(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “The Plane Truth”,
originally shared on March 8th, 2025. It was the 349th video for our
YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my
wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
What scares us? And what gives us power over
fear? Today, we’re going to find out.
I’ve spent most of the past month passing
or, I should say, my body was trying to pass kidney stones. One got
stuck.
I’ve had surgery that took care of half of
them, and I’m recuperating from that surgery. I’ll be having the other half of
them removed in the coming months.
Not fun.
It’s been said that the pain of passing a
kidney stone is the closest thing a man can come to childbirth, though some
women say kidney stones are worse. If that’s the case, I’ve had around 12 kids.
And it wasn’t just hard on me. It was hard
on my wife and son.
Fear of pain can be an effective motivator,
if only temporarily, though I have to say that since passing kidney stones, my
pain tolerance has gone way up! 😊
This week, we will mark the first Sunday in
the Church’s 40-day season Lent as we always do, with a consideration of the
beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. A ministry that began in pain with 40 days
of fasting.
Forty days of fasting! Alone. In the
wilderness. Being tempted by the devil. And at the end of those 40 days he was
weak and he was famished. And then Jesus was tempted by the Devil hard!
That had to have been tough not just on
Jesus, but on his family as well.
Did he just leave them for 40 days? How did
they react? Was he OK? Where did he go? Was Mary afraid for her son?
I saw a meme a few years ago titled, “It
sure wasn’t easy being the mother of Jesus.”
Mary was reading a note that said:
“Dear Mom,
Gone into the wilderness for 40 days to be
tempted by Satan.
Don’t worry!
xo J.
But that wasn’t the most remarkable thing
about this event in Jesus’ life.
The most remarkable thing is what we learn
about it at the beginning of this reading, in Luke 4, verse 1-2a,
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned
from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, 2 where
for forty days he was tempted by the devil.
The Spirit led Jesus in the wilderness. And
he was tempted by the devil.
We lost an hour of our day last night, but
we didn’t lose power.
Jesus was not exempted from temptation but,
at the same time, the power of the Holy Spirit never left him.
I heard a Ukrainian soldier being
interviewed the on TV a couple of years ago. He said that morale is high among
the Ukrainian forces because they know what they are fighting for. Morale is
low among Russian forces, however, because they don’t know what they are
fighting for.
The importance of morale in life, as in
warfare, cannot be underestimated.
That’s why, as it’s often been said, the
first casualty in war is the truth. Sowing seeds of doubt, the big lie, and
disinformation are staples in all kinds of struggle. They are designed to
undermine an opponent’s will to resist.
They are at the center of the temptation of
Jesus by the devil in a text that will be read in the vast majority of churches
all over the world this Sunday, Luke 4:1-13. It starts with these first
two verses.
4 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the
Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, 2 where
for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those
days, and when they were over, he was famished.
Where was Jesus returning from? His baptism.
He had been baptized by John in the Jordan River and the Holy Spirit had
descended upon him. It had filled him and then led Jesus in the wilderness.
Matthew describes what happened from a slightly different angle in Matthew
4:1,
4 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the
wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
Either way, whether Jesus was led by
the Spirit in the wilderness or led in the Spirit in the wilderness,
Jesus does not find himself in the wilderness because of the devil. He’s there
in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. God is in control.
The devil begins with psychological warfare,
sowing the seeds of doubt, continuing in verse three.
3 The devil said to him,
“If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of
bread.” 4 Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One
does not live by bread alone.’”
The devil tries to promote uncertainty,
sowing seeds of doubt. “If you are the Son of God…” and he tries to tempt Jesus
at a point of physical weakness. Jesus has been fasting for 40 days, just like
Moses and Elijah had, representatives of the Law and the Prophets last week in
the Sunday of the Transfiguration Gospel lesson, and he was famished. I once
fasted for 3-days and by the second day, I was dreaming about food. Food would
have been a huge temptation. Any physical need is a huge temptation.
We are ofen tempted at our points of
weakness, when we have messed up and the devil says, “What a hypocrite! You
aren’t a Christian. Why pretend? Just give up!” That’s not the Word of God,
that’s the word of the devil. That’s the word of the forces that defy God. The
Word of God says, “I died for you. I overcame temptation, sin, death, and the
power of the devil, for you. You’re not OK, but I am. And I gave myself for
you!”
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, quotes
scripture, Deuteronomy 8:3,
‘One does not live by bread alone.’
We continue with the devil’s big lie,
starting in verse five.
5 Then the
devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the
world. 6 And the devil said to him, “To you I
will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me,
and I give it to anyone I please. 7 If you, then,
will worship me, it will all be yours.” 8 Jesus
answered him, “It is written,
‘Worship the Lord your
God,
and serve only him.’”
The devil promises to give what does not
belong to him. The devil is lying. The kingdoms of the world are Jesus’ for the
asking. Jesus responds with another quote from scripture, Deuteronomy 6:13.
‘Worship the Lord your
God,
and serve only him.’
Now the devil is tired of being shut down
with scripture, so he quotes some himself, to use plausible disinformation,
continuing with verse nine.
9 Then the
devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple,
saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 10 for
it is written,
‘He will command his
angels concerning you,
to protect you,’
11 and
‘On their hands they
will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”
12 Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord
your God to the test.’”
The devil’s words sound plausible, and he is
quoting scripture, from Psalm 91:11-12. But he is quoting it to serve
his own purpose and not the purpose of God. Jesus responds by quoting Deuteronomy
6:16, something we all need to remember,
‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’
I think of this section when people say that
they are not wearing masks in hospitals, or getting vaccinated, or washing
their hands or anything else because they trust in God to protect them.
It seems to me that they are putting God to
the test.
I believe that God does act in our best
interests, but in what form and by what means are not always clear to us. God
is God and we’re not. We cannot use God for our purposes.
The passage concludes with Luke 4:13,
13 When the devil had finished every test, he departed
from him until an opportune time.
Notice that the passage doesn’t end with a
surrender. The devil just goes away, “until an opportune time.” The devil will
be looking for a point of weakness or doubt, a way to exploit our fear and to
defeat us, but he has no power over us. Only God the Holy Spirit does.
Nothing can take us away from God, but the
forces that defy God, plus the world, and our sinful selves can deceive us to
tempt us to go away from God.
But if we do, if we yield to temptation, God
doesn’t give up on us. God calls us back.
We can be tempted, but the same Holy Spirit
that filled Jesus fills us and strengthens us to resist temptation.
I heard of a woman who said, “I know that
Jesus said that he wouldn’t allow us to experience any more than we could
handle. I just wish he didn’t think so highly of me.”
The good news about the temptation of Jesus
is that Jesus has overcome it everywhere, for us, even when we have not.
The victory over our failure has already
been won by Jesus on the cross, and we are filled with the Holy Spirit here and
now. The Holy Spirit guides us to be better people in response to what God has
already done for us.
Martin Luther, the 16th century
Church reformer, once said, “You cannot keep birds from flying over your head,
but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair.”
Lent is a time for reflection on that, for
turning away from those things in our lives that grieve God, and for living in
the power of the Holy Spirit, which wells up from within us, and opens our
hearts and minds to the presence and power of God in the Bible, in the
Sacraments, in ourselves, and everywhere around us, empowering us to be the
people of God. Especially in the wilderness of our lives.
I read about a man, once, who was afraid to
fly and who told a friend that people shouldn’t fly in airplanes because Jesus
wouldn’t be with them, and that it says so in the Bible.
“What?”, said the friend. “Where does it say
that?’
The man said that he couldn’t remember
where, but that he knew it was in there someplace and that he would find it!
Weeks later, they ran into each other and
the man triumphantly quoted the words of Jesus in Matthew 28:20, the
King James Version translation, “lo, I am with you always.”
I imagine that there are some people today
who have also been wondering about whether they should be flying in airplanes.
In the past couple of months there was a
collision between a Blackhawk helicopter and a passenger jet coming in for a
landing in Washington D.C. It was the
first commercial passenger airliner crash in the United States in 16 years, the
longest streak in American aviation history, but it was soon followed by the
crash of a medical transport plane in a residential neighborhood in
Philadelphia.
Then, a DC-10 passenger jet flying from
Minneapolis to Toronto crashed upon landing and flipped upside down! I heard
that a man who was at the airport in Toronto soon after that crash was about to
leave on another flight, got to the gate, and said, “Nope!”, and he turned
around. He couldn’t get on the plane. He was afraid.
And since then, there have been a slew of
smaller plane accidents and near misses.
And yet, I saw on the TV news that there
were 4.5 billion miles of air travel last year and 700 fatalities. The most
dangerous part of air travel continues to be the drive to and from the airport!
That’s the plane truth.
People seem to be more likely to be fearful
when they see an immediate danger, however, even though the risk is very small
over time.
On the afternoon of May 25, 1979, a
McDonnell Douglas DC-10 flight from Chicago O’Hare to LAX was taking off from
runway 32R when its left engine fell off the wing, causing a loss of control.
The passenger airliner crashed about 4,600 feet from the end of runway and 273
people died: all 258 passengers and 13 crew members on the aircraft and two
individuals at the site of the crash. It was the deadliest aviation accident in
U.S. history.
I was on the next DC-10 passenger aircraft
flight from Chicago O’Hare to LAX the next day. The wreckage of the previous
flight was still on the ground.
Everyone was calm, though, as we boarded the
plane and stowed our carry-on luggage. Everything felt normal. There was no
tension in the air.
We heard the flight instructions, buckled
our seatbelts, and the plane took off on the same route as the previous flight.
Then, as we were ascending and as we flew over the site of the crash and could see
the wreckage, we hit an air pocket, and the plane suddenly dipped!
A man in a seat directly in front of me lost
his control and yelled, “We’re going down!”
I think that most people, including me,
could feel the tension rise in the cabin. And then we leveled off. And then we
were fine. 😊
We are most afraid when we are out of
control, when we don’t know where we are going, or what is true, or what is
real life.
We are least afraid when we know Jesus, who
said in John 14:6,
6 Jesus said to him, “I
am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except
through me.
We are least afraid when we know that, in
this life, direction, truth, and life itself aren’t propositions, they are a
person, and that that person is Jesus. That’s the plain truth.
It’s Jesus!
It’s been said that the words “don’t be
afraid” or “fear not” or their equivalent appear 365 times in the Bible, one
for every day of the year, because though we may sometimes be afraid, faith
overcomes fear.
Our Gospel text reminds us what to do when
we are tempted to think that we aren’t good enough, that we haven’t done
enough, or when everything that is good seems to be falling apart, and that
there is a way that is better than Jesus.
Jesus was tempted at his greatest point of
weakness, yet he replaced fear with faith, not to give us an impossible
standard for living, but to show us that though we can’t depend upon ourselves
for our salvation, but we can depend upon him, especially when we seem
to find ourselves, estranged, in the wilderness. As Paul writes in Hebrews
4:14-16,
14 Since, then, we have a
great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God,
let us hold fast to our confession. 15 For we do not have a
high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one
who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let
us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive
mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
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