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SERMONS

The First Sunday of Lent
February 25, 2007

By The Rev. Alston Johnson

The Temptation in the Wilderness

Sometimes we can know the stories of Jesus so well, that we lose the details, overlooking something that might make all the difference.

This morning our Gospel opens, “After his baptism, Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days He was tempted by the devil.”

I don’t know about you - but what I normally latch onto in that opening verse is the latter point, not the former - the bit about the Wilderness and the Devil, rather than that Jesus had been baptized and was full of the Spirit.

the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Jesus does not begin his Wilderness journey empty handed; Jesus enters the Wilderness of Temptation with the consolation of God’s love draped about him like a Mantle.

The contrasts are striking - baptismal waters/dust and desert of the soul. Certainty of identity/to uncertainty and confusion of identity.

The heavenly voice of love and affirmation verses another “kind” of voice. It is a voice that is old and familiar in the world. A voice that strikes at the heels of those who seek to walk in God’s paths. It pinches the heart.

This voice corners the mind. It is a crafty, clever voice the writer of Genesis tells us. Its vocabulary is limited to all that is delicious, forbidden, and tempting. This voice belongs to one who twists, rather than straightens, the paths of the Lord. It is more dangerous than argument, more dangerous than open dispute, mor dangerous than simply asking reasonable questions, because THIS voice of the Wilderness would turn and twist the heart and soul, the life, of a person.

Its aim, if you might call it that, is a divided conscience, a divided heart, a divided Kingdom - ultimately our own separation from God. And Jesus goes out to meet him, or to be fully inclusive, him or her.

We call this one the angel of light, the tempter, the mother and father of lies, diabolos - the adversary. The devil is our adversary because that is exactly what he relies upon to make a case: adversity, antagonism, producing nothing, living only in reactivity to God’s goodness, the devil is forever the equal an opposite reaction to God.

The devil’s only real tools are counterfeit and suspicion. His gold may always be something beautiful, but it is always fool’s gold, an imitation of the real.

Temptation has been this way from the beginning - taking a truth and twisting it at its heart: “You will not die,” this voice tells Eve, “for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil . . .” . . . can you REALLY trust this god of yours . . .perhaps he is keeping something from you.

That is why the snake is not upright. Traveling upright, in openness, in transparency, are what the diabolos fears, because then he is defenseless. He or she must always hide in darkness, speak with half-truths, waiting to be the opposite reaction to God’s action.

This is what Jesus goes out to meet. Jesus is given three opportunities to make unholy compromises, trading what is real for what is counterfeit. The Catholic writer Henri Nouwen summarizes them as the temptation to be relevant, powerful, and spectacular. Each temptation that Jesus faces is really only one invitation from the devil - the invitation to become a counterfeit messiah, to become an “almost but not yet” beloved Son with whom God is well pleased.

Become relevant Jesus - fill your empty belly and their belly with bread.

Become powerful Jesus - just nod your head in my direction - and I will give you kingdoms on earth.

Become spectacular Jesus - mesmerize them - give them candy for their imaginations, show them you are God’s beloved Son.

Jesus remains the beloved in each of his temptations, not forgetting who he is, or whose he is. Jesus is the one who finally places his heel on the old snake’s head, discovering that God’s consolation will indeed sustain us in our desolation. The waters of baptism overcome the dust of our Wilderness.

Jesus goes into this wilderness for each of us; he is not overcome, so that we might not be overcome in our own temptations. The end of each of our own journeys with God are not contained in this world. There is a doorway which stands open between worlds forever. There is something eternal marked in our dust. We make a sign of this mark on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday, when we take dust and mark a cross on our foreheads; this is essentially what Jesus went out into the Wilderness to do. To make his mark amid all that the world and the adversary would throw at us to have us turn away and be separated from God.

It is his cross that stands through the dust and the temptation of time. Jesus goes out into the wilderness to make the mark of what is real in the midst of what is counterfeit.

So that when we stand in the face of temptation, we are not alone, we are marked men and women, we are claimed by what is real and eternal . . . with him “we are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.”