Matthew’s gospel doesn’t spend a lot of time drawing out the story of the birth of Jesus nor does it spend any time telling us about Jesus’ life as a child, a teenager, or even a young adult. The movement in the gospel is from his birth directly to John the Baptist proclaiming Jesus as the one who will baptize us with the Holy Spirit and fire. God then declares, “This is my Son, the Beloved with whom I am well please.” Then Jesus is lead into the wilderness.
Apparently, temptation is what is in store for those with whom God is well pleased. I’m not sure how we should respond knowing temptation is our fate as believers. Or, thinking about it in another way, perhaps our comfort comes from knowing Jesus’ life was not so different from ours after all, even Jesus lived for a time in wilderness, pain and distress. It is comforting hearing how Jesus, though he had gone 40 days and forty nights without food, and even with great temptation, He did not loose his way.
Our beginning with God is no less dramatic and we are no less vulnerable. For God makes a beginning with each of us. A beginning God initiates. God seeks us out and God engages us to be in a relationship of God’s own doing. This is dramatic and life changing stuff because we can know God only as God seeks and finds us.
Henri Nouwen, the late Dutch Roman Catholic spiritual writer, wrote in his book “In the Name of Jesus” about how we just as well be ready, because in our relationship with God, with our fellow-creatures, and with ourselves as body and soul, we will have times of temptation similar to Jesus’.
First, there will be the temptation to be relevant to the world and not to God, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” the tempter said to Jesus.
Nouwen realized the temptations of this world when he moved from a 20 year career teaching at Notre Dame, Yale and Harvard Universities, to live and work with people with mental and physical handicaps who could not read and knew nothing of his former life.
About that he said, “These broken, wounded and completely unpretentious people forced me to let go of my relevant self – the self that can do things, prove things, build things…” He found himself completely vulnerable and “open to receive and give love regardless of any of my former life accomplishments.” He goes on to affirm, “I am deeply convinced that the Christian disciple of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self.”
Our accomplishments, he thought, are not important. Underneath the world’s accomplishments is a deep current of despair, emptiness, and depression. What matters is that “God has created and redeemed us in love and has chosen us to proclaim that (only) God’s love is the true source of all human life.” Jesus said, “It is written, one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
Second, there is the temptation to be spectacular, important in the eyes of the world, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from the pinnacle of the temple,” the tempter said to Jesus.
Nouwen describes this temptation as the pressure to do something that will win great applause. Stardom and individual heroism are, he feels, aspects of our competitive society pervasive even in the church. In contrast, the authentic task is heard from the lips of Jesus to Peter, “Feed my sheep” (John 21). Nouwen affirms that we followers of Jesus Christ are “sinful, broken, vulnerable people who need as much care as anyone we care for.” Jesus said, “Again it is written, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”
And finally, there is the temptation to be powerful, “”All these kingdoms of the world I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”, his tempter said to him.
As a university professor, Nouwen had been “in charge” and a powerful person. Among these people who were handicapped, it was different. He writes, “one of the greatest ironies of the history of Christianity is that its disciples constantly gave in to the temptation for power – political power, military power, economic power, moral and spiritual power”. It is easier to control people than to love them, he found. But our task is to empty ourselves and follow Jesus. The way of power is chosen, he writes, “when intimacy is a threat. Many Christian believers have been people unable to give and receive love.” Jesus said, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”
Here are God’s beginnings for us this Lenten season. Here is God’s way of getting what God wants with us by saying no to the tempter and by lifting up for us the greater goods God has in mind for us. We will have to adopt Jesus way with temptation and learn to begin our new relationship with God by saying No to ourselves. Saying No to our distracting habits and lifestyles, those ones that distract us from God’s grace and God’s glory never forgetting Jesus can give us the grace we need to deny ourselves.
I believe our greatest challenge this lent may be to begin again, with Jesus, to remember who he has called us to be. For Jesus has called us to be a follower, not of our own disciplines, but of his, loving sinners, feeding the hungry, bringing peace and justice to our families, our community, our church and our world. Giving something up would be so much easier.
Jesus comes from the wilderness hungry and tired and just wanting a warm bath, a bite to eat and a moment to rest his weary body. But life won’t cooperate, Monday has come and he has that meeting he has been dreading the entire month. All he has to offer is scripture, the Word of God. His responses to the tempter come right out of Deuteronomy, God’s holy word. That’s what he knows by heart and God’s word is all he has the heart to respond with. The world of God becomes his response to life’s trials and temptations. That and the promise given him at his baptism, “This is my Son, the Beloved,” Jesus is God’s beloved, no matter what, all Jesus has is who he is. God’s beloved.
And this is the only truth left in our own hearts, our promise, made to us at our baptism that we are somebody, we too are loved by God, we too are children of God. That is a lot to offer and all we really need to sustain us in the valley of the shadows in our lives.
As Anna Florence wrote, “The waters of baptism are so warm and soft, and we don’t get to stay in them very long. The way back from the Jordan leads straight through the wilderness, and we go round and round until we are famished. We start to wonder, will I survive?
We forget, we do not have to prove we are loved by God, being loved by God is God’s description of who we are, his beloved.
We are the ones God has chosen to not have to live by bread alone, but we live by every word from the mouth of God.
We are the ones God has chosen to not have to put the Lord our God to the test. That Jesus is our savior is evident because Jesus is the sign God has given us. And we confirm the truth of Jesus by trusting in him and looking to him and giving our lives to him.
Dear ones, we are the children chosen by God to worship and serve God alone. Our proper response this Lenten season is thankfulness and gratefully getting on with the life God has chosen for us, a life not of our making, but of God’s making.
The true bread of life, the real security where our lives will not be dashed against a stone, and the assurance of our heavenly kingdom might elude us if we allow ourselves to be lead by anyone other than God.
It is only by grounding our identity in the life of Christ, as Christ alone claims us by the grace of God, that we will emerge from the wilderness and be fed, loved, comforted, and glorified by God.
God seeks us out for this life, and we need not worry, whomever God seeks, God finds.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever. Amen.
Additional resources:
“Christian Century”, Christian Coon, January 29, 2008, pg. 21.
“Pulpit Resources”, William Willimon, February 10, 2008, pgs. 25-28.
“The Presbyterian Outlook”, January 28/February 4, 2008, pg. 15, 19.
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