1 Lent C March 6, 2022
Deut.26:1-11 Ps.91
Rom.10:5-13 Luke 4:1-13
Most us will never have to follow Christ to actual crosses in our lives, nor will we even follow Jesus in his post-baptismal spiritual practice.
Can you imagine me telling my class of those adults preparing for baptism: “Okay, class your baptism is going to be a very special day. And because we are following Jesus, after your baptism, we are going to deliver you out into the wilderness so you can begin your forty day fast alone, and you will face the devil, mano a mano, like Jesus did. Just consider it like a Vision Quest in your new baptismal life.”
I'd probably lose most of my class, with most thinking, I wish mom and dad had baptized me as an infant, even if I had to bear the pictures of me in the family baptismal dress.
The nice thing about Jesus is that he was so unique, that he did one-of-a-kind things which he did once and for all for us, and so we do not have to and cannot follow in his exact footsteps.
How does the temptation of Jesus fit into the grand biblical epic, the big story which provides insights about issues of faith which happen in our lives?
In the big story, Eden is the paradise lost because the talking serpent trickster was able to throw Adam and Eve off the timing which God had for their lives. What was God's program for Adam and Eve? To be able in good time to come to eat of the tree of life in the middle of the garden. Should Adam and Eve know the difference between good and evil? Indeed, they should, but they should know it through the educational program of God teaching them moral significance. Instead, the serpent tricked these naive kids to learn about good and evil in the wrong way at the wrong time. And isn't that the moral educational dilemma of everyone? How to make the journey from childhood innocence to adult holiness without harming ourselves and others through excessive selfishness and constant bad timing of doing and saying things.
In the big story, God sent a temporary correction to the loss of paradise; he gave Israel the law and said if they lived by the law, they could possess a Promised Land which was a place of good provision for them. Following the law would allow them to reconstruct a new Eden in the Promised Land. But what happened? Like Adam and Eve, they became mistimed in their lives. They could not get into the timing of keeping God's law for the best recommended practices for good living.
In the first century, the Garden of Eden was long gone, the Promised Land was possessed by the Roman Empire. Adam and Eve could not be heroes in the Garden of Eden; they failed; mind you, a story character failure indicative of all our moral failure. The people of Israel failed in the Promised Land attempt to replicate the Garden of Eden. So, who would be the hero in the midst of so much moral failure and great mistiming in human behaviors?
From the traditions of followers of Jesus, we find that Jesus arises as a hero where Adam and Eve and Israel failed. But the Jesus Movement was no longer hopeful about an earthly Eden or a Promised Land with milk and honey supplies for everyone. What was the Promised Land for the people of the Jesus Movement? It was a spiritual event which make up a new creation of people, Jews and Gentiles. All people were to become the location of a heavenly place within themselves through the power of the Holy Spirit. But how could that inner place of the heart be prepared?
Eden had become the wilderness of a desolate and forsaken place. Our hero Jesus is presented as going into the wilderness of sheer inner aloneness, bereft of human company, and left with the great inward accuser whose purpose is to get people to mistime their words and deeds in life; to do things in the wrong way at the wrong times.
What are things that are right about human life and purpose? Food and our physical needs. Personal esteem, and given the effects of time, what is purposeful in human life is a good death.
Old Satan, and diablo was given permission by God to try to distract Jesus. And Jesus decided to tie both hands behind his back. "Ok, I'll fast for forty days and make myself, the most vulnerable that anyone can be."
"You're hungry Jesus. You are the creative word of God, then command these stones to become bread so you can eat. Surely, it is okay for you to eat when you are hungry." " But Satan, bread and hunger, have no meaning without Word. We don't live by our stomachs; we live by the meaningful existence provided by the Word, who is God. Satan, you cannot get me to mistime when I am supposed to break my fast. And it's not breakfast time yet."
Then old diablo tempted regarding esteem. "Jesus, you know your life would really be worth something if everyone in the world worshipped you; and like the future Dr. Faust, if you sell your soul to me, I can make it happen." And how does Jesus respond? "My esteem and fame comes from God my Father; this is the only worthwhile recognition to have. Satan, if God even created you, why should anyone worship anyone other than the creator? Satan, like the fallen Lucifer, you had a pride based on something that you were not. You were not and are not God."
The last trick of Diablo was to get Jesus to die in the wrong way at the wrong time. "Throw yourself off this tall place, because the angels mentioned in the poetry of Psalms will catch you." And Jesus responded, "Don't try to test me and think that I don't know the difference between poetry and the reality of the forces of gravity. I will die my good death in God's time and way."
The Gospel for you and me is to learn from Jesus about good timing and mistiming of everything in our lives. There is a good and right timing for food and our physical needs, and we need to be seeking the best wisdom for good timing in our lives. We tell our kids, "chocolate cake is good, but don't mistime and eat the entire cake at once." Temptation is about timing in our lives, and as the saying goes "timing is everything."
Esteem is important in our lives but to get our strokes from the wrong people at the wrong time can make us narcissists who can never get enough attention from others, because we have not had the mystical experience of knowing that God loves and cares for us.
The goal of life is to have a good death, and a good death is that it is done by our choice. The angels of God's perpetual messages to us can bear us in our lives all the time without falling into thinking that we should go before our time.
Let this season of Lent be an effort for us to get into good timing in our lives regarding the care of our physical life and the physical lives of the people in this world. Let us get into the timing of the ultimate event of personal esteem, namely, God loves you. God loves you. God loves you. And finally, let us ask God for a good death, a timely death when we can say, in God's will and in God's time, "it is finished."
The Psalmist wrote, "Our times are in God's hand." Let us know ourselves today to be on God's schedule be thankful that the perfect timing of the life of Jesus was given as a gift for us. The purpose of prayer is to learn how to be in sync with the inner mystical timing that God’s Spirit has for our lives. May God help our world to find this perfect timing today. Amen.
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