When
I was in my second year at seminary, our daughter needed to go to her high
school for an event. The night was a
Wednesday and the seminary always had a midweek service on that night. I wasn’t able to go, so my daughter and I got
in the car and I drove her to her high school. I wasn’t particularly happy
about that. I really wanted to go to the
service. On the way to the high school, we passed the seminary chapel where the
service was in progress. They were
reciting the creed. I heard them saying:
We
believe in God, the Father Almighty and in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord. All of a sudden, I understood the implication
of those words and I felt immediately connected to that congregation. The “we” included me and my daughter and my
wife and all of us who although not attending that service, were a part of the
faith. I have always remembered that
moment as a time of connection, a connection of my God to my life. My
reluctance to take my daughter where she needed to go disappeared and I was
again connected to my family, my seminary and my life.
Life happens, as they say. We need to do what is required of us, even if
it is sometimes inconvenient. Jesus
returned from the Jordan River where he had been baptized by John the Baptist
and was immediately led by the Spirit into the wilderness where he was tempted
by the devil for forty days. This wasn’t
particularly convenient for him.
Listening to the devil and his temptations must have been a harrowing
experience. But it was a very human
experience. You and I are tempted
constantly. Sometimes we give in to
those temptations and fall into sin.
That also isn’t particularly convenient for us because sin has
consequences. We also don’t always like
the consequences. This season of Lent is
a time for us to take stock of our lives and try to get back in tune with what
our God has in mind for us.
The thing about Jesus’ temptations
is that they were all things that he needed very much. The devil knew that he was hungry, so he
suggested to Jesus that he use his power to turn some of the stones into bread
so that he could eat. Jesus told him: One
does not live by bread alone.
He
then took our Lord to the top of a mountain and showed him all of the cities of
the world. He told Jesus that all of
these would he give to him, if only Jesus would worship him. Jesus answered him: Worship the Lord your God and
serve only him. The last temptation was to take Jesus to the pinnacle
of the temple and suggest that he throw himself down from the height and then quoted
Psalm 91 to him: that God would put angels in charge over him lest he strike his foot
against a stone. Jesus said to him: Do not put the Lord your
God to the test. The scripture says, having finished his tests, the
devil departed from him until an opportune time.
Nicholas Kazantzakis used this
moment in Jesus life as the inspiration for a book called The Last Temptation of Christ which was made into a great
movie. In this story, Jesus is on the
cross and is visited by a small girl who suggests that he can come down from
the cross and live a normal life. Jesus
almost in a trance because of the pain of the cross agrees, goes back to
Bethany where he marries Mary, has some children and begins to live
normally. He encounters Paul who says to
Jesus,
I really didn’t need you. I could have
done everything by myself. All
of a sudden, Jesus wakes up, back on the cross, still in pain, but knowing that
his destiny is to be exactly where he is.
He suffers his death for all of humankind and after three days, he rises
from the tomb and provides for all of us the proof of eternal life that God has
promised to us all.
That is what this season of Lent is
all about. We are not the Son of
God. We are not immune from the
temptations that come our way. What we
do have is God’s promise to us to forgive our sins and to receive us back, even
when we have strayed. That is the
certainty that we can always rely on, even when we have reached the
bottom. Jesus came to us not to make us
perfect, but to help us in our humanity.
That is what we all so desperately need.
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