What can we say March 9? Lent 1

   Deuteronomy 26:1-11, a text Gerhard von Rad dubbed a “creed” for the ancient Israelites, would work well to kick off Lent: we offer our first fruits, we give up what is precious, in recollection of God’s deliverance. Similarly, in Romans 10:8b-13, we’re invited to confess – but not your sins! Rather, confess that Jesus is Lord. Everything is different because of what God has done in Jesus – beautifully articulated by Fritz Bauerschmidt (in his marvelous The Love That Is God): “The words and actions of Jesus do not so much seek to tear down the walls of earthly kingdoms as to undermine their foundations so they will collapse under their own weight.”

   And so, in Romans, or in any Lenten text, we reimagine our relationship to everything. Bauerschmidt again: “When we expect the passing things of this world to bear the full weight of our love, they collapse under that weight, their own structural flaws revealed in their inability to bear that weight.” Jesus, therefore, was not much troubled by the contagion of sin, and so he easily and naturally befriended outcasts and sinners. His lordship can be vividly envision as (to cite Bauerschmidt one more time!) “love running forth in joy to embrace the wayward human race, journeying even as far as the place of death, and bringing humanity into the interpersonal, generative and joyful love that is the Holy Trinity.” The first place he ran was into the wilderness:

   Luke 4:1-13 is in a way an astonishing text to open Lent. It’s not about our sin, it’s not really about our being tempted (as in the thin, vapid sermon that might say We’re tempted like Jesus, so let’s resist the way he did!). It’s a story about how great Jesus is, how he became that Lord named in Romans 10. Luke 4 is my parade example (discussed in my The Beauty of the Word) of the way we mis-read texts in preaching. We make texts about us: my faith, my struggle, my serving, my doubts, my discipleship. But most texts aren’t actually about us. They are about God. Jesus did what you and I could never do, and that we (what a relief!) don’t have to do. Jesus isn’t our moral example, showing us how to combat Satan. Jesus is our Savior, for all the times, for all of life, when we succumb, when we drink the koolaid and fall for the devil’s wiles. This story should make us fall on our knees in awe. Jesus. Wow. What a Savior.

   In his wonderful The Whole Language, Father Gregory Boyle narrates his mother's final days, way past ready to go. She'd awaken in the morning, and after an exasperated "Oh for crying out loud," she'd fix her gaze on one or 2 or 4 family hovering nearby and say "You're here, you're here. Boyle wonders if the temptation narrative was really God saying tenderly to Jesus "You're here!" and Jesus not really knowing what to say in response but "YOU'RE here." "God meets our intensity of longing with intensity of longing. The Tender One whom we long for, longs for us. Maybe the desert is really a time to notice the notice of God."

   Luke sets Jesus’ ministry in the context of the political powers of his day: Tiberius, Pilate, Herod. Does Luke imply in chapter 4 that Satan is the source of their power? Luke’s genealogy of Jesus traces his lineage back to Adam. Luke 4 shows Jesus succeeding where Adam failed; with Paul in Romans 5:12-21, we see Jesus correcting and healing the Fall.

    Jesus, Luke alone mentions, is “full of the Holy Spirit.” He’s not beaming or having a titillating emotional experience. The Spirit, for him, stiffens his resolve to be at one with God the Father in the most arduous circumstances imagineable. And he’s not alone out there! The preacher might contrast solitude with loneliness. Jesus seems never to be lonely, although he’s often alone. Luke makes his solitude-ness explicit: the Spirit is with him, in him. When we are alone, we get lonely because we hear voices in our heads, negative messages… Preaching should make some attempt at comfort – while still fixed on the fact that this story is about Jesus, not us.

   It’s helpful for the preacher to describe the locale. Not a “desert,” like a stretch of sand with cacti. The Judean wilderness was a rocky zone full of cliffs and caves, with dangerous predators lurking behind every rock. A gravity-defying monastery clings to a cliff there, marking the traditional spot of Jesus’ testing. It’s a wilderness, again reminding us where Israel was tested (and failed). Again, Adam failed, Israel failed, we all fail. Jesus alone is our Savior.

   I love Nikos Kazantzakis’s image of Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ: every time young Jesus reaches out for pleasure, “ten claws nailed themselves into his head and two frenzied wings beat above him, tightly covering his temples.  He shrieked and fell down on his face.”  His mother pleaded with a rabbi (who knew how to drive out demons) to help.  The rabbi shook his head.  “Mary, your boy isn’t being tormented by a devil; it’s not a devil, it’s God – so what can I do?”  “Is there no cure?” the wretched mother asked.  “It’s God, I tell you.  No, there is no cure.”  “Why does he torment him?”  The old exorcist sighed but did not answer.  “Why does he torment him?” the mother asked again.  “Because he loves him,” the old rabbi finally replied.

   This devil is more sinister and sneaky than a red guy with a pitch fork. The devil’s greatest wile? To persuade us he doesn’t exist, or to dupe us into seeing the devil behind every rock. Thomas Merton spoke of “the theology of the devil,” suggesting that what the devil wants most of all is attention. Clearly, if evil is alluring, we should look to things that are beautiful, attractive, even appearing to be holy – and that’s where evil sets its trap for us, as it did for Jesus.

   After teasing Jesus to turn rocks into bread (after all, he’d been born in Bethlehem, the “house of bread,” and he was on his way to becoming “the bread of life”!), the devil fights 2 more rounds. Luke reverses temptations #2 and #3 from Matthew’s version. The offer of the kingdoms: I can’t talk about this without lifting up Tolkien’s marvelous Lord of the Rings, in which he quite wisely showed that the ring of power shouldn’t fall to those who believe they’ll wear it well; it must be destroyed for there to be peace and goodness.

   Jesus is taken (spiritually? in the imagination? or literally?) to the “pinnacle” of the Temple. Does Luke mean the southeast corner of the Temple Mount, looming 400+ feet over the Kidron Valley? How many televangelists, or even parish pastors, would indulge in a bit of razzle-dazzle? Henri Nouwen (in In the Name of Jesus) reminds us that we clergy fantasize about doing something impressive for God. Sometimes, I worry if I see in others (and in myself!) a kind of ambition to be somebody, to matter, to stride forward to validate self - in a religious cause, of course! But this is not God’s way.

  The devil quotes Scripture! And from this Sunday’s Psalm (91) – that the angels won’t let us fall. I’ve called this the devil’s favorite passage, since it speaks of God protecting us from harm. People experience harm, pain, loss – and believing thinly that the Bible promises God won’t let that happen, people just give up on God and don’t believe any more. Every time this happens, the devil smiles, thinking My favorite Bible passage brought down another one!

   The angels adored and worshipped Jesus – but clearly, in the end, they not only let his foot be dashed against those stones near the Temple. They let Jesus’ blood be shed, his body be pierced. This story points toward that day – as Luke adds the tantalizing, haunting footnote that once Jesus won round 1, Satan “departed from him until an opportune time.”

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