May the words of my mouth and the
meditations of all our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our
strength and our redeemer. Amen.
When
I was in Israel just about a year ago, one of the moments that was most deeply
meaningful happened at narrow spot of the Jordan River. This site is known as
Qasar El Yahud and it’s a rather still and brown section of the Jordan, but
scholars and religious authorities suggest that this is the site where Jesus
was baptized. So our group visited that site, after a drive of about an hour
through the desert of Israel, and we renewed our baptismal vows there. Behind
us was Mount Temptation, the place where today’s reading from Luke took place.
The link between baptism and temptation is unmistakable given the geography.
But it was an
even more ominous experience. The Jordan is about 20 feet wide at that spot,
and on the other side is the country of Jordan. So as I looked across the
river, there was a Jordanian soldier with an M16 on patrol. And behind me was
an Israeli military installation. As I walked the path down to the river, I
passed fencing that had large yellows signs on it, and the signs read “Danger!
Mines!”
My
experience there isn’t all that different than what Jesus would have
experienced after his Baptism. Just before our reading from Luke begins today,
Jesus was baptized and then was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, and in
the wilderness he encountered the danger of the Devil. And the Devil will be the topic for
this sermon. We’ll explore several things about the Devil. And for the purposes
of this sermon, the words “evil,” “sin,” or “Satan” are roughly synonymous with
“Devil.”
The
first thing to say about the Devil is that the Devil is real. Now I know that
for some of us, that’s a tough pill to swallow. We like to think that the Devil
is some part of mythology that we don’t need any more. We say that the Devil
was simply a way for the person in olden times to explain bad things. Or
sometimes we even frame it in theology and argue that since the Devil is evil,
and God created everything, but God wouldn’t create evil, there must not be a
Devil. But those thoughts are all wrong.
We
all have experiences of the Devil in our lives. How many of us have said “I
don’t know what got into me” or “I don’t know why I did that?” We all have
moments of weakness, we are all tempted, and the Baptismal vows that we have
made will be tested. This is, of course, is God’s world, but the Devil is a
player on the field. To think otherwise is to fall prey to the very nature of
evil. In The Screwtape Letters, CS
Lewis writes of a demon coaching another demon on the ways of leading humans to
Hell. At one point the teacher demon says “the fact that devils are
predominately comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any
faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in their minds, suggest to
them a picture of something in red tights and persuade them that since they
cannot believe in that they therefore cannot believe in you.”
Although there may not be a being named Satan, the idea of the Devil is real. Perhaps not in an ontological sense, but evil exists. Even if we
say that evil is simply the privation of the good or is the effect of the
divine “no,” evil is a force in our world. The moment we allow ourselves into
thinking otherwise, the Devil achieves the first victory.
The
Devil comes to Jesus in personal form because we experience evil in a deeply
personal way. Some of the worst evils we know are betrayal and abuse, which
happen at the hands of others. Devil is presented as a person because that is
real. And by presenting the Devil as a person, Luke makes it clear that though
evil can dwell within us, we are not the Devil and the Devil is something much
larger than any of us.
The
Devil is reasonable. Notice the things that Jesus is tempted with, nothing too
outlandish. Perhaps some other time I’ll preach in more detail on the
temptations that the Devil offers Jesus, but essentially, the Devil comes and
tempts Jesus with being relevant, powerful, and spectacular. And we are tempted
by those things as well. The Devil uses logic in tempting Jesus. The Devil even
quotes Scripture, which is a good reminder to us that just because you quote
the Bible doesn’t mean that the Devil isn’t at work. You likely won’t easily
object to the guiles of the Devil, because the arguments will be reasonable.
And
in a similar line of thought, the Devil is smart, smarter than you. If you got
all A’s on your report card, the Devil got all A+’s. If you have a Ph.D, the
Devil has two. You can’t outsmart the Devil, and the moment that you think you
can, you’ve already fallen into the trap. We all know that our intellect can
justify anything that we want it do. We can justify lying, cheating, and
stealing. We see it happen all the time. A lot of people in Washington, regardless
of political persuasion, will tell you that Bill Clinton is one of the smartest
men to ever sit in the Oval Office. And look what his superior intellect of his
was able to justify in the way of giving into temptation. The smarter you are,
the harder the temptation because the easier it will be for your intellect to
justify sin and evil.
Something
that deeply disturbs me is the reprehensible actions started by the Bush
administration but made even worse by the Obama administration. I’m referring
to the rampant use of assassinations by predator drones. Somehow, we have
misused our intellect to justify the indiscriminate killing of enemies, and
even worse, American citizens with no due process or judicial review. I am
deeply disturbed that the inalienable rights that Americans have are being
unilaterally stripped away, that President Obama’s intellect has allowed him to
decide that those rights do not apply. We are not a country that kills first
and asks questions later, but again, our intellect can justify anything.
There’s a reason why God never asks us for our minds, but instead God prefers
our hearts.
Next,
we can say that the Devil is subtle. The Devil won’t come asking you to sell
the farm, but maybe to just plant a few crops. Or as someone recently told me,
if you give the Devil a ride, eventually he’ll ask to drive. The Devil is
subtle, sometimes by getting us to do the right thing for the wrong reasons, or
the even worse doing of the wrong things for the right reasons. It has been
said that it is better to have vices than a surplus of virtue. When we have too
much virtue, we lack a sense of conscience because we think we’re safely on the
side of morality.
One
of the ways this subtlety works is that we don’t really think we’re sinners. We
had an outside speaker at clergy conference this past fall, and after
worshiping with us, he remarked that during the Prayers of the People, when we
prayed for the sick, we all named people out loud, and when we thanked God for
the blessings of this life, we all shared joys, but when it came time for the
silence after “let us confess our sins to God,” you could have heard a pin
drop. How many of us really see ourselves as sinners? Don’t you think the world
would be a better place if everyone was more like you?
I’ve
noticed that Episcopalians, who are by-and-large, educated and at least middle
class, tend to shy away from saying words like Jesus, sin, or cross in public.
Talk to a Baptist and they’ll tell you all about how they were a wretched soul
until Jesus saved them. I don’t think I’ve ever had that conversation with an
Episcopalian. And I think that is, in part, because we’re not so convinced that
we’re actually sinners. Sure, we’ll acknowledge that we’re not perfect, but
it’s far too easy to fall for the subtle argument that we’re part of the
solution, not the problem.
The
truth of the matter is that we’re all sinners, Jesus did die for you in some
sense, and apart from God’s grace, you’re doomed to Hell. But the Devil comes
to us with the subtlety of thinking that the Confession that we say must be
about other people, not us.
Another
way that the Devil uses subtlety is in redefining what is normal. One of the
translations of the word “Devil” is “slanderer;” the Devil distorts reality and
slanders what God would have as normal. When we start to accept as normal
things that are very wrong, the Devil starts to win. Think about driving around
Greensboro, on most corners you can find a homeless person. And how many times
do we give it a second thought? It has become normal to see a person standing
on a corner with a cardboard sign begging for money. There is nothing normal
about that. The norm should not be that we have people living in our community
that don’t have a roof over their head.
Did
you know that in the entire country, the Greensboro/High Point region ranks 4th
worst in people who report that they don’t have enough money for food? Backpack
Beginnings reports that North Carolina is the second worst state in terms of
childhood hunger and over half of children enrolled in Guilford Country schools
are on free or reduced lunch. If you hear nothing in this sermon, hear this-
childhood hunger is not normal and it is not acceptable.
But
the Devil comes and does the work of evil, not always through genocides or mass
killings, but in far more devious ways by redefining what is normal for us. By
redefining the normal, we accept things that if you asked us about, we’d say
we’d never allow to happen. But they happen all around us.
This
is part of what is going on in our reading from Deuteronomy this morning. God
is instructing the people what to do when they come out of the wilderness and
enter the Promised Land. They are to recount their history, give the first
fruits to God, share their food with the hungry and the foreigners, and show
gratitude. Gratitude though is not the norm. Theologian Karl Barth once remarked
that all sin is basically ingratitude. How often do we take a moment out of the
busyness of life to take stock of our blessings and respond with gratitude? Great
evil is done by the Devil when we accept an attitude of ingratitude as normal.
And
moving into our next point, that the Devil challenges our identity, it is vital
to be thankful. Remember what happened at Jesus’ baptism, the heavens opened up
and the voice of God was heard saying “You are my son, the beloved.” And
immediately, the Devil challenges Jesus’ identity. Jesus was just called the
Son of God, and the Devil comes and says “IF you are the Son of God,” asking
him to prove his identity. Part of the reason why Jesus was able to resist the
Devil is that Jesus knew who he was and was confident in his identity, and he
had gratitude for being the beloved of God.
It
is fitting that the wilderness is the setting for this passage. Alfred North
Whitehead said that “religion is what we do with our solitude.” In those
moments when we are alone in the wilderness the voices of self-doubt will creep
in. But if we can remember, as Jesus did, that we are the beloved of God, we
stand a better chance at resisting temptation.
In
the Bible, the wilderness is a special place, it is where God ministers to
Hagar in her grief, where God meets Moses and baptizes Jesus, and where the
wandering Hebrews become the nation of Israel. And wilderness is not a bad
place to be, remember, the Spirit, not the Devil, led Jesus into the
wilderness. One desert theologian wrote that “The wilderness, in short, is a
place of threat, vulnerability, and danger. Yet it is also a place where we
encounter a love we never could have imagined.” The wildernesses of our lives
are the times and places where we will find our true identity.
Our
identity is one of the things we hold most dear in our hearts, and rightfully
so, so it is no surprise that the Devil comes to attack us there. Using a term
from the work of Edwin Friedman, Jesus was self-differentiated.
Self-differentiation happens when we are able to define our goals and values
apart from surrounding pressures, when you are able to say “I” instead of “we,”
when we are able to take responsibility for our own destiny and emotional being
while still remaining connected to others. Jesus was able to do this. He didn’t
need the approval of the Devil, or the glory of others, to be confident and
happy. He wasn’t going to live on someone else’s terms. Jesus knew that his
identity was the beloved of God, and so when the Devil came to challenge his identity,
he was ready for it. Never forget, you are the beloved of God, and so is
everyone you meet. Keep those things in mind and the Devil will have a much
harder time testing you.
And
the last thing to say about the Devil is that the he or she is persistent. At
the end of the reading, the text says that “the Devil departed from him until a
more opportune time.” The Devil doesn’t give up and will come back when your
defenses are down and your emotional vulnerability is high. Even if you resist
a temptation today, you can be assured that another temptation will be around
the corner. There is a reason why Jesus says “for the gate is wide and the road
is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it.” Perhaps the
persistence of the Devil is why when Jesus teaches us to pray, he includes the
line “and lead us not into temptation.”
So
the things to say about the Devil this morning are that the Devil is real,
personal, reasonable, smart, subtle, challenging our identity, and persistent.
As we embark on our Lenten journey, we will be tested. Perhaps you’ve given
something up for Lent, chocolate or meat, and that’s good. But it’s fairly easy
to give up luxuries, but far worse to give up our soul to the Devil. I don’t
know how the Devil will come to you. I don’t know what your wilderness exam
will be. Only you know what devils have your number and what bribes they can
use to get you. But I know that they’ll be calling you.
As
we enter the wilderness, may it be a holy time, a time of finding our true
identity. Come Easter morning, may we be found to have the strength to resist
temptation and confidence in our being the beloved of God. And dear Lord, lead
us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. Amen.
