Sermon "How Jesus Handled Temptation"
Rev. Lonnie Richardson
Sunday, February 21, 1999
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How Jesus Handled Temptation
There's a story about a forester named sam. Old Sam would be out chopping down the tree. You could hear him say one phrase: "Oh, Adam. Oh, Adam." Every time he hit that tree, he'd say, "Oh, Adam." One day the foreman came by and asked him, "How come every time you hit the tree, you say, `Oh, Adam?'" Sam said, "Because Adam, my forefather, sinned against God. God cursed him and said that he would have to work from that time on. So every time I hit this ax against the tree, it reminds me that if Adam hadn't sinned, I wouldn't have to work." One day his supervisor came and said, "Come here, Sam." He took him to his big, plush, palatial ten-thousand-square-foot mansion. He said, "It's all yours. You can live in it; you can do whatever you want. You've got a swimming pool, a tennis court, servants--everything. Everything in this house is yours. I'm giving it to you because I don't want you to struggle with that Adam mentality. I ask only one thing: don't lift up the box on the dining room table. Enjoy everything else in the house, be what you want to be, do your own thing, but that box on the dining room table, do not touch."
Sam said, "No problem. I can handle it." So Sam played tennis every day, went swimming, ate three meals a day. But after about five months, he saw that box. That bothered him. He wanted to know why, if he could have everything, that box was so important. He said, "No, I'm not going to touch it; I'm not going to jeopardize my time here."
After a year he had tried everything. He had gotten used to everything. There was nothing new anymore. There was only one thing new in that house, and that was that box. And so one day, when nobody was looking, he lifted up the box just a little bit. Out of that box ran a little, teeny mouse that hid, and Sam couldn't catch it and couldn't find it. The supervisor came and noted that the box had been lifted. He went to Sam and said, "Now Sam, I warned you. Go back out into the forest and pick up your ax and chop again." The next time the supervisor came by he heard sam saying, "Oh, Sam. Oh, Sam."
Can you remember the last time temptation pinned you up against the wall and dug its claws into your throat? No, I don't mean the Racine kringle you passed on this morning. Or forsaking Gilles or Kopps in a lenten discipline. I'm talking real, heart wrenching temptation so serious that to fail the test would lead to a disaster in your life.
Does anything good come from temptations? Temptations and wildernesses help adjust our perceptions of reality. Though temptations seem to be numerous, they all boil down to some basic categories. The ones Jesus faced are pretty familiar if you make a careful comparison to our own lives. Just like Jesus, temptations take our measure and force us to choose between what we say our priorities are and the rough roads we are really willing to travel on and pay the tolls for.
None of us has the power to make bread from stones. But we all share with Jesus that temptation to muscle the rest of the world into answering our immediate needs and wants. This temptation springs right from the illusion that we should never, never be uncomfortable. If we are, it is bad, and furthermore, it is someone or something else's fault.
The wilderness calls us to let go of the illusion and face reality on its own terms. When we don't, we yell at our families, criticize co-workers, and complain to our friends about the way things could be, should be or ought to be, according to us. We overeat or use drugs and alcohol to kill the pain of an inconvenient world. Some people really do "shop 'til they drop" so that they will not have to face the rocks in their lives which refuse to become bread.
If Jesus had gone down that road, his comments would not be hard to imagine.
"Darn it, I never asked to be the Messiah! I'm sick of rocks."
"If Adam had snacked less and gardened more, maybe this place wouldn't be so barren . . ."
Or, "It isn't my fault that the world is the way it is, why should I have to be the one to go hungry?"
How about Jesus at the pinnacle of the temple? How many times do we wish that something difficult in life could be easier, or that it could be over faster? Have you ever wished that life was like a good book and you could skip to the end to make sure everything turns out all right? One thing about jumping off the temple, it would have been a lot quicker than crucifixion. If the whole point was Jesus' death, one step into thin air would have been simpler than hours of suffering.
What about that fantasy that rattles around in the back of our heads about God protecting those who are good from all harm? We know from our own observation that it isn't true, but sometimes we wish it were. If Jesus is really the Messiah of God, he might wonder if God would rescue him by sending angels to play catch.
Angels rarely come in those circumstances. God does not seem to be in the habit of suspending the laws of the universe so that we do not have to live with the consequences of our choices. It was the same for Jesus. Therein lies the beauty of that phrase Jesus hid in the middle of the prayer he taught us: "Thy will be done." It makes real prayer out of lots of fond wishes.
So, finally, all the kingdoms of the world line up before Jesus for his inspection. All he has to do is worship what ought not be worshipped, mangle a few priorities. It seems pretty close to what he wants and yet, not quite. The truth is his faithfulness didn't get him what the devil promised. It may be that the devil could not have delivered it either, but that question, too, is for another day.
The final temptation is most important for us. Succinctly, this temptation challenges us to keep our focus on god and the faithfulness god invites us to. No matter how real what we term the real world is, no matter how pressing our most pressing concerns, we must look for God standing in them and behind them. No matter how convincing evil sounds, it does not have the last word. Evil cannot set the agenda unless we set God's aside.
God's one agenda is: love. Not, finally, our satisfaction, our convenience, or our safety. Not even the satisfaction, convenience, or safety of God's beloved son. Just love. "For God so loved the world..."
What we are finally to do is what we have been commanded by every messenger the holy one has ever sent. Jesus said it best, and it is how he handled temptation, "Love God with all that your are, and your neighbor as yourself. Love your enemies. Pray for those who abuse you."
Temptations will come. They will always show us the barren wildernesses in our lives where love is thin or perhaps non-existent. The wilderness will always ask us to face reality and make our response. Often, the process will feel evil to us. It will seem that way because the choice between our own preferences and the possibility of grace is so plain.
What is surely most impressive about the teaching of Jesus is that he is not concerned with explaining evil, it is assumed, but with overcoming it. For instance, the immensely powerful words of the Lord's prayer, "Deliver us from evil." This is the gospel we have to deliver - that "in Christ" we have a deliverer who by his crucifixion went through the worst evil any of us can know, and is alive today as the victor. This is what we have to declare and to demonstrate in word and sacrament and deed. The lord who teaches us to pray: "Deliver us from evil" is the one who can do it - both now in our worst agonies, and in the end when the victory will be complete. Amen.
