(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for The Temptations, originally shared on February 22, 2021. It was the ninety-second video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
Do you think that Lent is a dark season
about keeping random rules out of a fear of punishment? Think Again. Today we
will consider the victory that Lent points to, and how we can live in its
light.
It’s been said that many people feel that
the music that was the best is the music that was popular with their group in
their youth because listening to it brings back memories and makes them feel
young. Be that as it may, I think that The Temptations is the best R&B
group in history, and that their greatest album is a tossup between The
Temptations’ Greatest Hits and The Temptations Sing Smokey. There. I’ve said
it. Let the disagreements fly.
We are now past the First Sunday in Lent,
the 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter that focus on introspection and
sacrifice. Garrison Keillor, who wrote and spoke of the fictional Lake
Woebegone on his radio show A Prairie Home Companion (of which it has been said
that that if you think A Prairie Home Companion is a documentary, you might be
a Lutheran), once said that, “For Lutherans, every day is Lent.”
I suppose that he might have meant that many
Lutherans are notorious for a certain reserve. I hope that it also means that
Lutheran are known for a focus on the cross, the death of Jesus who was fully
God and fully human, for the salvation of the world, that we were given the
means by which to receive the gift of faith, a living relationship with the one
true living God through grace of God, without any achievement of our own at
all, the major themes of Lent.
The First Sunday in Lent features a Gospel
reading about Jesus at the beginning of his public ministry and the temptations
by Satan that he faced in the wilderness to give up the road to the cross and
ease into a more comfortable life instead. This year, it was the version from the
Gospel according to Mark, the 1st chapter, starting at the 9th
verse:
*Mark 1:9-15
I shared a cartoon by Cuyier Black last week
that I had found online. It showed a woman wearing a headscarf reading a note.
The caption said, “It sure wasn’t easy being the mother of Jesus…” The note read,
“Dear Mom, Gone into the wilderness for 40 days to be tempted by Satan. Don’t
worry! xo J.”
I suppose that wouldn’t be easy. Neither is
resisting temptation.
I saw a bumper sticker once that said, “I
can resist anything but temptation.”
I suppose there are some people like that
who have no moral core, no sense of civic responsibility, no desire to act in
response to the love of God in Jesus Christ shown on the cross.
Like the pastor who needed to keep an
appointment to visit to a member of her congregation before her church
council’s meeting but could only find parking in a red zone outside the
member’s apartment building. She parked there and put a note under her
windshield wiper that read, “I’ve been driving around the block for 12 minutes.
Please don’t give me a ticket. If I don’t park here now, I won’t be doing my
job. ‘Forgive us our trespasses’.” When she returned to her car, she found a
ticket and a note that read, “I’ve been driving around this neighborhood for 12
years. If I don’t give you a ticket now, I won’t be doing my job. ‘Lead us not
into temptation’.”
But most of us, I think, want to live lives
that please God.
In the Small Catechism by 16th
century Church reformer, Martin Luther, Luther explains the phrase from the
Lord’s Prayer, “Lead us not into temptation” or “Save us from the time of
trial” with these words:
“What is This? or What does this
mean? It is true that God tempts no one,
but we ask in this prayer that God would preserve and keep us, so that the
devil, the world, and our flesh may not deceive us or mislead us into false
belief, despair, and other great and shameful sins, and that, although we may
be attacked by them, we may finally prevail and gain the victory.”
I heard about a woman who had read
*1 Corinthians
10:13, “No testing has
overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not
let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also
provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” And she said, “I
know that God won’t give us any more than we can handle. I just wish God didn’t
think so highly of me.”
We are going to pass 500,000 deaths in the
United States from the coronavirus today. A key model used by the University of
Washington predicts that there will be 90,000 more by June. And yet, people still go around without
masks, or practicing any of the well-known things that could easily lower that
number. And, with the return of the 700,000 doses of the vaccine to areas like
ours that had run out because of weather-related resupply issues, more people
will be tempted to let their guard down, and more people will die.
Luther once said that, “You cannot keep birds from flying over your head
but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair.” We can’t keep from
having thoughts that are contrary to the will of God, but we can keep from acting
on them or allowing them to change who we are. We get this power from the Holy
Spirit who strengthens us and shapes us. That’s why living water is used as a
metaphor for the Holy Spirit in both the Old and New Testaments. Living water
was a way to describe moving waters, like rapids in a river. It pushes things,
it powers things, it shapes things, and the Holy Spirit does all those things
to us, if we open our hearts, our true selves, to receive the gifts of God.
How does God preserve and keep us? The Bible
that points to Jesus Christ, and the Sacrament of Holy Baptism that makes us
children of God and Holy Communion that reminds us that we are never alone. Our
strength is God’s strength.
We have the means to resist temptation not
in ourselves, but in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, the person of
the Trinity, the one God, who is God’s ongoing presence
We are often tempted to rely on our own,
however. We all pass the tests that we write for ourselves, like the guy who
regularly brought donuts to the office, and ate most of them, until one day he
announced that Lent was coming, and he was giving up donuts. The day after Ash
Wednesday he arrived at the office with an arm full of donuts. One of his
coworkers said, “I thought you said you were giving up donuts for Lent.” The
many replied, “Well I was, but then on my way to work I was approaching the
donut shop and I prayed, ‘Lord, if giving up donuts is not your will, please
open a parking space for me in front of the donut shop.’” “So, there was a
parking space?”, the coworker asked. “Well, yes,” he said. “But I had to drive
around the block six times.”
Jesus did not yield to temptation. He
conquered it. In the letter to the Hebrews, the 4th chapter, starting
at verse 14:
*Hebrews 4:14-16
The Gospel lesson for last Sunday, the First
Sunday in Lent, that we read earlier is like a Gospel sandwich. The top layer
tells of Jesus baptism by John in the Jordan river, and as he was coming out of
the water “he saw the heavens torn apart”, and the Spirit descended on him like
a dove, “And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I
am well pleased.” Sight, touch, and heart. The whole Trinity was there, Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit.
The middle layer tells three things that
happened to him in his 40-day experience in the wilderness: tempted by Satan;
and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. And it tells us
how he got into this. Satan didn’t send him there, it first tells us, “And the
Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.”
The bottom layer tells us, “Now after John
was arrested, Jesus came to galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and
saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent,
and believe in the good news.”
Everything in this text points us forward to
the work of Jesus, the light of the world, who shows us who God is and how God
is disposed to us, on the cross. “For God so loved the world that he gave his
only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have
eternal life.” *John 3:16
We are not Jesus. We are the servants, not
the Savior. And we don’t always do the right thing. We don’t always resist
temptation. And sometimes we are doing wrong when believe we are doing right.
And sometimes we don’t know the difference, and other times we don’t care.
By our Sin, we are separated from God.
The Gospel, the reason it is literally good
news (that’s what the word Gospel means), is that we don’t need to get better
to be saved. To be saved we need a Savior. And we have one in Jesus Christ. The
paradox is that the more we depend on Jesus, the more we are formed to live the
life we are called to live, not because Jesus was strong, and has given us the
Holy Spirit to help us in our times of being tempted to throw it all away.
This final section tells us what to do. Jesus
says, “Repent and believe in the good news.”
That’s a great way to travel through Lent,
even when we are providing essential services, or are safer at home.
This Lent let’s make it a practice to spend
time in self-examination and show our appreciation for what God has done for us
in Jesus Christ at the cross in love for God and for one another. And, though
the temptations to give up the narrow way and follow an easier path may come,
let us be grateful that we are not alone. That we are never alone. That Jesus
fights with us, and that Jesus, the light of the world, has overcome!
No comments:
Post a Comment