Getting started on the right foot
Commentary
We now set sail for Jerusalem, the events of holy week, and the hope of Easter morning.
There is the old New England story of the farmer that, in giving driving instructions to
the flatlander, informs them that they can't get there from here. The story's humor
revolves around the absurdity of such a statement. Of course you can get there
from here. However, as I have watched the changing of the guard on Parliament Hill in
Ottawa, Canada, I have noticed that before they actually begin there has to be a lot of
shuffling and rearranging of ranks. In their case, if they do not start off on the right foot
from the right place, they will not wind up where they need to be. Lent is more like the
changing of the guard than like the story of the New England farmer.
Each of these texts helps us to identify where we begin our Lenten journey. They help us begin at the right place so that we can come out at a good place and be ready for the good news of Easter.
The text from Deuteronomy gives us our Jewish roots as the starting point for our journey. It is a good place to begin. Often, the Lenten journey has wound up in the bad place of anti-Semitic charges of Christ killer and hideous readings of scripture that imply that the events of Holy Week will not only leave Judaism behind but will leave many Christians with a false sense of superiority regarding the Hebrew's story. If this is where we end up then we certainly have gotten off to a bad start.
The lesson from Deuteronomy reminds us that we cannot get a grasp of what God is setting before us without coming to terms with what the journey has meant up to now. If this is what God has been up to in leading us in the past, then the journey ahead is about more than individual salvation or personal immortality.
The letter to the Romans proclaims that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. As part of the journey, it invites us to consider having our destinies tied to people of different customs and habits. Though the Lord may not make distinctions, we certainly do. If the starting point is that Jesus is Lord then we are in for quite a journey. The Gentiles are a pretty broad and diverse category of people. If we begin with the lordship of Jesus the engrafting of people can lead in many directions. However, if we do not begin with this lordship of Jesus then we may not arrive at the place God intends for us.
The gospel lesson tells the tale of how Jesus' journey began following his baptism. You hardly catch your breath and Jesus barely comes up out of the water when he is plunged into the desert: tempted by the devil, hungry, and on his own. Can you get there from here? The truth is that we often wind up in the wrong place because we have not started with our real hungers and we have often wrongly tried to satisfy them. We often wind up out of step with each other, because the steps that we have taken to get power, security, and prosperity are taking us seriously off target on our journeys.
Each of these texts raises the issues of where is the beginning point in my journey, and with whom do I share the journey? I believe if these questions are our starting point in the Lenten pilgrimage then we have an opening to where God wants us to land.
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
The text suggests that our starting point in the journey is "the land that the Lord your God has given you." My traditional faith upbringing tells me the starting point of Lent is my personal sins and what I have given myself over to that is blocking my relationship with God. This text seems to be quite a broad and expansive concept to be part of our Lenten luggage. However, the starting point in arriving at the place God wants us to be is the realization that land has been given as a gift. The starting point is asking, "Has the gift generated appreciation, gratitude, sharing a sense of abundance?" The starting point may be that land rather then being treated as a gift, becomes something to be fought over. We have been given a place but many are homeless, or do not feel at home because they need more than 30,000 square feet of living space. We have land issues.
The text makes clear that we were plucked from obscurity by this gift of land. By God's action, we have become a people with a history. Once we were only singular, a wandering Aramean, but by God's action we have become communal with dreams to share and visions to work out and a story to live out. But something happened in Egypt that happens to all who become communal. We become national as well as communal. As part of that system, as run by the Egyptians, we become enslaved to brick making. Education becomes about the number of credit hours you have to have and the letter grade you get. Medicine becomes mountains of paperwork and number of patients seen. Security becomes more about how high walls can be built rather than how contacts across borders can be made.
More and more bricks are on order to build the edifices of empires but the love of learning takes a backseat. The first brick is put into place by admission to the right preschool which will enable you to matriculate at the right private school and so advance to Skull and Bones at Yale or its equivalent. Healing begins to be second fiddle to cost effectiveness. Taking care of business becomes more important than taking care of yourself or of souls as we work longer hours and give up more vacation time.
That can happen to you in Egypt. By its very nature that is what Egypt and Egyptian thinking can do to you. The next thing you know you are enslaved to the notion that life cannot be good without that 30,000-square-foot house -- more bricks, more bricks. The only reward, as the Hebrews found out, for being able to make more bricks, is the demand that you make more bricks. This is what has happened and does happen to us when we live in Egypt.
The story is not all about us. "The Lord, the God of our ancestors, the Lord heard our voice and saw our afflictions." It does not say that this voice was one of prayer. It is not a voice that has gotten its theological i's dotted and t's crossed. It is not a voice that is even directed to God or one that speaks only with one accent. Yet, God hears this voice. At the starting of a Lenten journey, I realize my need to repent for not speaking in this voice. We often try to fancy up our situation with theological language that we think will capture God's attention. The good news is that we already have God's attentiveness; we need only speak in a voice that reflects our genuine anguish.
What is also good news is that God will act on what God sees and hears. This is our story as well. There have been signs and wonders: walls do come crashing down, apartheid and segregation end, empires do not hold on forever. This is good news for the poor, for the poor unfortunate who have gone down to Egypt to make their fame and fortune, and for all who are good and tired of making bricks. It is very bad news for those who are building their towers like Babylon, or requisitioning more bricks for walls.
Romans 10:8b-13
Confessing that "Jesus is Lord" is one of the hardest things to do as I consider the starting place of my Lenten journey. As I consider Calvin's understanding of Jesus in his Institutes of Religion, I find it much easier to confess Jesus as prophet or priest than king. I feel comfortable with the first two roles no doubt because they spring directly out of specific religious connotation. I can see myself in the role of prophet speaking truth to power. I can understand one of the fundamental roles of ministry as priests mediating the presence of God through the rites and rituals of the church. That is as far as it gets. I have real trouble with identifying with the lordly virtues of kingship. I look at the assortment of modern possibilities for naming Jesus and the ones that come to mind feel pretty comfortable: wisdom teacher, therapist, visionary, marginal Jew, and so on. They all have their appeal. However, when it comes to what Paul writes to the Romans I can feel the mental and spiritual breaks screeching as my faith understanding heads for a derailment.
It is a role that I am uncomfortable giving to Jesus and one that I am uncomfortable taking in ministry. I like Jesus as friend, I like to be friendly. I like Jesus as helper; I like to be thought of as helpful. I like to think of myself as a prophet of justice and I like seeing Jesus in the same way. I even graduated from a seminary, Lancaster Theological Seminary, that had the nickname "The School of the Prophets." It never ever occurred to anyone that the nickname "School of the Lords" would be appropriate.
Perhaps, however, the starting point for my Lenten journey is the realization that I need to pay attention to what Paul is saying here. Certainly in the Roman world, saying that Jesus is Lord is quite a claim. In our world, making this claim is no less vital. It is not just a claim that challenges Roman gods, it also challenges a world where many would make a god of the free market or anything else that would satisfy human wants.
Theologically, I am comfortable with the Jesus who says that he "stands at the door and knocks" and if anyone would let him come in, he would dine with them. However, I am less sanguine about the Jesus who ignores locked doors, who comes and barges right in and stands in the midst of the disciples after Easter morning. The Jesus who cannot be barred in the exercise of his lordship is, I suspect, somewhat threatening. The Jesus watching and waiting until we are ready is appealing to most. There is hardly a church that could not find in its church building somewhere an artistic representation of these words from the book of Revelation. However, it seems somewhat harder to find any painting or sculpture of the Jesus who comes into the midst of the disciples despite their attempts to wall outside the external world.
I, too, wonder if my discomfort with this role for Jesus is really my discomfort with this role in ministry. Where does authority arise; how should it be exercised? Do other factors pretending to lordship creep into our lives so that we find ourselves serving false masters? One wonders what would have happened to the recent sex scandals among clergy if the churches had responded, "No one who believes in him will be put to shame."
Paul says it is not adequate to make the statement, "Jesus is Lord" only in one's heart. Putting it on your lips has a way of making it real in a way that keeping it inside does not. Putting it on the lips makes it a matter of conversation. No one should offer obedience without some conversation with those who find the concept of kingship and lordship difficult and offensive in their experience. The starting point of my Lenten pilgrimage is in part repentance for not having been more of a part of that conversation.
Luke 4:1-13
He is in the wilderness or the uninhabited place. It is usually in such places that these temptations come at us. However, the kind of temptation that Jesus struggles with seems alien to us. Does it really boil down to this way or that way? In making our life choices, we usually have to balance one interest after another. Can we see where the devil is coming from in this case? Is there not a case to be made here on his behalf? After all, if we could turn the world's stones into bread, we could make quite a dent in world hunger. Is there not a place, despite all the moral compromises involved, for taking charge with authority and power in the world? Is not one of the chief complaints against the peacekeeping capabilities of the United Nations that the UN is nothing but a well intentioned, weak ineffectual presence in the world? One can certainly make out the case for Jesus being protected from certain death at least for what turned out to be his short life. Wouldn't it have been wonderful if Jesus had been around long enough to keep on as teacher and offering all those wonderful stories? If he had been protected from death if only for a bit longer would we not have had some answers for all those thorny questions that can get raised in confirmation classes? Would it have hurt for just a few more miracles to become the occasion for the miracle of more people coming to faith? There is a case to be made for the devil here.
The problem here is that no matter how eloquently the case can be made, it cannot be squared with the spirit that has filled Jesus soul, the scripture that falls from Jesus' lips, or the worship that Jesus spirit offers. When I yield to temptation and find myself off course from where God wants me to be, it is the result of failing to make these things the center of my being. Having made most of the headway in my life through using my brain, I am only more than ready to listen to well-reasoned arguments even if they come from the devil. Indeed only when I find myself beginning to listen to devilish arguments do I realize how I have wandered from what ought to be the starting point of my life.
Of course, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could turn stones into bread. However, the problem in the world is not that we do not have an adequate supply of bread. The problem is that we do not have a distribution system that faithfully shares the abundance we do have. The devil has conveniently left this out of the equation. Shall Jesus turn just enough stones into bread to satisfy his own needs? Such basic selfishness seems part of the world's problems right now. Shall he make enough bread from stones to satisfy the world's problems while leaving the distribution network to the devil? That, too, seems to be part of the world's problems as too many have too little, too few have too much, and the price on the wrapper that goes around the bread is more than the farmer gets for the wheat that goes into the bread. If your soul is set on the Holy Spirit, if a knowledge of scripture is at your fingertips, and you engage in holy worship you tend to pick up on these things.
Of course, all the kingdoms come at a price. All you have to do is to stop worship as we know it and everything will be fine. All you have to do is to no longer make daily bread the aim; stop praying, "thy kingdom come." Make sure that those who trespass somehow into your territory know about it in no uncertain terms before you even think of owning up to the number of times you have trespassed against them. Would any of the kingdoms of the world be worth very much if we lived in a world like that? People who are up on their scripture know these things; people who walk in the spirit see through this offer.
The final temptation offers thoroughgoing protection from all of the exposure that the rest of the world has. Of course, thoroughgoing protection will result in complete disconnection from the reality of life as the rest of us experience it. Who would want to go and worship at that altar? It is tempting to be super human but the promises of God come to a head in the one who is fully human -- Jesus the Christ.
People who are filled with the Spirit, have the words of scripture at hand, and who know what right worship is pick up on these things as the starting points for their lives.
Application
Saint Paul wrote that we should run the race that is set before us. A good part of the battle is getting to the starting line. A few years ago, when I ran my first 10k race, I learned what that meant. In the race that is set before us, there are no shortcuts and no getting there without getting to the starting line first. This would seem rather obvious until you realize at Lent how easy it is to wander off the course from the start.
My faith journey is rooted in the sad story of a people who are called out and made a community by the gift of God. Yet, they cave into the temptation of living the "Egyptian" lifestyle. My faith journey begins with the knowledge that God hears their complaints and our complaints when that happens. In my reluctance to give Jesus lordship as much a starting place as his friendship, I wonder how far off course I have become. No doubt about it, reason should be one of the supports of faith, and a faith that defies too much reason can be off the mark. Yet, I wonder how vulnerable I become to temptation when reason -- more than right worship, more than the right relationship to the Holy Spirit, and more than the righteousness of God made known in scripture -- is my first line of defense.
Lent invites us to ponder these questions in order that we may find ourselves on course for the good news of Easter.
Alternative Application
Romans 10:8b-13. All my life I have seen signs that say, "Jesus saves." What is behind the signs means many things to many people. There seems to be near unanimity in agreeing with Paul that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved -- whatever that may mean. I must admit that I come from a tradition that has some skepticism in regard to that language. Putting a sign on the front lawn of our church to the effect that "Jesus saves" would get the phones in our congregation and community buzzing.
We have in the lectionary texts the recitation of great saving moments in the history of the Hebrews, which they owned and celebrated. It might be quite a sermon to celebrate just what have been those times in the life of your congregation when you felt that the "Lord had heard your voice and saw your affliction and acted to free you from bondage." It might make quite a beginning to Lent to gather in stories from church members as to when they have felt such times in their lives, and share that testimony with the entire congregation.
It seems particularly true in the kind of New England mainline Protestant church that I serve that we need to repent of not telling and sharing these stories. We are particularly vulnerable to devilish temptations when we do not have a narrative that tells our history of salvation experiences.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
This psalm represents a real struggle for most people. Simply put, the psalmist is positing that if you trust enough in God, no evil will befall you. At the risk of contradicting scripture, let it be said that even the most simple among us know this to be false. The world is full of good God-trusting people who have fallen victim to evil. From innocents who happen to be in the path of a bomb dropped from 20,000 feet to the millions around the world who succumb to the AIDS pandemic, the innocent do perish no matter how much they trust in God. Certainly, as Christians, we know what happened to Jesus who trusted God and went the distance to the cross.
No pastor worth his or her salt would ever let congregants believe that Christian faith amounts to an insurance policy against bad things happening. Yet here in this psalm, the faithful must contend with what was obviously a part of Jewish piety at the time that this was written.
Let it be said, instead, that the protection that the faithful receive from God is not safety from life's calamities. It is the security and sense of power that comes from the assurance that God accompanies the faithful through life's travails. Paul says it best in Romans.
What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
-- Romans 8:31-39
Indeed, our trust in God is not betrayed when trouble arrives. We are, instead, accompanied through these woes by a mighty Savior.
Each of these texts helps us to identify where we begin our Lenten journey. They help us begin at the right place so that we can come out at a good place and be ready for the good news of Easter.
The text from Deuteronomy gives us our Jewish roots as the starting point for our journey. It is a good place to begin. Often, the Lenten journey has wound up in the bad place of anti-Semitic charges of Christ killer and hideous readings of scripture that imply that the events of Holy Week will not only leave Judaism behind but will leave many Christians with a false sense of superiority regarding the Hebrew's story. If this is where we end up then we certainly have gotten off to a bad start.
The lesson from Deuteronomy reminds us that we cannot get a grasp of what God is setting before us without coming to terms with what the journey has meant up to now. If this is what God has been up to in leading us in the past, then the journey ahead is about more than individual salvation or personal immortality.
The letter to the Romans proclaims that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. As part of the journey, it invites us to consider having our destinies tied to people of different customs and habits. Though the Lord may not make distinctions, we certainly do. If the starting point is that Jesus is Lord then we are in for quite a journey. The Gentiles are a pretty broad and diverse category of people. If we begin with the lordship of Jesus the engrafting of people can lead in many directions. However, if we do not begin with this lordship of Jesus then we may not arrive at the place God intends for us.
The gospel lesson tells the tale of how Jesus' journey began following his baptism. You hardly catch your breath and Jesus barely comes up out of the water when he is plunged into the desert: tempted by the devil, hungry, and on his own. Can you get there from here? The truth is that we often wind up in the wrong place because we have not started with our real hungers and we have often wrongly tried to satisfy them. We often wind up out of step with each other, because the steps that we have taken to get power, security, and prosperity are taking us seriously off target on our journeys.
Each of these texts raises the issues of where is the beginning point in my journey, and with whom do I share the journey? I believe if these questions are our starting point in the Lenten pilgrimage then we have an opening to where God wants us to land.
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
The text suggests that our starting point in the journey is "the land that the Lord your God has given you." My traditional faith upbringing tells me the starting point of Lent is my personal sins and what I have given myself over to that is blocking my relationship with God. This text seems to be quite a broad and expansive concept to be part of our Lenten luggage. However, the starting point in arriving at the place God wants us to be is the realization that land has been given as a gift. The starting point is asking, "Has the gift generated appreciation, gratitude, sharing a sense of abundance?" The starting point may be that land rather then being treated as a gift, becomes something to be fought over. We have been given a place but many are homeless, or do not feel at home because they need more than 30,000 square feet of living space. We have land issues.
The text makes clear that we were plucked from obscurity by this gift of land. By God's action, we have become a people with a history. Once we were only singular, a wandering Aramean, but by God's action we have become communal with dreams to share and visions to work out and a story to live out. But something happened in Egypt that happens to all who become communal. We become national as well as communal. As part of that system, as run by the Egyptians, we become enslaved to brick making. Education becomes about the number of credit hours you have to have and the letter grade you get. Medicine becomes mountains of paperwork and number of patients seen. Security becomes more about how high walls can be built rather than how contacts across borders can be made.
More and more bricks are on order to build the edifices of empires but the love of learning takes a backseat. The first brick is put into place by admission to the right preschool which will enable you to matriculate at the right private school and so advance to Skull and Bones at Yale or its equivalent. Healing begins to be second fiddle to cost effectiveness. Taking care of business becomes more important than taking care of yourself or of souls as we work longer hours and give up more vacation time.
That can happen to you in Egypt. By its very nature that is what Egypt and Egyptian thinking can do to you. The next thing you know you are enslaved to the notion that life cannot be good without that 30,000-square-foot house -- more bricks, more bricks. The only reward, as the Hebrews found out, for being able to make more bricks, is the demand that you make more bricks. This is what has happened and does happen to us when we live in Egypt.
The story is not all about us. "The Lord, the God of our ancestors, the Lord heard our voice and saw our afflictions." It does not say that this voice was one of prayer. It is not a voice that has gotten its theological i's dotted and t's crossed. It is not a voice that is even directed to God or one that speaks only with one accent. Yet, God hears this voice. At the starting of a Lenten journey, I realize my need to repent for not speaking in this voice. We often try to fancy up our situation with theological language that we think will capture God's attention. The good news is that we already have God's attentiveness; we need only speak in a voice that reflects our genuine anguish.
What is also good news is that God will act on what God sees and hears. This is our story as well. There have been signs and wonders: walls do come crashing down, apartheid and segregation end, empires do not hold on forever. This is good news for the poor, for the poor unfortunate who have gone down to Egypt to make their fame and fortune, and for all who are good and tired of making bricks. It is very bad news for those who are building their towers like Babylon, or requisitioning more bricks for walls.
Romans 10:8b-13
Confessing that "Jesus is Lord" is one of the hardest things to do as I consider the starting place of my Lenten journey. As I consider Calvin's understanding of Jesus in his Institutes of Religion, I find it much easier to confess Jesus as prophet or priest than king. I feel comfortable with the first two roles no doubt because they spring directly out of specific religious connotation. I can see myself in the role of prophet speaking truth to power. I can understand one of the fundamental roles of ministry as priests mediating the presence of God through the rites and rituals of the church. That is as far as it gets. I have real trouble with identifying with the lordly virtues of kingship. I look at the assortment of modern possibilities for naming Jesus and the ones that come to mind feel pretty comfortable: wisdom teacher, therapist, visionary, marginal Jew, and so on. They all have their appeal. However, when it comes to what Paul writes to the Romans I can feel the mental and spiritual breaks screeching as my faith understanding heads for a derailment.
It is a role that I am uncomfortable giving to Jesus and one that I am uncomfortable taking in ministry. I like Jesus as friend, I like to be friendly. I like Jesus as helper; I like to be thought of as helpful. I like to think of myself as a prophet of justice and I like seeing Jesus in the same way. I even graduated from a seminary, Lancaster Theological Seminary, that had the nickname "The School of the Prophets." It never ever occurred to anyone that the nickname "School of the Lords" would be appropriate.
Perhaps, however, the starting point for my Lenten journey is the realization that I need to pay attention to what Paul is saying here. Certainly in the Roman world, saying that Jesus is Lord is quite a claim. In our world, making this claim is no less vital. It is not just a claim that challenges Roman gods, it also challenges a world where many would make a god of the free market or anything else that would satisfy human wants.
Theologically, I am comfortable with the Jesus who says that he "stands at the door and knocks" and if anyone would let him come in, he would dine with them. However, I am less sanguine about the Jesus who ignores locked doors, who comes and barges right in and stands in the midst of the disciples after Easter morning. The Jesus who cannot be barred in the exercise of his lordship is, I suspect, somewhat threatening. The Jesus watching and waiting until we are ready is appealing to most. There is hardly a church that could not find in its church building somewhere an artistic representation of these words from the book of Revelation. However, it seems somewhat harder to find any painting or sculpture of the Jesus who comes into the midst of the disciples despite their attempts to wall outside the external world.
I, too, wonder if my discomfort with this role for Jesus is really my discomfort with this role in ministry. Where does authority arise; how should it be exercised? Do other factors pretending to lordship creep into our lives so that we find ourselves serving false masters? One wonders what would have happened to the recent sex scandals among clergy if the churches had responded, "No one who believes in him will be put to shame."
Paul says it is not adequate to make the statement, "Jesus is Lord" only in one's heart. Putting it on your lips has a way of making it real in a way that keeping it inside does not. Putting it on the lips makes it a matter of conversation. No one should offer obedience without some conversation with those who find the concept of kingship and lordship difficult and offensive in their experience. The starting point of my Lenten pilgrimage is in part repentance for not having been more of a part of that conversation.
Luke 4:1-13
He is in the wilderness or the uninhabited place. It is usually in such places that these temptations come at us. However, the kind of temptation that Jesus struggles with seems alien to us. Does it really boil down to this way or that way? In making our life choices, we usually have to balance one interest after another. Can we see where the devil is coming from in this case? Is there not a case to be made here on his behalf? After all, if we could turn the world's stones into bread, we could make quite a dent in world hunger. Is there not a place, despite all the moral compromises involved, for taking charge with authority and power in the world? Is not one of the chief complaints against the peacekeeping capabilities of the United Nations that the UN is nothing but a well intentioned, weak ineffectual presence in the world? One can certainly make out the case for Jesus being protected from certain death at least for what turned out to be his short life. Wouldn't it have been wonderful if Jesus had been around long enough to keep on as teacher and offering all those wonderful stories? If he had been protected from death if only for a bit longer would we not have had some answers for all those thorny questions that can get raised in confirmation classes? Would it have hurt for just a few more miracles to become the occasion for the miracle of more people coming to faith? There is a case to be made for the devil here.
The problem here is that no matter how eloquently the case can be made, it cannot be squared with the spirit that has filled Jesus soul, the scripture that falls from Jesus' lips, or the worship that Jesus spirit offers. When I yield to temptation and find myself off course from where God wants me to be, it is the result of failing to make these things the center of my being. Having made most of the headway in my life through using my brain, I am only more than ready to listen to well-reasoned arguments even if they come from the devil. Indeed only when I find myself beginning to listen to devilish arguments do I realize how I have wandered from what ought to be the starting point of my life.
Of course, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could turn stones into bread. However, the problem in the world is not that we do not have an adequate supply of bread. The problem is that we do not have a distribution system that faithfully shares the abundance we do have. The devil has conveniently left this out of the equation. Shall Jesus turn just enough stones into bread to satisfy his own needs? Such basic selfishness seems part of the world's problems right now. Shall he make enough bread from stones to satisfy the world's problems while leaving the distribution network to the devil? That, too, seems to be part of the world's problems as too many have too little, too few have too much, and the price on the wrapper that goes around the bread is more than the farmer gets for the wheat that goes into the bread. If your soul is set on the Holy Spirit, if a knowledge of scripture is at your fingertips, and you engage in holy worship you tend to pick up on these things.
Of course, all the kingdoms come at a price. All you have to do is to stop worship as we know it and everything will be fine. All you have to do is to no longer make daily bread the aim; stop praying, "thy kingdom come." Make sure that those who trespass somehow into your territory know about it in no uncertain terms before you even think of owning up to the number of times you have trespassed against them. Would any of the kingdoms of the world be worth very much if we lived in a world like that? People who are up on their scripture know these things; people who walk in the spirit see through this offer.
The final temptation offers thoroughgoing protection from all of the exposure that the rest of the world has. Of course, thoroughgoing protection will result in complete disconnection from the reality of life as the rest of us experience it. Who would want to go and worship at that altar? It is tempting to be super human but the promises of God come to a head in the one who is fully human -- Jesus the Christ.
People who are filled with the Spirit, have the words of scripture at hand, and who know what right worship is pick up on these things as the starting points for their lives.
Application
Saint Paul wrote that we should run the race that is set before us. A good part of the battle is getting to the starting line. A few years ago, when I ran my first 10k race, I learned what that meant. In the race that is set before us, there are no shortcuts and no getting there without getting to the starting line first. This would seem rather obvious until you realize at Lent how easy it is to wander off the course from the start.
My faith journey is rooted in the sad story of a people who are called out and made a community by the gift of God. Yet, they cave into the temptation of living the "Egyptian" lifestyle. My faith journey begins with the knowledge that God hears their complaints and our complaints when that happens. In my reluctance to give Jesus lordship as much a starting place as his friendship, I wonder how far off course I have become. No doubt about it, reason should be one of the supports of faith, and a faith that defies too much reason can be off the mark. Yet, I wonder how vulnerable I become to temptation when reason -- more than right worship, more than the right relationship to the Holy Spirit, and more than the righteousness of God made known in scripture -- is my first line of defense.
Lent invites us to ponder these questions in order that we may find ourselves on course for the good news of Easter.
Alternative Application
Romans 10:8b-13. All my life I have seen signs that say, "Jesus saves." What is behind the signs means many things to many people. There seems to be near unanimity in agreeing with Paul that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved -- whatever that may mean. I must admit that I come from a tradition that has some skepticism in regard to that language. Putting a sign on the front lawn of our church to the effect that "Jesus saves" would get the phones in our congregation and community buzzing.
We have in the lectionary texts the recitation of great saving moments in the history of the Hebrews, which they owned and celebrated. It might be quite a sermon to celebrate just what have been those times in the life of your congregation when you felt that the "Lord had heard your voice and saw your affliction and acted to free you from bondage." It might make quite a beginning to Lent to gather in stories from church members as to when they have felt such times in their lives, and share that testimony with the entire congregation.
It seems particularly true in the kind of New England mainline Protestant church that I serve that we need to repent of not telling and sharing these stories. We are particularly vulnerable to devilish temptations when we do not have a narrative that tells our history of salvation experiences.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
This psalm represents a real struggle for most people. Simply put, the psalmist is positing that if you trust enough in God, no evil will befall you. At the risk of contradicting scripture, let it be said that even the most simple among us know this to be false. The world is full of good God-trusting people who have fallen victim to evil. From innocents who happen to be in the path of a bomb dropped from 20,000 feet to the millions around the world who succumb to the AIDS pandemic, the innocent do perish no matter how much they trust in God. Certainly, as Christians, we know what happened to Jesus who trusted God and went the distance to the cross.
No pastor worth his or her salt would ever let congregants believe that Christian faith amounts to an insurance policy against bad things happening. Yet here in this psalm, the faithful must contend with what was obviously a part of Jewish piety at the time that this was written.
Let it be said, instead, that the protection that the faithful receive from God is not safety from life's calamities. It is the security and sense of power that comes from the assurance that God accompanies the faithful through life's travails. Paul says it best in Romans.
What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
-- Romans 8:31-39
Indeed, our trust in God is not betrayed when trouble arrives. We are, instead, accompanied through these woes by a mighty Savior.
