Genesis 2:15--17 & 3:1–7
Saint Matthew 4:1–11
It is good on this first Sunday in Lent to begin the season by thinking of our sinful pleasures.
One of mine, embarrassingly enough, was the television program Lucifer. It is seen now only in reruns and that may be a good thing because, in addition to be highly entertaining, each episode also contained one gigantic blasphemy after another. Some were so bad that even if I was watching alone I found myself looking around to make absolutely sure noone else was there before I buried my head in my hands.
Lucifer was based on a DC graphic novel {read: comic strip} in which the devil, Lucifer Morningstar, abandons his rule in Hades, and moves to Los Angeles and opens a nightclub. Somehow, he gets involved in helping the LAPD solve a murder and likes the job so much he wheedles his way into becoming a consultant to the department. {I told you this was a sinful pleasure!}
What intrigued me about the series was the way Lucifer was portrayed.
He was not a caricature of the devil. This Lucifer, as played by the Welch actor, Tom Ellis, is urbane, witty, more than a little bit of a rogue, and plays a mean jazz piano. He is also more than handsome. Walking down the street or mixing with the crowds in his night club one would never expect that he was the Devil of hell, prince of the underworld.
Only on occasion, when he wants to scare the liver out of someone, does he show them what he calls his “scary face” but, other than that, except for being a raging egomaniac, he is a charmer.
So charming is he that, when he wants to lure the truth or a confession out a crook, he looks them directly in their eyes and asks with a wry smile, “Tell me what it is that you want. What is it that you really, really want?”
The temptation story in Genesis tells us what Adam and Eve, and every human after them “really, really wants” and it is not something that be found in the fruit and vegetable aisle of your nearest green grocer. No matter how we have tried to render the story down to being tempted by a forbidden fruit hanging from a tree it is about much more than that.
Back in seminary, long ages ago, Donald M. Baillie, in his classic book, God Was In Christ, gave me this insight into what sin really is. He wrote:
In the story of Eden, the serpent says to the woman: ‘Ye shall be as gods.’ That is the temptation to which mankind has succumbed: we have put ourselves, each one individually, in the centre of our universe, where God ought to be. And when persons do that, it separates them both from God and from each other. That is what is wrong with mankind. That is original sin.”1
That is a constant struggle because what we want, what we really, really want is to be at the centre of our universe, to be our own gods.
As Dr. Fred B. Craddock reminded us: “a real temptation is an offer not to fall but to rise.”
It is important to keep in mind that a real temptation beckons us to do that about which much good can be said. {In Jesus’ case} Stones to bread – the hungry hope so; take political control – the oppressed hope so; leap from the temple – those longing for proof of God’s power among us hope so. The tempter in Eden did not ask, “Do you wish to be as the devil?” but, “Do you wish to be as god?” No self-respecting devil would approach a person with offers of personal, domestic, or social ruin. That is in the small print at the bottom of the temptation.”2
Adam and Eve gave into their desire to “be as god” Jesus is struggling with what it would mean for him to be about God’s business.
Adam and Eve gave into their desire to “be as god” Jesus is struggling with what it would mean for him to be about God’s business.
Since you are the Son of God,” the tempter kept asking in one form or another, “just modify your ministry ever so slightly so that the purpose of your life becomes your purpose, instead of God’s purpose. So you can be the kind of Messiah, the kind of Savior, the kind of God’s Son that the people can understand and get behind, might even follow with ease since it will demand so little of them.3
But we know, that people’s desires change. They demand one kind of leader one day and another kind of leader the next. What is in fashion today is out of fashion tomorrow. What satisfies on Monday may not satisfy on Tuesday. What we want one day we may not want the next.
Think about the bread business. Jesus did that once. He may not of used stones but he turned a few little loaves into so much bread that over 5,000 men, women, and children not only ate and were satisfied but had leftovers. That’s the attendance figure we all remember 5,000 plus.
This occurs is the 14th chapter of Saint Matthew’s Gospel, but did you know that in the very next chapter, Matthew 15, almost the very same type of miracle is recorded except that the crowd is only reported as being 4,000 or so.
Scholars have attributed this to all kinds of things – life, different circumstances or a different location. Some have suggested that it was a “scrivener's error” included twice when it was only meant to be recorded once. But what if it wasn’t those things at all? What if it was that this bread business only goes so far?
“What’s Jesus up to today?” the crowds might have asked.
And those who only came for dinner and a show might have replied, “He’s doing the bread and fish thing again. Been there. Done that. Let me know when there is something else on the menu.” And so those who didn’t see the reign and rule of God as being revealed in this miracle stayed home and waited for Jesus to do something more with something else. What they wanted, what they really wanted, was a full stomach and a fresh menu.
What Jesus told the tempter was true. “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”4 His ministry was going to have to be about more than what Luther called “belly miracles.”
For the third test, the Devil took him to the peak of a huge mountain. He gestured expansively, pointing out all the earth’s kingdoms, how glorious they all were. Then he said, “They’re yours—lock, stock, and barrel. Just go down on your knees and worship me, and they’re yours.”5
How many times have we seen people think this is really, really what they wanted while innocents have had to live with the consequences.
A year ago Friday, someone consumed by a desire to restore the “motherland” to its former glory – with the theological blessing of his archbishop no less – brutally invaded another country hoping to make that land his. He wanted the land he thought was his back and he was willing to sell his soul and sacrifice countless lives to get it. He put himself in the centre of his own universe where God ought to have been.
We’ve seen people in power – again aided by some righteous leaders in the church – almost drive our Republic to the brink because they thought that the office they held belonged to them and them alone. They wanted to be, if not the centre of the universe, at least the centre of attention. They wanted to be their own god’s in the place of God.
Or other leaders, some of whom wear crosses around their necks, who would use their platforms to divide us on the basis of race, creed, gender, ethnic origins, or sexual orientation in order to “play to their base” and the lesser angels of their followers. In so doing they became centres of the sound bite universe with one god-forsaken idea after another.
And what would Jesus say to these despots large and small? “Away with you.”6 “Get out of here.” “‘Beat it, Satan!’ And he would back his “rebuke with a third quotation from Deuteronomy: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and only him. Serve him with absolute singleheartedness.’”
Serving God with a single-minded, single hearted devotion was what Jesus really, really wants from us. And, as Father Robert Farrar Capon in a wonderful chapter called “Superman” in his book Hunting the Divine Fox reminds us, that the “messianic sign” that God decreed for Jesus is the cross. As Capon says:
We crucified Jesus, not because he was God, but because ... He claimed to be God and then failed to come up to our standards for assessing the claim. It's not that we weren't looking for the Messiah; it's just that he wasn't what we were looking for. Our kind of Messiah would come down from a cross. He would carry a folding phone booth in his back pocket. He wouldn't do a stupid thing like rising from the dead. He would do a smart thing like never dying.8
Lent reminds us that the deepest desire of our hearts, what we should really, want is to follow him. To discover again that his ways are far superior that all the ways the world could possibly offer. To remember that what Jesus did we could never do and that is to be our Saviour.
So maybe the question asked by the character from a crazy television show isn’t so far-fetched after all. When temptation asks us: “Tell me what it is that you want. What is it that you really, really want?”
Maybe our answer should echo the words of that old, wonderful spiritual: “Give me Jesus. Give me Jesus. You can have all this world, but give me Jesus.”
_______________
1. D. M. Baillie, God Was in Christ: An Essay on Incarnation and Atonement (C. Scribner's Sons, 1948), p. 204.
2. Fred B. Craddock, Luke (Louisville, , KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), p. 56.
3. Shannon Kershner, “Scene 1: The Wilderness.” Sermon preached at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. March 10, 2019.
4. St. Matthew 4:4. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]
5. St. Matthew 4:8-9. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, with Topical Concordance (NavPress, 2005).]
6. St. Matthew 4:10. (NRSV)
7. St. Matthew 4:10. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible. (Carol Stream: Tyndale House Publishers, 1971)
8. Robert Farrar Capon, in Hunting the Divine Fox; Images and Mystery in Christian Faith (New York, NY: Seabury Press, 1974), p. 91.
Sermon preached at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saint Luke
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMG13efcLGA
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