1st Sunday in Lent, 03/13/2011

Sermon on Matthew 4:1-11, by Richard O. Johnson

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread." But he answered, "It is written,"‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, "‘He will command his angels concerning you,' and "‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.'" Jesus said to him, "Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.'" Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, "All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me." Then Jesus said to him, "Be gone, Satan! For it is written, "‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.'" Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him.

In West Africa there is a long, graceful and beautiful river called the Niger. In its 2600 miles, it meanders through seven different nations before emptying into the sea. Sanche de Gramont, in his book called The Strong Brown God, calls the river "the cradle of West Africa . . . a moving path into the heart of the continent, a long, liquid magic wand, that makes fertile the soil it touches. Cattle drink its water and graze on its green banks. Its fish and game birds provide food. Its trees give wood for dugouts." The river, he says, "means an end to hunger, thirst and isolation." [Sanche de Gramont (aka Ted Morgan), The Strong Brown God, Houghton Mifflin Co, 1977]

It is a striking portrait, and it would be supported by watching life on the river. People bathe themselves there, and wash their clothes; the river gives drinking water that people carry for miles; children laugh as they swim in its waters, seeking relief from the oppressive tropical heat.

Yet underneath the placid surface of this center of African life, there lurks a fatal danger. A small parasite, called schistosomiasis, thrives there, carried by snails, and infecting millions of people just going about their daily life and enjoying the apparent benefits of the river. It is a deadly parasite, second only to malaria among the world's parasitic infections. But unlike malaria, the infection rate of schistosomiasis is increasing rapidly each year.

Parasite of sin

The gospels present the temptation of Jesus in an amazing sequence. It happens right after he is baptized. A spiritually powerful moment, the inauguration of a great ministry, the strong presence of the Holy Spirit-everything seems fine! Yet underneath it all-could we perhaps even say "underneath the waters of his baptism"?-there lurks this strange and deadly parasite called sin which raises its ugly head here, in the wilderness, in these dreadful temptations.

Sometimes it seems we have lost the sense of struggle in Christianity. We make of baptism a wonderful celebration of life and promise-and so it is. But perhaps we need to remember what lurks beneath the baptismal waters. It is struggle and conflict with sin, and its cohort, temptation; and it comes to us, just as it came to Jesus.

In our baptismal liturgy, we ask the person being baptized, or the sponsors, if the candidate is a child, a pointed question: "Do you renounce the devil and all his ways?" They say "I do." About three seconds of attention to the devil. How much more straightforward were the words in the old Book of Common Prayer: "Dost thou, therefore, renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all the covetous desires of the same, and the carnal desires of the flesh, so that thou wilt not follow, nor be led by them?" And the response would be, "I renounce them all; and by God's help will endeavor not to follow, nor be led by them." Now that's giving the Devil his due! That's taking seriously the struggle that we have, we who have been baptized, against all the powers of darkness! But we don't say those things much anymore.

Unholy trinity

In the Small Catechism's explanation of the Lord's Prayer, Luther says that we ask God to watch over us "so that the devil, the world, and our sinful self may not deceive us." The devil, the world, and our sinful self. I believe we could understand that little triad, that "unholy trinity," as being just what is involved in this story of the temptation of Christ.

The first temptation is to turn stones into bread. What a picture of "our sinful self"! We think first of our own needs, our own desires. It is the temptation, Dostoevsky once suggested, to be pampered, to be taken care of. It is something to which we are particularly prone. Ever since the Garden of Eden, we human beings have thought first of ourselves-always "looking out for number one!" For us human beings, number one means me. What I want is most important.

Of course we never think of ourselves as self-centered or selfish. That is a large part of the danger of our sinful selves-we are able to justify almost anything, to deny a good deal. In Psalm 32, we hear the prayer of a man who has denied his own sin: "My bones withered away, because of my groaning all day long . . . my moisture was dried up as in the heat of summer." The very reason we refuse to acknowledge our sin is that we are entrapped by our sinful self. It convinces us that we have done nothing wrong.

What the world will think

The second temptation sometimes seems a bit peculiar. The Devil challenges Jesus to throw himself down from the pinnacle of the Temple. "Throw yourself down!" he says. "God will take care of you." Here Jesus is tempted to prove himself before the world. A dramatic rescue by the angels will surely convince everyone that Jesus is, in fact, the Son of God. So why not do it? It is the thing that will convince the world!

Yes, the world. We're so worried about the world, and what it will think. "We've got to behave in this way, or people will think we're foolish." "We've got to soft-pedal this teaching, or the world will be turned off." The world has all kinds of ideas, and we are so often ready to take them lock, stock and barrel.

Yet the teaching of Scripture is, again and again, that the world is deceiving. What the world says is great and wonderful and good, is so often just exactly opposite of what God intends. Think for a moment about advertisements for alcohol or tobacco. What do they suggest? Beautiful people, having a good time, enjoying life, enjoying the wonderful creation God has made-and that alcohol or tobacco is just another part of that good life! What is not shown is the reality: lives ruined by addiction, bodies wasting away from illness, the human cost of harmless pleasures.

And so it always is with the world. The world paints a rosy picture of what life means, but the picture is so often a lie. The world misleads us. The world is not such an honest judge. Jesus responds by refusing the invitation to prove his divinity to the world. The world doesn't matter much to him, you see; what matters is God.

To cling to God alone

The third temptation is the most blatant and the most honest. "Fall down and worship me," the Devil says, "and everything will be yours!" And here we get to the heart of it all. Our sinful self and the world-those are just fronts! It is the Devil who is behind it all-that mysterious, incredible force with whom we contend each day of our lives, whose effort it is to deceive us and draw us away from God. It is him with whom we strive. The stronger we become spiritually, the more difficult the struggle.

But to cling to God alone-that is what Jesus does, and what we must do. It means, Luther says, "nothing else than to entrust ourselves to him completely." Anytime there is something else besides God demanding your complete trust-well, it is a false god, and behind it stands the one who confronts Jesus in our story this morning.

Yes, the Christian life is a struggle. Why do we have to face these temptations? Why are we so troubled by the Devil, the world, and our sinful selves? Dietrich Bonhoeffer makes the very profound point that these attacks against us are in fact attacks against Christ himself. Jesus defeated the Devil in his temptations in the wilderness-and so now the Devil continues his battle with Jesus by tempting us. We face those same temptations that Jesus faced-the devil, the world, our sinful selves, always trying to draw us away from God. But because Christ fights with us, we can overcome.

That is indeed the promise of this morning's gospel lesson. It is possible to overcome all the temptations that confront us. It is not possible to do it alone; but we don't face those temptations alone. We face them with Christ. He fights by our side. And because he does, we can be victorious. Again Luther put it as powerfully as anyone:

God's word forever shall abide,

No thanks to foes who fear it;

For God himself fights by our side

With weapons of the Spirit.

Were they to take our house,

Goods, honor, child or spouse,

Though life be wrenched away,

They cannot win the day.

The kingdom's ours forever.

In the Name of the Father, and of + the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Rev. Richard O. Johnson
Grass Valley, CA, USA
E-Mail: roj@nccn.net

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