Göttinger Predigten
Göttinger Predigten im Internet hg. von U. Nembach
The First Sunday in Lent , 03/05/2017
LEAVING YOUR WILDERNESS WITH NEW DIRECTION
Sermon on Matthew 4:1-11, by David Zersen
A former colleague of mine, who once lived on the prairie in North Dakota, told me that in Austin, Texas, he missed getting up in the morning, looking out the door, and seeing the horizon. I’ve often reflected on his comment because, speaking geographically, few of us have experienced, except perhaps on vacations, the bleakness and barrenness of deserts, prairies or wastelands that place nothing before us until our eyes meet the horizon. Most of us are products of villages, town and cities. We tend to be urban people.
The geographical settings of men and women in the biblical world, however, gave them familiarity with wilderness. Long after their wanderings in the Sinai desert, their nomadic heritage embraced them as they walked the trails from village to town in the Judean hinterlands or the Samarian highlands. Their ancestors had spent 40 years in the wilderness, and Elijah knew its solemnity for 40 days. After his conversion, Paul may have spent several years in the Arabian desert, and in today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus spends 40 days in the wilderness. In each of these cases, the wilderness experience provided moments of challenge and contemplation.
Jesus tackles the power structures in the world
Jesus’ own experience involved him with temptations to change course and to develop a ministry that was founded on definitions of power that worked not for human advantage, but against it. He was tempted to turn his ministry into that of a miracle worker, specifically one of providing food to keep people dependent on the resources he provided. He was tempted to test the power of God to meet his own needs, even if they were trivial. And he was tempted to accept authority over the world, becoming as it were a secular ruler. In reality, Jesus was being tempted to determine how he would use power and presumption in his life—whether he would use them to satisfy his personal interests and needs, or whether he would use them to care for the needs of those to whom he was given in ministry.
The theologian who has wrestled with this subject the most is Walter Wink, for many years a professor at Auburn Theological Seminary in upper Manhattan. His classic trilogy deals with power, and Jesus’s use of it: “Naming the Powers,” “Unmasking the Powers” and “Engaging the Powers.” Wink shows how money, politics, sports, science, etc. dominate human interests and tempt us to make them our priorities. He wants us to ask whether we can name and unmask these powers so that they do not control us? Into which wilderness should we go to be tested so as to find the proper direction for our respective ministries?
The great Greek novelist, Nikos Kazantzakis, helps us provide answers to these questions in his novel, now also a film, “The Last Temptation of Christ.” While on the cross, suffering the agony provided by human cruelty and rejection, Jesus has to decide: Should he reject his claim to be the Christ, be taken down from the cross, and be allowed to live a normal family life with Mary Magdalene (Kazantzakis’ conjecture, of course) or should he lose his life by accepting the sentence and the punishment that actually belonged to others? Should he be the scapegoat that allowed others to live while he dies in their place?
In Kazantzakis’ language, as well as in Wink’s, Jesus chooses to allow people to exercise the power that leads to his crucifixion. He does not make their decision for them, but chooses to begin a ministry of caring for and curing people, at least for those who are willing to allow him to strengthen and heal them. He enters the wilderness, a place known already by his ancestors as a setting in which to be equipped and focused, and returns to his people to be a servant to them.
Each of us also has this option, the possibility of choosing the way which best meets our own personal needs and ultimately leads to a dead end, or the prospect of learning how to be one who cares for the needs of others. When such decisions are facing us, do we know how to find our wilderness, those reflective settings or personal interlocutors who may take the time to work with us? Can we know when we are really ready to pursue new directions in our lives?
Each of us needs a wilderness that fosters introspection
The three temptations in today’s Gospel lesson are matched by another in the Old Testament lesson. Adam and Even are tempted to eat the fruit of a tree which, according to the Tempter, would give them the wisdom to know the difference between good and evil. They decide to eat the fruit, but then merely discover that they— are naked. This is how it is with most of the temptations to which we, or groups of us, succumb— especially when we have not taken the time to go into the wilderness to think things through. We meet our dead ends quickly and don’t get anything close to the prize we think we’re going to get.
Perhaps we quit our job because, we cursorily reflect, then the boss might really miss us. We tell a friend that we’re not going to the prom with him/her after all, because that may really make him/her know how badly he/she acted. We divorce our spouse, because then he/she will really be sorry!
Perhaps our local parish decides not to integrate or encourage open and reconciling relationships because some might have their feelings hurt. Someone criticizes us at church and we snap back at them because they spoke out of turn. A student takes our backpack and we know who took it, so we spread false rumors about them.
Perhaps at our place of work someone says that we do a sloppy job on our projects and we make up something about him/her that isn’t true and pass it around. We have a rift with someone on the softball team from our unit at work and we don’t invite them to the team party at our home.
Women are invited to a shower for a woman on the floor who’s getting married, and you’re in charge of invitations and “accidentally” fail to send one to each of two women you don’t like.
These may not be monumental issues that could initiate a war or create a riot. However, in most cases, action or reaction takes place too quickly because someone doesn’t take the time to reflect or contemplate the results of poorly-planned reactions. Most importantly, someone (“Is it I, Lord?”) fails to “remember Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross…” (Heb. 12:2) It is too easy to forget the Savior who entered the wilderness of suffering and self-denial in order to show us a new and better way. There is a wilderness awaiting each of us in which we may take the time to watch and pray and seek the alternatives which benefit not just us, but those we are called to serve.
In the 2017 film based on the novel by the Japanese Christian, Shusako Endo, Silence, two Portuguese Roman Catholic priests struggle with the implications of surrendering their faith or continuing their presence in it. If they surrender it, they will be unfaithful to their God, but the Japanese converts will no longer be persecuted. If they continue to promulgate it, they will be killed and no one will have a leadership role to promote the faith for future converts. The two struggled very hard with the temptation to commit apostasy, to surrender the faith, at least publicly. The result is that, after their apostasy, the Japanese converts were no longer prosecuted, and the Christian priests were given menial task, but remained alive. The “wilderness” in which the priests struggled for a long time was painful, and the film left the viewer wondering whether the response to the temptation was correct. One thing was clear: The new direction taken by the priests allowed them to serve the Japanese people in a caring way.
The story provides enormous intellectual and theological challenges to the views, perhaps at a level that he/she may not be prepared to undertake. However, as we enter this Lenten season, our own 40 days of wilderness, we should be ready ask ourselves about those new directions we may need to pursue. The temptations before us encourage directions we may not yet have considered, but always allow us to choose between the alternatives to satisfy us personally and those that meet the needs of others.
These questions are real for us. Can these 40 days serve not just as the “church’s” wilderness, but as our own?
Do we already know the directions that are possible for us?
Do we know which directions the Savior’s love alone empowers us to take?