Sermon Lent 1 2014

Genesis 2.15-17; 3.1-7

Romans 5.12-19

Matthew 4.1-11

Today Jesus is driven by the Spirit into the wilderness. This is just after his baptism, when the spirit descended like a dove and the voice from heaven proclaimed that Jesus was God’s Son, the Beloved. And immediately that same Spirit, the Spirit of God, drives Jesus into the wilderness. This is a place where there is nothing, where security and comfort are taken away. But this is God’s doing, because Jesus must depend entirely on God. This alone is the path of liberation that he follows, for and on behalf of all humanity.

The forty days that Jesus spends in the wilderness recall the forty years that Israel wandered after they were freed from Egypt. They too were brought out by the Spirit of God into the wilderness, liberated from their slavery, but leaving behind its security - the fleshpots, the onions and leeks that they hankered after. In the insecurity and uncertainty of the wilderness Israel wanted wanted food on demand, gods they could see and control, the golden calf that Aaron made. They failed the test. But Jesus now goes out into the wilderness in solidarity with Israel, and all humanity. He does not fail, and so is proved to be God’s Son.

In the wilderness there is nothing. Or at least, nothing comforting. There are stones. Vast empty spaces. Silence. God is in the wilderness, but God is not a thing. God simply is; we might say the wilderness is in God as much as God is in it. God is not something we can comprehend of control, not like the golden calf of the Israelites. 

The Devil also is in the wilderness, but the Devil has no existence of his own. The Devil is an absence, a parasite trying to suck in and destroy what is good. If all created things are good, then whatever is evil has no positive existence of its own, but is a diminution of the good that ought to have been. It may seem strange to say that the Devil doesn’t really exist, because the Devil is certainly real, and powerful. The Devil is like the vacuum that drives a hurricane: low pressure, an absence, at its centre, draws in the air from round about with destructive effects. 

But because the Devil only exists as a parasite on what is good, the Devil is deceitful. He has to present his absence, his furious emptiness, as an alternative good, to try to seduce humanity from what is truly good, which is God alone.

So in these temptations the Devil presents a false idea of God (and therefore of being the Son of God), to see if Jesus will fall for it.

The first temptation, command this stone to become bread. This is the temptation to self-sufficiency, I have all I need, I provide all I require, I’m in control, I’m not going to let go, I don’t need anyone else. It is the temptation to put ourselves at the centre, to make a god of our ego. 

But in truth it is God who is at the centre, God first, not me first. God creates and provides, and gives our being, entirely out of his own generosity. Everything we have is gift. So we don’t need to grasp and control. We do need to recognise our dependence. Letting go means opening my hands so that God can hold me, an act of faith and trust and worship. 

How easy it is to be taken over by the ownership and control of what we have or what we do. Lent, the wilderness, is a place where we can examine ourselves, and find out where we need to stop holding on, so that God can hold us.

The second temptation is subtle and cunning: throw yourself down from the temple, and God will send his angels to protect you. This is the most subtle false idea of god, because it seems to be talking about God. But actually the god who is being suggested here is a god of control, a god on demand, a god who does what we want. Like those golden calves of the Israelites. This is a spiritual power that we can manipulate - so although the devil talks about “god”, look who is still at the centre - me and my demands. 

The true God does not intervene on demand to arrange the universe according to our whims. The true God allows us our freedom, because he has created us in love, to be free to love. The true God is not a controller, but a lover. His will is our greatest good and our peace. In abandonment to Divine providence we will find all we need. But we have to be free to choose his will, to say, as Jesus will say in Gethsemane, not my will but yours. And there is our true freedom - the freedom to love. 

Today there is so much idolatry even among Christians  - the prosperity gospel and miracle cults abound on the fringes of Christianity, but even in the mainstream churches Christians can be bewildered when they pray for something that seems to them to be good and it doesn’t happen. In God’s will is our peace, and our prayer is first of all aligning ourselves with that will: Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done - before we ask for our daily bread. 

The third temptation, the offer of all the kingdoms of the world. This is the temptation to see the way the world runs as god, the supreme truth, the way that life should be ordered. Violence, injustice, oppression, exclusion, might is right. All of those echoing in fact the emptiness, the fury, of the Devil himself. The temptation is to accept this political reality of the world as the final truth. 

But the God of Jesus is the God who liberates, who is on the side of the victims of the world and its political structures. The Kingdom of God stands over against the Empires of this world. So we don’t have to collude with oppressive power and we can be called to make a stand against it - including in politics. Whoever says that the Church should keep out of politics hasn’t begun to take the Bible seriously. But also in the workplace, in the home, in our relationships - and recognising also the ways in which we ourselves oppress and exclude.

Jesus passes the tests. He recognises, and refuses, the false ideas of god presented to him. And therefore he is truly the Son of the true God. Jesus in these temptations represents humanity, and in him we are adopted as sons and daughters of God. We too are called to struggle with the same temptations, because we follow the path of Jesus, which is the way of being truly human. Unlike Jesus, we do not always pass the test. We are not without sin, but through forgiveness and grace we are called to continual conversion, to turn away from these false gods to the one true God.

Lenten fasting and abstinence is to help us learn to depend on God once again. Prayer is vital, rediscovering our hunger for God in our hearts. Without prayer fasting and abstinence are worse than useless, because they will simply focus our attention on ourselves, on what we are achieving. The discipline of Lent is about letting go of our self-obsession and desire for control so that we can learn to be God’s children once again.