After his baptism Jesus is tempted. After those special transcendent moments in our lives, we too are tempted. This is a transcription of a sermon I gave in 2013. Unfortunately the recording was not complete, so this is only the first half of the sermon. I do not have copies of any other sermons for the first Sunday of Lent in year C, but the first Sunday of Lent always looks at the temptation of Christ in the wilderness, so I am also including a sermon that I posted last year for the first Sunday of Lent as well.
1 Lent 2013
Transcribed from a
sermon given
By Rev. Valerie Ann
Hart
At St. Barnabas
Episcopal Church
On the First Sunday
of Lent 20013
Luke 4:1-13
Today on this first Sunday of
Lent we read about Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. He’s just been
baptized. He’s just had God or the Spirit, tell him that he is the son of God
that, he is beloved of God, that he is worthy and special in God’s eyes. Then
immediately after that the Spirit takes him out into the wilderness.
Last week we talked about the
transfiguration up on the mountain, and I talked a little about mountaintop
experiences and about how we can have these mountaintop experiences of the
presence of God, of knowing that we are indeed loved and special to God. But we
don’t get to stay on the mountain. We have to come back down into the valley
and go to work.
Well Jesus had the ultimate
mountaintop experience. Now theologians debate over whether he knew that he was
God’s son before his baptism or not but it is clear that there was something
about his baptism that changed him. Something about his baptism that made him
realize that he had a special calling from God and his ministry was
transformed. Whenever we have one of those profound experiences, or we feel
called by God, or we have a new understanding of who we are, it takes us a
while to figure out exactly what that means. Sometimes we have these mountaintop
wonderful experiences of God in our lives and then all of a sudden we feel like
we are wandering around in a desert. How can it be that I felt so good and so
close to God and now it is all so confusing? It is confusing because we have to
sort out what we are supposed to do now that we know that we are loved by God.
What are we going to do as we begin to see that God has given us special gifts?
How are we going to use them? What’s next? For Jesus this time in the wilderness
was a “what’s next” for him. Suddenly he had an awareness of immense power, so
he was tempted. All scripture has multiple meanings, that can be read in
multiple ways. One of the levels of reading scripture is looking at it as what
it says about our lives. What is the process that we go through in our lives?
So we have a mountain top experience and then we are confused or we are
tempted.
What were these temptations that
Jesus encountered? There has been lots of material written about that, about
what they represent.
The first one is he is tempted to
take a stone and turn it into bread. He’s hungry. He’s been fasting. He hasn’t
eaten for forty days. There is a stone and he has the power to change it to
bread. We know later on he was able to feed 5000 or 7000 people. He could do
that. The question was should he. The devil tempted him to take his power, his
enormous power for good, his power to feed people, and use it to feed himself.
Bread represents all those material things we need to survive. Bread represents
our food and water and shelter and clothing and all those basic survival needs.
The question that Jesus was confront was whether he to use his power just to
satisfy his own needs or was there something more in his calling. The question
for us has to do with the gifts that we have been given, whether it be that we
are strong and able to be a builder, or we intelligent and able to be a
professor, or we are a good leader and able to be a manager, or we are a great
cook and able to feed people. Whatever it is that is our gifts that we have
been given by God, are we to use them to take care of ourselves or are we to
use them to take care of others? Or probably better, how much can we focus on
ourselves and how much on others, because I certainly would think that God
would expect us to use our gifts to get food, shelter and the basic necessities.
We use the gifts of God to get a job that pays us so that we can have what we
need for our selves and our families There is nothing wrong with that. The
question is how much do we need. The question that we wrestle with, the temptation
that we wrestle with, is do we use our gifts only to satisfy ourselves. Do we say
that I am talented and God has made me wise. Or do we not even acknowledging
that it is from God and say that I am smart and am just going to use that to
get as much money as I can. Or that I need that security. Or that I need to
have this money in my bank account for my retirement. Or that I need to have a
new car. I need to have. I need, I want, I need.
For us temptation is not black
and white. It would be easy sometimes if it were. But temptation always looks
grey. There is always a reason to go with the temptation. It is easy to say, “Well
I deserve to have a little more.” Where is the edge? Where is that point? How
do we decide how much of our energy goes to satisfy us and how much for serving
other people? It’s hard. It is a hard discernment to make and it changes at different
stages in our lives.
The second temptation for Jesus
was to become king. The devil said to him “You can be king of all these worlds,
all these different people, and you can be the high king. All you have to do is
worship me.” But Jesus is already the king. But his kingdom wasn’t of this
world. Also the devil was offering a kingdom without pain, without having to go
through struggle and suffering, to just give it to him. So what does that
represent for us? What’s the temptation for us? There is a great desire in
human beings for power - to be the king. You remember in elementary school King
of the Mountain, there was a hill and somebody would get up on top of it and if
there wasn’t a hill it would be on top of the playground equipment or something
and say “I am the king.” And then you get into high school and there is all
that energy and jockeying into about who is the most popular. Who is the
strongest. Who has the most people in their group. And we see it in gangs today
where the gangs leaders are like kings. Right now I am reading the Game of Thrones.
My daughter is into it and said that I had to read them. Some of you may be
watching them on HBO. It is all about a land that is kind of like the middle
ages and the whole thing is about these different people who all think that
they should be king. And this whole class of people, these royalty, are
jockeying for position to see who is going to sit on which throne and who is
going to be in the great throne. Lots of people die in their wars, and all of
it is about who is going to be on what throne. The “game of thrones.” They are not
trying to become the king in order that they can bring justice to the land.
None of them seem particularly concerned about the poor or the everyday person.
And the people in the towns don’t really care who is king. They just want to be
left alone. But there is this whole jockeying for position. Who is the (the audio recording ends at this point).
1 Lent B
Sermon given on 2/16/97
By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart
At St Alban’s Episcopal Church, Brentwood
Mark 1:9-13
I
find the timing of Christ’s temptation in the wilderness very interesting. Here
he is, just having been baptized. He, as had many others, had come to this
strange person John who was preaching repentance, transformation, and asking
people to recommit themselves to God - to turn themselves over to the care of
God and symbolically acknowledge that commitment, that new way of life, with
baptism.
Jesus
must have in some sense recommitted himself to God. He offered himself to do
God’s will and showed that commitment through entering the water with John.
What he discovered was that he was so much more than he could have imagined
(now I don’t want to theologically argue about how self aware Christ was, none
of us will ever know for sure, but let’s assume for this day that his humanness
was showing.) What Jesus discovered, when he committed himself to God, was that
he was the beloved Son of God, and that God was pleased with him. And
immediately he went off into the wilderness and was tempted.
What
happens to us when we finally give up trying to do things ourselves, our own
way, when we admit that we are powerless, and we make a decision to turn our
will and our life over to the care of God. Well, the first thing we discover is
that we are so much more than we ever imagined, we are beloved children of God,
and then we find ourselves struggling with temptation.
It
is like a limousine that is being driven by a driver. For years the driver has
gone wherever he wanted. He choose which roads to drive, often he found himself
at dead ends because he had no particular place to go, or in a ditch, but he
continued to make decisions and learned to cope with driving. Then one day,
there is a knock on the window between the driver’s seat and the passenger
area. The driver discovers that not only is the owner riding in the limousine,
but that the owner has woken up and has now decided that he will decide where
the car will go. A great battle ensues over who will decide where the car goes
and what roads to take, how fast to drive, etc. In this image, the driver is
the ego - that sense of ourselves that is the decision maker. We all have an
ego, and it serves an important job. It drives the car, it makes practical
decisions, and it has learned to survive, to keep us alive, through the chaos
of our lives. But it has no destination. It just drives, so often it ends up in
dead ends, or off the road. At some point in our lives we wake up. Then our
higher self that longs for God wakes up. That part of us that knows what is
right and good and wants to return to a state of grace wakes up. Perhaps it has
taken an accident, a crisis, or we were awoken by a word from someone. But at
some point we decide that this driver, this ego, is out of control, is not
leading us to where we really want to go, and we attempt to reassert our
authority as the owner of the vehicle.
This
is equivalent to when we decide to turn our will over to God. We decide that we
will follow where God leads. BUT!!!
It
is not that simple. Often there is a feeling of relief and release as we offer
ourselves to God. We discover that we are loved by God and we yearn to follow
God’s will, BUT!!
Our
egos are in the habit of deciding where we go and what we do. In fact our egos
are just full of habits. And habits do not dissolve easily. We find ourselves
wrestling with ourselves. The better part of ourselves continues to turn our
will over to God; our habitual patterns keep popping up. The ego realizes that
if this newly awake owner really takes control, the ego’s control is over. The
ego feels like it will have to die. And one thing that our egos are good at, in
fact their purpose in life, is to stay alive.
Jesus
turned his life over to God at his baptism and then had to struggle with the
temptation to listen to his ego instead of to God’s will. And what a temptation
it must have been. To know on the one hand that you are all-powerful and could
rule the earth with the flick of your finger and on the other hand to know that
to follow God’s will would mean walking steadily to the cross.
A
commentator on this scripture wrote: “Temptation is made up of the illusion
that happiness can be found in anything less than God, and for something less
than paying the full price, which is ourselves.”
Christ
was tempted to take the easy way. Christ was tempted to follow something other
than God’s will, yet out of love, out of love for us, he choose his own death.
We
are tempted over and over again to follow our old patterns, our old habits. We
are continually tempted to think that we can find happiness someplace other
than with God. We are tempted to look for happiness in things (one more
purchase and I’ll really be happy) in relationships (when I find the right
man/woman then I’ll be happy) in addictions (just one more drink won’t hurt) in
work (with the next promotion I’ll be content) or in so many other ways. Yet
none will bring us the peace and joy we are truly seeking. That is only found
in God. But it is found at the cost of our own egos.
We
are tempted to think we can do it on our own, but we cannot be made whole
without first giving ourselves wholly to God.
I
am so glad that the story of Christ’s temptation is a part of our scriptures,
for it is so reassuring to know that I am not alone in facing the inner
struggle between the part of me that yearns for God, that yearns to give myself
wholly to God, and the part of myself that still insists on being “in control.”
And it is reassuring to know, that with God’s help, I can conquer those
temptations one at a time.
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