Temptation, Anti-Christ and Mistiming in Life

1 Lent C    March 10, 2019

Deut.26:1-11    Ps. 91

Rom.10:5-13     Luke 4:1-13

Lectionary Link
As I read the account of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, it occurred to me that in 

effect, the internal struggle of Jesus was whether to be the Christ or the Anti-Christ.  The 

temptation was the attempt by the great liar and accuser, Satan, the Devil, the Serpent to 

get Jesus to depart from the intended way of God the Father for the chosen messiah.

The New Testament writers referred to the Anti-Christ.  The Anti-Christ would be a very popular public figure who would have the ability to even use the Bible and religion to fool people.  The New Testament writers were very concerned about false messiahs.  And some would like to think that there is only one Anti-Christ.  But the accounts of history show us that the father of lies has been able to so possess political figures and the results have been the committing of some of the worst atrocities in human history.

In the elements of the temptation of Jesus, he is faced with being tricked by the another manifestation of the original trickster serpent of the garden of Eden.  Eat this fruit the serpent told Adam and Eve and you will be wise like God. 

“You’re hungry Jesus.  Just command these stones and they will become bread.”  So Jesus was being tempted to obey the commands of Satan.  An Anti-Christ is one who follows the lying commands of the prince of lies.

How did Jesus answer?  You are not my Father; I obey my Father and his words and I will be patient for the word of my Father to tell me when it is time to me to eat.

The Anti-Christ is a megalomaniac.  He the Faustian man who makes a bargain with the devil; sells his soul to the devil to be the ruler of the world and to attain greatness.

Again, Jesus rebuked refused to make a bargain with devil.  “Why should I worship you, Satan, Lucifer, Devil, for you have been created by God my Father who is higher than you.  Why should I worship someone less than God the creator?  You are but an idol maker.”

The devil and the anti-Christ are those who are so full of pride that they believe that they are worthy of ungodly adoration and popularity, when true fame and glory belongs to God, alone.

When the temptation regarding bodily needs or the temptation to extravagant fame fails what other trick did the devil have?   The devil said, “kill yourself, throw yourself off the high place, and don’t worry because the Bible says that the angel defy gravity, they will catch and you will be rescued.  Kill yourself because the afterlife is better than this life.

And what did Jesus say, “Be gone Satan.”  Jesus would not be the “Anti-Messiah,” he was the true Messiah because he was going to do all things in God’s way and in God’s timing.

Another thing that I found interesting about my reading of the temptations of Jesus again, is to realize how they correspond to the public criticisms of Jesus.

What did people say about Jesus?  He crazy, he’s mad.  He’s suicidal because he said he was going away; is he going to kill himself.  They said he was a glutton and wine bibber, and one who hung out with sinners.  They said he had a pact with Beelzebub to cast out demons.  They said he had blasphemed because he made himself equal to God and took upon himself the right to forgive people’s sins.

So the very things that Jesus was tempted about were things that people accused him of being. 

Where do you and stand with the temptations of Jesus and with our own temptations today as we enter symbolic season of Lent, 40 days, dedicated to deal with the temptations in our lives?

The essence of temptation is really about mistiming, doing good and bad things at the wrong time.  It’s okay to eat, but we have to do it in the best way for our bodily health and for the health of the 5000 plus who need to be fed in our world.  We must learn to distinguish genuine self esteem which comes from knowing that our heavenly parent loves us, from the narcissistic unquenchable need for public fame based upon the pride which got Lucifer cast from heaven.  We cannot exchange the esteem based upon the love of God for the vainglory which is the major drug of sick personalities.

And finally, just because the Scriptures includes poetry which has angels catching falling people, it does not mean we should mistake science for poetry or poetry for science.  We can be both scientists and poets at the same time using the proper discursive practice for the proper rhetorical occasion.  When people mistake science for poetry and vice versa, people who do not want to believe in God say that religious people are crazy.   

You and I need to learn to resist being “anti-messiah.”  We need to develop the relationship with God to know the inner affirmation which creates an esteem that does not need to be replaced with vainglory.  We need to know the timing of God’s wisdom in our lives so that we live with the mystical sense and the faith to know how we should act at all times, learning what is most appropriate and graceful for each situation.

Let us learn how to resist the internal liar and accuser who would try to get us out of step and timing with the mission of the messiah that awaits us each day.  Amen.

  

Delayed Gratification and the Satanic Voice

1 Lent C    February 14, 2016

Deut.26:1-11    Ps. 91
Rom.10:5-13     Luke 4:1-13

Lectionary Link

  Today is the First Sunday in Lent and our Gospel reading is about the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness for 40 days and nights.

  The season of Lent gets its numerology from the symbolic number of 40 in the Bible.  40 is the number signifying the time of ordeal or the time regarded as the providential discipline of God in bringing people to new spiritual vision and moral and spiritual excellence.

  The Gospel lesson invites us to look clearly at the event of Jesus spending forty days in the wilderness, physically alone but still knowing the voice of an adversary.

  Jesus is driven into the wilderness following his baptism after the voice of God said to him, "You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased."   In this account of the forty days of fasting Jesus is presented as imitating what Moses and Elijah did as well, signifying that spiritual life can sustain one in a way in which the sustenance of food cannot.

  Did Jesus fast from food and water?  Gandhi once fasted from food for 21 days.  To go even 100 hours without water would invite death.  What kind of fast did Jesus have?   Did he go on the John the Baptist diet of locust and honey?  I think what is more crucial about the fast of Jesus is less about it being a fast from food and more about being a fast from the company of other people, other language users.

  We as language users can sometimes get overwhelmed by too much talk and too many language products.  We have developed today to be able to live in the complete inundation of language products in our lives today.

  And sometimes we may want a retreat.  A retreat from people.  A retreat from other language users.  A silent retreat.    Probably all of us at some time have had a craving for silence or alone time.   We may have dabbled with and practiced meditation.

  One of the first things that we find out when we try to meditate or to observe silence is that when we take ourselves away from other language users, we cannot escape language.  You can take the language user out of the company of other language users, but you cannot take the language out of the language user.    We crave silence and yet we seem to carry a boom box of voices around in our heads.  And sometime those voices are hard to silence.

  You and I are inundated by word and language through and through.  The environment which we see is thoroughly coded by our internal interpretive grids through which we see the world.  And we are grounded in word itself, since we have this perpetual conversation always going in within us.  Some of us are actually honest about this by apparently openly talking to ourselves.  Why are we always talking and to whom are we talking?  Are we but an internal echo producer assuming the echoing voices are really another person who has listened to our words present in our thoughts run amok, or our day dreams or our fantasies or our wishes and imaginations or visualizations?  We can't stop being language users and we cannot stop the variety of voices which sound within us even though our interior life is supposed to be silent.

  Even when we sleep, we activate our language.  Freud taught us that the unconscious had its own language.

  To be human is to have language and to be coded by our language environments and so our language in many way, has us more than we have it, though we appear at times to have some freedom in how we articulate language products in speech and writing and body language acts.

  Jesus fasted...from people, from other language users.   But the information that we have about the fast of Jesus indicates that he could not fast from the arising of the Satanic voice to a place of being heard by him.

  A deliberate fast is the way in which we can simulate a crisis.  When we are sick and deprived and when we suffer significant loss, we experience real crises.  And we often are not properly prepared for the crises of loss which can come to us.

  The fast of Jesus meant that he deprived himself of the company of other people for comfort or fellowship and he deprived himself of food to simulate the conditions of a crisis.  A crisis can open up the interior life to be vulnerable to the arising of many kinds of interior voices.  And these voices can be quite unnerving, even frightening and they can be attended by the worst kinds of moods which cloud the possibility of hopeful and optimistic viewing of our circumstances.

  Jesus alone and fasting became vulnerable to the arising of the Satanic Voice.  Satan is the accuser.  Satan is a personal voice, who attains interior personal status when he becomes the gathering of all negative word fragments from one's memory to become a unified interior agent.  And this unified agent begins to make one's thoughts and emotions work against the well-being of one's life.  The Satanic voice is a parasite that lives and thrives on the memory of all that is bad and negative.  The Satanic voice gathers in a time of crisis.  A crisis is like a magnet that can attract the formation of accusing voices and it seems to have personal presence because it has agency to control and cause us to have behaviors which are not beneficial to us.  The internal accusations of that arise within a crisis are not very trustworthy because they cause us to make poor decisions and act out on bad and faulty information.

  The accusing Satanic voice that became heard by Jesus taunted him about making stones into bread to fix his hunger during his fast.  The accusing Satanic voice said to Jesus that he was so special that he could leap from a high place and not crash to the ground because the angels would take care of God's chosen one, just as was promised by the Psalmist.  And the Satanic voice appealed to the megalomaniacal impulse in everyone which is the desire for the unlimited esteem of fame and glory of endless public adoration.

  The times of crisis make people vulnerable to the Satanic voices.  The Satanic voices invite people to act out upon delusional ideas and ideas which have no basis in commonsense empirical reality.  Satanic voices can tempt us to act in unreasonable ways.

  Jesus fasted from food and from people as a method of simulating crisis, and sure enough the accusing Satanic voice arose to challenge him to act in irrational ways and to act in ways which would be disobedient to God his Father.  The Satanic voices tried to get Jesus to change the calling and direction of his life.

  How is it that the Satanic voice can arise?  We as humans are taught that we function best by having a very short time between human need arising and human needs being fulfilled.  We do not like delay in the gratification of our needs.  Fasting is an attempt to increase the time between having human need and having the gratification of a human need.

  One of the difference between a young child and a person growing into adulthood is learning how to handle the time of delayed gratification.

  Delayed gratification can be regarded to be a loss in life which can help make us vulnerable to the voices which arise in the wake of such profound need.  And those voices can lead us astray if we have not learned to structure the delay in gratification.

  Let us take heart today from the temptations of Jesus.  Jesus experienced actual accusing voices in his life to be vulnerable to those voices gaining a significant concrescence into the person of Satan to confront his interior life.  The Gospels tell us that during his life, Jesus was accused of being mad, he was accused of being in league with Beelzebub, the devil and Satan.  He was accused of being one who loved to hang out with notorious sinners; he was said to be a drunkard.  He was accused of being suicidal, a heretic, of being disobedient to his parents, of not being friend of God, a political rebel, a breaker of the Mosaic law and a pretender to throne of Caesar.   Jesus had the opportunity to hear plenty of negative voices in his life to have them come back to him as the voice of the accusing Satan when he simulated the time of crisis through his voluntary fast. 

  Jesus is shown to us to be a hero in his battle with the Satanic voice.  The Satanic voice tempted him to be very literal and to act out upon things that would cause him harm or make him look crazy and suicidal.

   There are many fanciful things that can occur to us in dreams and day dreams and fits of anger or depression, things which we should not act out upon because they do not partake of good commonsense and reasonable choices.  What we learn from the temptation of Jesus is that he was empowered to orchestrate the interior voices of his life.  He was able to channel delayed gratification into effective resistance in refusing to act out upon unhealthy voices which could be active agents of chaos.

  At the end of his temptation Jesus found the ministry of the angelic voices.  These were the messengers of faith and hope and obedience to God.  These are the voices of affirmation which can arise to counter the negative voice of Satan.

  You and I need constant encouragement in orchestrating and taming the voices which can arise in us.  Forceful voices can arise within us in momentary events of delayed gratification and we can be made into reactionary people.  We can let the Satanic voice make us into passive aggressive people, angry people, or addicted people who are tempted not to be able to tolerate any delay in immediate gratification. 

  During Lent, we are given the opportunity to embrace some disciplines which help us deal with the ever present issue of delayed gratification.  We can delay our gratification by helping other people who have delayed gratification forced upon them by their conditions of life.  If we can be devoted to helping gratify the needs of others, we may find help in our own lives to learn to tame the negative Satanic voices which live as parasites off of the memories of the extreme times in our lives when gratification was in some way significantly delayed.

  May God grant us a holy Lent as we train ourselves further in dealing with the human issue of delayed gratification.  May we be given strength to resist the Satanic voices which arise to tempt us to leave good reason.  May be we given strength to resist acting out upon things that derive from the agency of a mood induced by the negative memories of extreme delayed gratification and the rise of a Satanic taunting voice.

  Let us be strong and bold in our resistance, particularly when the Satanic voice accuses us of not yet being perfect.  Such an accusation is only effective if we had such an illusion in the first place.  One of the most effective ways of dispelling the Satanic voice, is to say, "The question of me being perfect was never the issue; but I am perfectible, and I can get better with God’s help, so be gone Satan."

  May God bless us all and let us be inspired that Jesus has resisted the Satanic voice, and so can we through the power of God's Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

Sunday School, February 14, 2016 1 Lent C

Sunday School, February 14, 2016                        First Sunday in Lent

Themes and Topics

Learning Self Control

Learning to be one’s own hero

Fasting is a practice of learning self-control

Gospel Story:  Jesus went away to a place to be alone and fast

When you feed a dog, you put the food in the dog dish and set it on the floor.  And what do many dogs do?  They immediately try to eat all of the food as fast as they can.  Now some dog owners will try to teach a dog to wait until he or she give the command to the dog to eat.  A dog owner may try to teach a dog to wait before eating.

When babies are hungry, they want their milk right away.  They don’t want to wait and if mom makes them wait, what do they do?  They cry.

Growing up means we learn how to control our selves when we have to wait for something that we need.

So you may be hungry right now, but mom says the food is still cooking and besides we’re waiting for dad to come home so we can eat together.   So even if you are hungry right now, you learn to wait so that you can eat with the rest of the family.

Learning to wait to eat is “fasting.”  It is learning how to control yourself.  It is learning to not let your desire for something make you unhappy if you cannot get it right away.

Fasting is about learning to wait and have patience so that you can learn to do things together with other people.  Fasting is about learning other people’s schedules.

When you teacher asks you to be silent and raise your hand, this is also fasting because it is waiting for your turn to speak so that you can honor the schedule of your class.

Jesus was a hero because he learned to fast; he learned to do things according to God the Father’s time.  He did not obey the voice of Satan which tempted him to do the wrong things, at the wrong time in the wrong way.

Lent is about learning how to be our own superhero by learning how to control ourselves.

Jesus was a superhero of self-control;  And we can learn from Jesus about being our own superhero as we learn self-control.  An important part of self-control is learn how to share in how we live with other people.

Lent is a season of learning self-control for the purposes of sharing the gifts and good things of our lives with others, especially those who do not have enough.

A sermon about learning to be one’s own hero

  How would you like to be a hero?  How do you think you can be a hero?  Do you have to fly like Superman, Batman and Spiderman in order to be a hero?  Do you have to save someone from drowning to be a hero?  Do you have to rescue some one from a burning building to be a hero? Doing those things would make you a hero, but there is another way to be a hero.

  And Jesus wants us all to be heroes.  How can all of us be heroes?  By being strong.  Let me see your muscles.  But the muscles in our arms are not important muscles that we need.

  We need some other muscles.  We need strength to be able to not do things that are bad for us.  We need strength to be able to do things that are really, really good for us.

  And so we need to do some training to be heroes.  That is what the season of Lent is for..it’s for doing some special training.

  Is it easier to eat four pieces of chocolate cake than to eat our vegetables?  Chocolate cake is good and vegetables are good.  And we need to be heroes by becoming strong enough to choose the right amounts of good food for us.  Say, I am strong.  I am powerful.  I will be a hero.  I will choose good food.

  Is it easier to watch cartoons on TV or clean your bedroom or do your school work?  It is fun to watch TV but when there are other things that we need to do, we need to have the power to choose to do other things to help our families and to help us get good grades at school.  Can you flex your muscles and say: I am powerful.  I will be a hero.  I will choose to do good things.

  Jesus was a hero because he learned to have power to do the good things that he was supposed to do.  When he was given the choice between doing some good and doing something bad, he chose what was good.

  You and I have to practice being good.  And how do we practice being good?  We have to build the muscles of our choosing power.  We have to practice making the right choices.  Our teachers and parents help us to make the right choices.  Even though they are not perfect; they still are able to help you make good choices.  And if we learn to make good choices, then we become powerful and we become heroes of our own lives?

  Can you learn to be a hero today?  Let’s see your muscles.  Say:  I am strong.  I can make good choices.  I can be a hero today. 

St. John the Divine Episcopal Church

17740 Peak Avenue, Morgan Hill, CA 95037

Family Service with Holy Eucharist

February 14, 2016 The First Sunday in Lent

Gathering Songs: On Eagle’s Wings, Just As I am, I Am the Bread of Life, Thy Word

Song: On Eagle’s Wings (Renew! # 112)

You who dwell in the shelter of the Lord, who abide in his shadow for life, say to the Lord: “My refuge, my rock in whom I trust.”

Refrain: And he will raise you up on eagle’s wings, bear you on the breath of dawn, make you to shine like the sun, and hold you in the palm of his hand.

The snare of the fowler will never capture you, and famine will bring you no fear: under his wings your refuge, his faithfulness your shield.  Refrain

Liturgist: Bless the Lord who forgives all of our sins.

People: God’s mercy endures forever.  Amen.

Liturgist:  Oh God, Our hearts are open to you.

And you know us and we can hide nothing from you.

Prepare our hearts and our minds to love you and worship you.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Liturgist:         The Lord be with you.

People:            And also with you.

Liturgist:  Let us pray

Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan: Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Litany of Praise: Chant: Praise be to God!

O God, you are Great!  Praise be to God!

O God, you have made us! Praise be to God!

O God, you have made yourself known to us!  Praise be to God!

O God, you have provided us with us a Savior!  Praise be to God!

O God, you have given us a Christian family!  Praise be to God!

O God, you have forgiven our sins!  Praise be to God!

O God, you brought your Son Jesus back from the dead!  Praise be to God!

Liturgist: A reading from the Letter to the Romans

For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, "No one who believes in him will be put to shame." For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved."

Liturgist: The Word of the Lord

People: Thanks be to God

Liturgist: Let us read together from Psalm 91

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, * abides under the shadow of the Almighty.

He shall say to the LORD, "You are my refuge and my stronghold, * my God in whom I put my trust."

He shall deliver you from the snare of the hunter * and from the deadly pestilence.

He shall cover you with his pinions, and you shall find refuge under his wings; * his faithfulness shall be a shield and buckler.

Litany Phrase: Thanks be to God! (chanted)

Litanist:

For the good earth, for our food and clothing. Thanks be to God!

For our families and friends. Thanks be to God!

For the talents and gifts that you have given to us. Thanks be to God!

For this day of worship. Thanks be to God!

For health and for a good night’s sleep. Thanks be to God!

For work and for play. Thanks be to God!

For teaching and for learning. Thanks be to God!

For the happy events of our lives. Thanks be to God!

For the celebration of the birthdays and anniversaries of our friends and parish family.

   Thanks be to God!

Liturgist:         The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Luke

People:            Glory to you, Lord Christ.

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread." Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone.'" Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, "To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours." Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'Worship the Lord your God,  and serve only him.'"  Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you,  to protect you,' and 'On their hands they will bear you up,  so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'"  Jesus answered him, "It is said, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

Liturgist:         The Gospel of the Lord.

People:            Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Sermon – Father Phil

Children’s Creed

We did not make ourselves, so we believe that God the Father is the maker of the world.

Since God is so great and we are so small,

We believe God came into our world and was born as Jesus, son of the Virgin Mary.

We need God’s help and we believe that God saved us by the life, death and

     resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We believe that God is present with us now as the Holy Spirit.

We believe that we are baptized into God’s family the Church where everyone is

     welcome.

We believe that Christ is kind and fair.

We believe that we have a future in knowing Jesus Christ.

And since we all must die, we believe that God will preserve us forever.  Amen.

Litany Phrase: Christ, have mercy.

For fighting and war to cease in our world. Christ, have mercy.

For peace on earth and good will towards all. Christ, have mercy.

For the safety of all who travel. Christ, have mercy.

For jobs for all who need them. Christ, have mercy.

For care of those who are growing old. Christ, have mercy.

For the safety, health and nutrition of all the children in our world. Christ, have mercy.

For the well-being of our families and friends. Christ, have mercy.

For the good health of those we know to be ill. Christ, have mercy.

For the remembrance of those who have died. Christ, have mercy.

For the forgiveness of all of our sins. Christ, have mercy.

Youth Liturgist:          The Peace of the Lord be always with you.

People:                        And also with you.

Song during the preparation of the Altar and the receiving of an offering

Offertory Hymn:  Just As I Am (Renew! # 140)

Just as I am without one plea but that thy blood was shed for me,

and that thou bidd’st me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come. I come!

Doxology

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures here below.

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Prologue to the Eucharist

Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, for to them belong the kingdom of heaven.”

All become members of a family by birth or adoption.

Baptism is a celebration of birth into the family of God.

A family meal gathers and sustains each human family.

The Holy Eucharist is the special meal that Jesus gave to his friends to keep us together as the family of Christ.

The Lord be with you

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts

We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to God.

It is right to give God thanks and praise.

It is very good and right to give thanks, because God made us, Jesus redeemed us and the Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts.  Therefore with Angels and Archangels and all of the world that we see and don’t see, we forever sing this hymn of praise:

Holy, Holy, Holy (Intoned)

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of Power and Might.  Heav’n and earth are full of your glory.

Hosanna in the highest.  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. 

Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna in the Highest.

All may gather around the altar

Our grateful praise we offer to you God, our Creator;

You have made us in your image

And you gave us many men and women of faith to help us to live by faith:

Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachael.

And then you gave us your Son, Jesus, born of Mary, nurtured by Joseph

And he called us to be sons and daughters of God.

Your Son called us to live better lives and he gave us this Holy Meal so that when we eat

  the bread and drink the wine, we can  know that the Presence of Christ is as near to us as  

  this food and drink  that becomes a part of us.

The Prayer continues with these words

And so, Father, we bring you these gifts of bread and wine. Bless and sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ our Lord.  Bless and sanctify us by your Holy Spirit so that we may love God and our neighbor.

On the night when Jesus was betrayed he took bread, said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to his friends, and said, "Take, eat: This is my Body, which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me."

After supper, Jesus took the cup of wine, gave thanks, and said, "Drink this, all of you. This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me."

Father, we now celebrate the memorial of your Son. When we eat this holy Meal of Bread and Wine, we are telling the entire world about the life, death and resurrection of Christ and that his presence will be with us in our future.

Let this holy meal keep us together as friends who share a special relationship because of your Son Jesus Christ.  May we forever live with praise to God to whom we belong as sons and daughters.

By Christ, and with Christ, and in Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit all honor and glory

 is yours, Almighty Father, now and for ever. AMEN.

And now as our Savior Christ has taught us, we now sing,

Our Father: (Renew # 180, West Indian Lord’s Prayer)

Our Father who art in heaven:  Hallowed be thy name.

Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done: Hallowed be thy name.

Done on earth as it is in heaven: Hallowed be thy name.

Give us this day our daily bread: Hallowed be thy name.

And forgive us all our debts: Hallowed be thy name.

As we forgive our debtors: Hallowed be thy name.

Lead us not into temptation: Hallowed be thy name.

But deliver us from evil: Hallowed be thy name.

Thine is the kingdom, power, and glory: Hallowed be thy name.

Forever and ever: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

Breaking of the Bread

Celebrant:       Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.

People:            Therefore let us keep the feast.   

Words of Administration

Communion Hymn: I Am the Bread of Life (Renew!  # 246)

Unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink of his blood, and drink of his blood, you shall not have life within you.

Refrain: And I will raise you up, and I will raise you up, and I will raise you up on the last day.

Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who has come into the world.  Refrain

Post-Communion Prayer. 

Everlasting God, we have gathered for the meal that Jesus asked us to keep;

We have remembered his words of blessing on the bread and the wine.

And His Presence has been known to us.

We have remembered that we are sons and daughters of God and brothers

    and sisters in Christ.

Send us forth now into our everyday lives remembering that the blessing in the

     bread and wine spreads into each time, place and person in our lives,

As we are ever blessed by you, O Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Closing Song: Thy Word (Renew! # 94)

Refrain: Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.

When I feel afraid, think I’ve lost my way, still you’re there right beside me.  And nothing will I fear as long as you are near.  Please be near me to the end.  Refrain

I will not forget your love for me, and yet my heart forever is wandering.  Jesus, be my guide and hold me to your side; and I will love you to the end.  Refrain

Dismissal:   

Liturgist: Let us go forth in the Name of Christ. 

People: Thanks be to God! 

Temptation: Acting on Misinterpretation

1 Lent C    February 17, 2013

Deut.26:1-11    Ps. 91

Rom.10:5-13     Luke 4:1-13

Lectionary Link 

Text:

  We begin the season of Lent with the famous show down between Jesus and Satan.  One wonders how this private temptation of Jesus ever came to textual form but it has and it ties in with numerology of the Hebrew Scripture.  The number 40 is the symbolic number for test and ordeal and wandering before arriving at an appointed place.  40 years in the wilderness for the people of Israel.  It rained 40 days and night in the big Flood.   

  The wilderness is also a symbolic place of making the lonely vision quest to test one’s calling.  Are you really sure you’re supposed to do this?  A vision of vocation and ministry is tested.  “Maybe I shouldn’t have left the previous familiar place.  Maybe I did not have any choice as circumstances forced me in the liminal state of betwixt and between, a rite of passage.  Maybe I’ve launch out into the new vision and I’m getting nowhere so in disappointment, maybe I should quit.”  The showdown between Jesus and Satan in the wilderness happened after his baptism by John the Baptist, when Jesus was to begin his ministry.  In his vision quest in the wilderness one can find revisited the place of human defeat, namely the current state of the Garden of Eden..  First Adam failed in his temptation with the serpent-Satan, the trickster, and as a result the entire creation was plagued with weeds.  The Garden of Eden was locked off; Shangri-la now but an ancient myth.  Now the dis-harmony with the plant world was expressed in the weeds that want to grow in our garden of wheat and fruits and choke off our labor.  The Garden of Eden as a friendly menagerie of animals with Adam being like a Dr. Doolittle talking with animals and giving them their names, had become the wilderness where the beasts were predators and humanity is a prey unless human beings can outsmart the animals who were originally created for eco-harmony and friendship.

  “God, we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” This was a visionary impulse long before Joni Mitchell wrote a song about the Woodstock hippie quest for a return to Eden.  The entrance of Israel into the Promised Land flowing with milk and honey was another attempt to get back to the Garden as are all human attempts at utopia for more perfect societies. 

   Adam and Christ stand as the totemic personalities for trying to understand human direction and in the story of Adam, we find a story that gives us insight about our moral failure.  First man and first woman, Adam and Eve are naively innocent creatures, who succumb to the superior stealthy cunning of the serpent, and the naïve pair went from being vegetarians to misbehaving fruitarians and as they say, the rest is history.  In the Biblical epic, there was one needed to progress beyond the state of naiveté and go again to a site of the original misdirection and that once Garden site has now become the wilderness haunted by wild beasts.  And a second Adam, a hero had to go in to confront the great trickster. 

  We in our biblical religion are so used to “externalizing” all things biblical as having happened out there in the external world.  The Greeks use a word, “Topos” to refer to both physical sites but also literary textual topics.  When we read the Bible we are reading about those “topoi,” those great human topics or literary topographical inner space sites of human angst and triumph.

   Perhaps the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness highlights most poignantly the notion of word, text and topic.  The temptation showdown was essentially an interior verbal sparring between Jesus and his interior trickster Accuser.  They exchanged words and so we had a debate or forensic discourse, verbal jousting.  And what were they jousting about?  They were essentially jousting about the great text of their known world, the words of their Bible, the words of the Hebrew Scripture.  The temptation of Christ shows us that Satan knew how to use the Bible.  The words of the Bible as written could be interpreted in a hundred ways and so Satan was using the words of the Hebrew Scripture to tempt Jesus to make the word flesh in coming to an actual deed.  The fullness of word being made flesh occurs when it animates an actual deed.  Just as the serpent trickster of old used flattering words to motivate Eve and Adam to the deed of eating the forbidden fruit, so too the trickster and eloquent devil tried to appeal to the good holy book to influence an action by Jesus.

  The temptations of life most often are about interpretation and timing?  Is eating an apple from the tree bad?  Of course not, it is timing of when the apple can be eaten.  A parent does the same thing with one’s child.  Are cookies bad for children, yes and no, it depends upon the timing of eating for good nutrition.  Is bread bad for Jesus or us?  Of course not, it has to do with the timing of throwing Jesus off his schedule of how he understood his relationship with God his father.

   The idolatrous form of self-esteem is the megalomaniac quest for the kind of fame when a person is dominated to define their very worth as a person by the number of people who can express devotion or adoration towards them.  Our media society certainly feeds this distorted view of fame as famous people complain about invasive paparazzi even while they use all of the distorted fame to get wealthy.  Worship and adore me in exactly the way that I want you to.  And you see how fame and the events that lead to fame often get labeled as a Faustian bargain.  “Jesus, you are clever enough to use your wisdom and your charisma and your ability to manipulate people and become as powerful and as famous as the Caesar, so why don’t you use your ability to get this kind of fame.”  The plan of God had Jesus becoming famous in the path of counter-logic; by getting crucified and then returning to countless numbers of people in resurrection manifestations. 

  And then there is the temptation trick of trying to get Jesus to be a fundamentalist literalist.  “Throw yourself off the building Jesus because the Bible says the angels will catch you.”  There was a time and a place for Jesus to die but not by being led into acting because of a faulty reading of the Bible.  Lots of people are led to hurtful prejudice and acts of injustice because of the way in which they read the Bible.  Our world is full of incredible cruel actions done because of the way that religious people of all religions have been tempted to read their Holy Books in distorted ways.  The temptation of Christ is a witness to us to be careful in how we seek to understand our Holy Book in our time and if our interpretation of the Bible does not pass the non-exploitative, love and justice and common sense smell test, then we need to be careful in the kinds of interpretation of the Bible that we are acting upon.

  The greater point that I would like for us to understand is that you and I are word constituted in a sea of words.  By this I mean our world and self-knowledge is constructed by the way in which we see or perceive through the word structures of our life.  We use Holy Books and “higher education” to inform the language lenses through which we see all of life outside of us and all of who we are inside of us.  So we have taken on lots of word usage that already result in automatic body language acts in our life.  Our body language follows the code of how we have taken on word use in our lives.

  So this temptation event of Jesus as a clash of competing interpretations is crucial in understanding that you and I live on a sea of words in how we are interpreting the meaning of our lives in each word and deed.  The parts of our life deeds that are already on automatic in our body rituals sometimes are hard to interdict and change.

  The reason we try to educate and bring into our lives new word events and new possibility of new interpretations is that we hope to cure in progressive ways the ignorance that our speech and body habits have taken on through being informed by less than ideal sources of information.

  This is why we are always within a textual temptation, a word battle for excellence in future speech and action.  Jesus won the battle of words against the one who wanted him to misinterpret and take the wrong actions in his life.

  We live the drama of this temptation too, every moment of our lives.  That is why the “ I.T. phrase “garbage in, garbage out” is relevant to our life of temptation.  What we take in as we live on this sea of words in some ways become flesh in the actions of our lives and so we need to be ever mindful of what we are taking in so as to influence what we will be expressing in the words and deeds of our lives.

  Friends, we highlight the temptation of Jesus today as we have begun Lent, but trust me, you and I are living this dramatic temptation in our word lives all of the time.  Let us ponder today how we are interpreting and acting out the highest ideals of our lives today, and let us follow Jesus in finding strategies against the temptation to “mistime” the words and deeds of our lives.  Amen.