By the Reverend Michael Robinson
Smith Mills Christian Congregational Church
“The Temptations of Temptation” February 21, 2010
Could I please have a show of hands….
Who has ever been tempted—by something, by somebody ?
OK.
Now let’s see who has courage…
How many of us actually succumbed to the temptation ?
Would you like me to ask all of you who kept your hands down
to speak now about how you escaped succumbing to temptation ???
OK. Let me see all those hands go up now.
Remember what it was like in school
when the teacher called on you because you never spoke up
or tried to hide in the back row ?
Well, yes, of course.
We all have been tempted.
And we ALL have succumbed to temptation.
Food, drink, sex, ambition, recognition(fame), money (fortune), things—
just to list a few.
But it’s OK. I’m not preaching this sermon to lay a guilt trip on you.
We all fall prey to temptation.
The Apostle Paul agonized over this.
“Why is it that I do the very think that I hate ?”
Our bodies and our egos are very demanding.
By the way, does anyone here wear a hair shirt
Or sleep on a had bed in a cell with no heat ?
Or get up at 3 AM in the morning to go to chapel.
Or go all week without speaking to anyone ?
Or renounce sex for life ?
Embrace poverty ?
Vow to be obedient ?
Well, millions of men and women did just that during the Middle Ages
When convents and monasteries were filled to the brim
With people seeking the virtuous life.
Show of hands again.
Anyone willing to give up all those things here today ?
Nope.
Didn’t think so.
Least of all me….
So what about this account of Jesus in the Wilderness for 40 days.
Nothing to eat.
Contemplating just what was meant by those words spoken by God at his baptism by John the Baptist in the River Jordon ?
“This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”
Whoa !
What mush he have thought about that.
I can imagine him saying,
‘Guess I better go into seclusion for a while to work this all out.’
.
The Spirit had flowed into him that day of his baptism.
Remember, John the Baptish had prophesied,
I baptize with water, but one is coming who will baptize by the Holy Spirit.
I am unworthy even to tie the thongs of his sandals.”
Last Sunday, you may recall the words which came out of the cloud on the mountaintop at the Transfiguration:
“This is my chosen Son in whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him !”
The same words as were heard at Jesus’ baptism,
except there is the admonition to “Listen to Him.”
Now—again—I have to imagine that Jesus had been immensely moved by what took place up there on the mountain.
Had God planted all the words He wanted Jesus to say in his mouth ?
What had he meant by the words, “Listen to Him.”
Wow. That was a pretty heavy commission.
Jesus must have thought,
What does my Father want me to say ?
Will what I say carry any weight ?
I am a nobody from a hick town up in Galilee.
Who will pay any attention to me ?
I am not even a Levite.
What on earth am I to do with this weighty task ?
Is it any wonder that he went off by himself for a month and 10 days
to ponder this anointing ?
I have spoken to you before about the universal rite of passage rituals in ancient and tribal societies—the so-called “vision quest.”
The young man, on the cusp of manhood,
is sent out into the wilderness, or to the mountaintop, by the elders
on a solitary and often dangerous mission
to commune with the Spirit and make some determination
of what and who they will be in their manhood.
A “Transforming” and transformative experience.
An experience of coming to terms with who we are and who we will become.
All we know is that Jesus was “the carpenter’s son.”
What must he have thought after being baptized by his cousin, John,
with that voice endowing him with special grace ?
Try to imagine it…………………………………………………
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So, he is “driven” by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness.
Well, yes.
But I expect he would have retreated somewhere anyhow
to try to make sense of what had happened.
Did he already have an understanding of the remarkable powers at his disposal ?
Well, the “Devil” obviously did.
Now, I must confess, that in my personal theology
the only Devil that exists is tight in here (pointing to my heart.)
You don’t have to accept that if you think that idea is heretical.
But I have to say that after a whole lot of study and reflection,
Especially given the weight of the entire Old Testament,
That the idea of a being, almost equal in power to God himself,
Who takes control of people’s lives
Just very well might be an invention of the church—not reality.
The problem with the Devil is that it makes it very convenient
To blame our bad behavior on a malign and evil being
That “mad us do it.”
Sorry—don’t accept that.
As the saying goes,
“I looked into the mirror and I found the Devil.”
Anyway, whether it was a diabolical being or Jesus’ own inner self he wrestled with,
The inescapable fact is that he wrestled with what I will characterize as
The “Dark side.”
Yesw—we all know it.
There is a bit of Darth Vader in all of us.
And, yet, in the end we discover that even Darth Vader was not all evil.
Imagine that Jesus had done some simple experiments to test just how far God’s favor had been bestowed on him.
He might have mused,
‘Even though I have had nothing to eat for days,
I will not feel hunger because of my special status.’
The first temptation is to tuen the stones into bread.
Well, he doesn’t do it.
Yet, remember, later at the Sermon On the Mount,
He performs an even greater miracle.
Feeding thousands from only a few scraps of bread.
Then he is tempted to become the conquering hero and king of all nations.
A Jewish Alexander—a re-incarnated King David, Cyrus, Xerses, Pharoah.
Nope. Doesn’t go for it.
Then the 3rd temptation.
To throw himself off the precipice of the Tenple Mount
Only to land gently, saving himself from certain death.
Nope. Doesn’t do that either.
But remember this.
Of anyone who has ever lived in history.
1. He not only fed the masses by multiplying the loaves
2. He in effect became Lord and King, at least of Europe, the Middle East and Americas, and so has endured for 2,000 years.
3. AND Though he prayed and sweat tears of blood that “This cup might be removed from me,” he died but then was raised from the dead and lives as the embodiment of the Church.
So. He denied all the temptations
Yet ion the end, all with which he had been tempted was given unto him.
He refused to tempt God.
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And what is the message for us….
Well, perhaps first it is this:
We are neither the Apostle Paul and certainly we are not Jesus.
We DO succumb to temptation.
Most of us every single day.
Do we feel guilty about it ?
Well, yes—sometimes.
But, usually, I suspect, we succumb to temptation out of habit
and don’t think a thing about it.
“Lead us not into temptation.”
Have you ever thought, really thought about that ?”
Now, it wasn’t God who tempted Jesus on the wilderness, was it ?
Then why would Jesus instruct his disciples to pray to God
that God not lead them into temptation ?
That is really worthy of pondering.
Why wouldn’t the prayer say,
“Help me, God, from being led into temptation by the Devil ?”
Or, “Lead me, O God, in paths away from temptation.”
But it doesn’t….
I suggest when we say this prayer
that we interpret the words to mean,
“Give me strength, Lord, to keep from succumbing to temptation.”
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Now, let’s talk a little bit about those temptations I listed at the outset:
Food, drink, sex, ambition, recognition(fame), money (fortune), things.
My hero Ben Franklin would have this to suggest my message today:
“Michael, everything in moderation.”
And he would be right about that.
BUT:
Food ? Well, we have to eat to live don’t we ?
How much is enough ?
Just who’s going to tell me how much and what to eat ?
Drink ?
Well all the research points to the health benefit of red wine, drunk in moderation. By the way, I read this over the weekend—
People in France live on average three years more than we do.
Heavy, creamy, fatty food and wine in copious amounts from childhood.
Sex ? Well, where would the species be if everyone gave up sex ?
What was Paul thinking about anyway ?
Nothing intrinsically wrong with sex.
But there are whole lot of things wrong about too much sex—
especially with the wrong people, at inappropriate ages,
outside of the marriage covenant, etc., etc.
Mark my words,
celibacy will prove to be the death knell of the Catholic Church in America.
We are just not genetically designed to be celibate creatures.
Ambition ?
My grandfather used to sputter that so and so
didn’t have enough ambition to even get out of bed in the morning.
Yes, to achieve anything worthwhile in life,
we have to have some motivation, some ambition.
Fame ? Well, who doesn’t relish a little recognition once in a while ?
That’s healthy, provides feedback on a “job well done”
and is a good motivator to do more.
Fortune/money ?
Well, you can’t exist in our culture and society without money income.
‘Gotta have it—
whether you earn it, inherit it
or receive it as charity, welfare, a pension or as Social Security.
Question is, how much is enough—really enough ?
The recent tragedy in Haiti really makes a statement on this whole question.
Average income of only $ 2/day ?
As the younger generation would say, “Get Real !”
Things ? Well, ‘gotta have ‘em.
‘Gotta have a car, a house to live in, a bed to sleep in, etc.
But: A TV (and it’s gotta be a flat screen) in every room,
cell phones for everyone in the family, closets full of clothes –most of which are hardly ever worn ?
Starting to get my drift here ?
In all these things:
How much is enough ?
That’s the question.
When does having “MORE” become a temptation ?
How much money SHOULD Derek Jeter make,
Or the president of Goldman Sachs, or Howard Stern ?
UGH !
When we compare the astronomical salaries and income of these people
against the legal, legislated minimum wage,
we should all be outraged
that our system allows such egregious chasms
between the “haves” and the “have nots.”
It makes me very angry.
Do you remember the Sunday service a few years ago
that I asked 20 people to come up front ?
We had 10 chairs lined up with a person sitting in each one,
representing a 10th percentile of the population.
And…we had 10 people standing behind all the chairs.
Then the people who were standing re-distributed themselves to the right
to illustrate each 10th percentile of income distribution.
The top 10 % have % of the wealth in this country
And the top 1/10th of 1% have % of the ewalth.
This is even more skewed than it was in the gilded age of the 1890’s
Before we had a graduated income tax,
which was supposed to level out some of these disparities.
Winston Churchill once said, in defense of the common man,
that when the poor people in the great democracies,
meaning Britain and America,
figured out they had the votes to legislate their incomes,
capitalism as we have known it would end.
How much is enough ?
A good question for all Christians to ponder.
Remember Jesus’ words,
“Blessed are the poor, for they will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.”
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Sex ?
In Judaism, sexual love is elevated as an obligation—
of a man to his wife and a wife to her husband.
Celibacy was frowned upon.
“Be fruitful and multiply” was the Biblical injunction.
Yet, in an overpopulated world,
One wonders if it is as “Christian” or as “Jewish”
to have big families any more….
Again that word….moderation.
But in Judaism, as in Christianity—,
as in all the great religions and ethical systems,
it is taught that fornication, licentiousness and infidelity are sinful.
Yet, we know that all of these thrive in abundance in our culture,
as they have in all cultures and times.
Curbing sexual appetites requires discipline.
It is a difficult vow to be “true until death us do part.”
Yet, there are people and couples who are able to keep that vow,
hard as it sometimes can be.
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I’m not going to go through the rest of the laundry list.
I’m sure you have gotten the message by now.
Temptation ?
It is very real.
Succumbing to temptation ?
Well, yes,
we all do it at times,
some of us to a greater degree than others.
Does that mean we are weak ?
Well, maybe.
It certainly means that we are human.
We are not Jesus, even though we try to live up to his moral teachings.
May be what we should pray for
is that we succumb less often to life’s temptations.
That we seriously ponder the consequences of over-indulgence.
That we engage the brain before the taste buds, the gonads and the credit card.
That we place a higher premium on moderation than succumbing to our appetites.
There is a great lesson in the temptation of Jesus ion the wilderness.
He resisted it.
And the great message is that, in the end, all that had tempted him was granted.
He created bread where there was none.
He became Lord and King of Kings of vast areas of the Earth.
He conquered death.
He accomplished all of this by respecting and submitting to God the Father
By obeying the Mosaic Law
By submitting his will and human passions
to the will of God and the welfare of others.
We can do that too.
It takes self-control and will
It also means subscribing to the discipline of making conscious choices
every time we are presented with a temptation.
It means soberly weighing the consequences of our choices
So that when we DO succumb to temptation
We do it knowingly,
with some degree remorse and resolution to succumb less often.
So may our prayer be,
Lead us away from temptation, O God,
and give us the strength and fortitude to resist it, most of the time.”