| |
Sermon
1st Sunday in Lent,
March 1, 2009 (Year B)
Stumble or Stand
The Rev. Robert B. Wood, St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church, Alpharetta,
Georgia
Temptation. Sin. Repentance.
Discipline. All themes for the season of Lent—but not for Lent
alone… and not themes for the Bible alone. Many stories of
temptation have been written besides today’s famous one of Jesus
being tempted in the wilderness by Satan. Some of those stories,
like today’s, are true; some are fiction but truthful to human
nature. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings, is among such books. All
three of that trilogy were made into movies a few years ago.
There is nothing explicitly Christian in Tolkein’s stories…as
there is, say, in the Chronicles of Narnia (with Aslan being the
Christ-figure who rises from the dead). However, temptations
that Christians often face are part of the deep fabric of
Tolkein’s stories…temptations like pride, envy, and gluttony.
As you remember, The Lord of the Rings has it’s hero, Frodo, who
is on a long, dangerous journey to destroy an evil ring. Galdalf
the noble wizard of the story, tells the ring’s story: it comes
from the dark Lord Saron, who crafted it with evil powers to
make him strong. In battle, the ring was cut from Saron’s
finger—but it still has an evil life of it’s own. The ring will
deceive its bearer into a destructive fidelity, control his or
her life, and force the bearer to reunite it with Saron.
Common sense might say, “Then get the ring as far away from
Saron as you can.” But Galdolf poses greater wisdom: destroy the
ring in its hometown, the volcanic pit in Saron’s evil
territory: Mordor. Translation: we have to face our fears and
temptations head on, not run from them. Thus Frodo is not spared
a difficult journey. Thus, for readers of Mark’s gospel—as well
as Luke and Matthew, Jesus is not spared the desert temptations
of Satan nor later the shame and pain of the cross.
Thus a church season called Lent—when Christians are not spared
a day like Ash Wednesday or beginning a service with a long,
long, long prayer about our sinfulness…when we have to face our
sinfulness head on—not run from it, but turn to address it—a
turning we call repentance.
We repent because we want to set things right, to be good, free
from sin. Whether you are teenager or an adult, that fight to
stay with the good is hard. Life is full of temptations and
tests. No human being, not even Jesus, has been spared the fight
with evil, the temptations, the tests of faith.
Something tells me we don’t know about all the tests and
temptations that Jesus had to go through in his earthly life,
but we know about the time he was led by the Holy Spirit into
the wilderness, where he met Satan head-on.
Mark’s Gospel doesn’t give us the detail of that temptation, but
Matthew and Luke’s gospels do. We hear from them that Satan
started with Jesus’ stomach. Not a new strategy for Satan. Adam
and Eve both had fallen to the temptation of attractive food,
and the Israelites whined about the manna in the wilderness. Why
wouldn’t Jesus fall for turning rocks to bread?
But Jesus understood that Satan’s question was really a decoy.
Just as with Adam and Eve and the Israelites, the test had
little to do with food and so much to do with fidelity. My first
loyalty is God. I die without God, not without bread. Try again.
In the second test, Satan tries to plant the seeds of self-doubt
in Jesus’ heart. “You really think you are the son of God? Prove
it to me….and to yourself—throw yourself down from the heights
of the temple. When you are saved by angels, you’ll know for
sure you are God’s beloved son. Go ahead, show me. If it’s all
true, what have you got to loose?
No, says Jesus. You are testing my fidelity again. It is written
that you shall not tempt the Lord your God. And another
thing—Jesus might have said….I have already made the jump from
heaven to earth. It is not my intent to be born up by angels,
but the bear sins of the world, the marks of violent hate and
rejection. I am here to show fidelity……fidelity to God and to
the people I have come to save.
“So you have come to save the world, have you,” Satan asks.
Then, taking Jesus to a high mountain, he shows him the kingdoms
of the world. “This is what you want, is it? I will give it all
to you—if you fall down and worship me.” Now Jesus sees what
Satan really wants—and has wanted all along: to be worshipped
and obeyed. To take over. Begone Satan, says Jesus: I will not
let you take over my life. I will serve God alone.
And here is the connection between Satan, sin, and the dangerous
little ring hanging around Frodo’s neck: they all want to take
over your soul, and they tempt you, fool you into serving them.
What are Satan’s temptations in our time? What are our dangerous
rings that need to be destroyed-- destroyed by facing them down
head-on? Destroyed before they destroy us.
I believe we are facing a time when the visible sins of greed
and gluttony have come pretty close to destroying us. And we now
need to see them for what they are, face them head-on, and
destroy them. Isn’t this recession fashioned by those two sins
of excess: greed—focusing on worldly or temporal things, and not
eternal things (like love, kindness, generosity).
Greed along with gluttony: wanting more, more, more—and not just
in terms of food. more clothes, more electronics, more
whatever…as long as it’s more! We are taught at an early age by
our culture to consume, consume, consume—that we are valued as
people if we have buying power, consumption power, and can show
it.
These are not new sins for the human race. A famous parable of
Jesus’ placed a gluttonous, greedy, well-dressed man and a table
filled with fine foods—while on his curb was a naked man,
starving to death, while dogs licked his sores. That parable was
about greed and gluttony—and their effects on the human soul:
indifference to the world and to people.
If you and I could reach into that parable, and get the rich man
to face down his sin, we’d have him take some food to the man on
the street so that he could eat. Or we’d have him take the
naked, wounded man and bring him inside, give him a bath, some
clothes, and have him sit down as a dinner guest. Bottom
line—let eternal things like kindness and mercy rule the day—not
greed and gluttony. There is enough to go around.
We are living a parable much like this one about the rich man
and the hungry wounded man because many are becoming homeless,
hungry, and wounded in this economic recession, and some of them
are you—some of them are people who used to sit at tables that
had more than enough food. Gluttony and greed have shown
themselves to be the self-destructive forces that they are.
We’ve over-extended ourselves, over-consumed, and we don’t know
where to turn.
In fear, we’ve turned to the government. But you know as well as
I do that the bail-out will not come from our government or big
business. The bail-out will come from us…not in taxes and
national debt, but from repentance…from facing down the
temptation to fix the situation by continuing the sin of big
consumer spending but instead to face down and destroy the sins
of gluttony and greed that got us here, to face them down by
becoming generous and kind and living within our means.
One of the reasons that Jesus and the church talk so much about
giving to others—
--sharing goods, not hoarding them--is that that discipline of
giving away 10% holds off gluttony and greed and reminds us of
people in need—so that we don’t create or become the poor
Lazarus on the doorstep, but so that we share, care, and give.
So even if or as resources become scarce in this time of
recession, even as you are face the fear of a changing economic
status, please don’t let the ring of greed and gluttony take
complete hold of you and control you.
Face it and your others temptations down, and, remembering all
that Jesus gave for us. And maybe, just maybe, this 40-day
season of Lent will be a journey that changes our hearts and
lives—not for a month and a half—but for a lifetime.
© Fr. Robert B. Wood. All Rights
reserved.
|
|
