to the test – the very thing God expressly told us not to do.  All of which is to say that the temptations faced by Jesus may not be so remote from us as we think; indeed, the temptations faced by Jesus are with us to this day.

So why Lent?  Why 40 days of self-examination and repentance.  The intent is not to indulge in sadism and masochism, not to inflict meaningless pain on ourselves or others.  Rather, ultimately Lent is an opportunity to face the truth about ourselves.  We don’t like to think about sin, especially our own sin.  We’d rather point fingers at the sins of others, or put on rose-colored glasses and not face our sin, our darkness at all.  But we all have sin and darkness in our lives – we all have a shadow side – and ignoring it doesn’t make it go away, just as ignoring an infection or a tumor doesn’t make the infection or tumor go away.  If we try to ignore our sin, we’re like the black knight in the Monty Python movie who, having had both his arms cut off, one after the other, says “It’s just a flesh wound” while he’s bleeding to death.  Ultimately we need to confront ourselves in the light of God’s word and implore God’s help to turn away from our sin, just as we would bring our infection or tumor to a doctor in search of diagnosis and treatment. Ultimately our hearts need to be broken by the pain of our own sin, in order that we can ask God for healing.  There are many ways to observe Lent.  Some people give up meat or chocolate or such.  Some, instead of giving up something for Lent, take on something for Lent – more disciplined prayer, for example.  For example, there’s an ancient kind of prayer called the prayer of examen, in which at the end of each day we ask Jesus to walk with us through the day that has passed, to forgive where we’ve gone astray and to know that we are loved despite our failings.  Pope Francis has suggested, instead of giving up meat for Lent, to give up indifference to God and neighbor.  Francis said, “Indifference to our neighbor and to God ….represents a real temptation for us Christians. Each year during Lent we need to hear once more the voice of the prophets who cry out and trouble our conscience." 

“Lord who throughout these forty days for us did fast and pray/Teach us each day to mourn our sins and close by Thee to stay.”  May God grant us the clarity of mind to see the sin and darkness and brokenness of our own lives, and the courage to ask God for healing.  Amen.