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Lent 1, 03/10/2019
Sermon on Matthew 4:1-14, by Evan McClanahan
It has been said - and debated - that there are only 7 basic plots in all of storytelling. Every movie or book or play you love can fit into one of those seven plots. They are Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, The Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, and Rebirth. If it is true that there are only so many stories to be told, I would suggest it is because we live in God's world and are made in His image for his purposes and the point of stories is to help us see that reality.
But I thought of one of the meta-narratives and its association with several stories in the Bible: Voyage and Return. There are many times in the Bible when characters are sent on a journey and either they are able to return or we are, in fact, still living in the middle of that story. In our lessons this morning, we have two stories of different journeys, and both stories have a lot to say about our own voyages and our own returns.
We should begin with the meta-narrative of the entire Bible: Fall and Redemption. When Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden, they had everything they could want or need. But they were incapable of of being content with that. Unable to live as God would have them live, they were banished from the Garden. No longer would it, or could it, be their home. That day, their voyage, and indeed, the voyage of every human being who would come after them, would begin. Cast "East of Eden", men and women would essentially become wanderers, never fully or perfectly at home as much as we were in Eden.
Now, there is an answer to this story. There is a Return to this Voyage, and it is Man's return upon his resurrection from the dead to a New Heaven and a New Earth. For now, we are wanderers, but we will return home one day to a place that resembles Eden in every way except one: there will be no Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and there will be no sin and death.
So the meta-narrative of our faith is that we are on a voyage as a result of our Fall into Sin, but we will return home to Eden when Christ comes again to judge the living and the dead. John writes in Revelation about our future home: "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more." What a glorious homecoming we have to look forward to!
But I mentioned there were other stories that speak of Voyage and Return, and so there are. Perhaps the most famous wilderness story of all is God's judgement against the Israelites for their lack of faith and their subsequent wandering for 40 years. Recall that the Israelites were so afraid of enjoying the new home that God provided for them - the land we now call Israel that flowed with milk and honey - that God required an entire generation to pass before Israel could enjoy their return home.
It is during that time that the Torah - or the first five books of the Bible - were written, including our reading from Deuteronomy. God addresses the homecoming of the Israelites in particular, recalling the promise of this piece of Land that God has procured for his people. And God gives them this command to take the first of the fruit that is harvested in this new land and give it to a priest as an offering. This relatively arbitrary command seems especially designed to remind the people that it is God who has given this people their land after years of a voyage. Listen again to what the Israelite is to say to the priest: “Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.” Voyage and Return.
Jesus is led by the Holy Spirit into the Wilderness for a voyage of his own. His public ministry having begun at his baptism, Jesus leaves home, family and even food and water behind to do battle with the devil. And make no mistake, it is not only three temptations that Jesus resists. Jesus is demonstrating here that the devil will have no power over him at all and that there is not a single thing the devil can offer Jesus that will deter him from his mission. We often make the First Sunday of Lent about our own temptations, and there is certainly nothing wrong with that. We most certainly need the Spirit's aid to resist and defeat temptation.
But given the location the temptation - the wilderness - it is not wrong at all to see Jesus finding his way to the outskirts of Eden and beginning his undoing of what took place in Eden. It is not wrong at all to connect Jesus in the Wilderness for 40 days with the Israelites time in the wilderness for 40 years. In each case, through disobedience and fear, God's people found themselves in the wilderness and outside of the home that God had prepared for them. By going into the Wilderness, Jesus is demonstrating his power in defeating the devil. Where we are afraid, he is courageous. Where we are disobedient, he is obedient.
After his time in the wilderness, and after being tended to by angels directly, Jesus returned home and returned to his ministry. During that ministry he taught about the Kingdom of God. He raised the dead. He healed the sick. He befriended the friendless and he gave solace to the lost. His ministry concluded when he died a sinless death as an atonement for you and for me. And then his new life began when God raised him from the dead, and Jesus' voyage to the one planet God has deemed fit for life came to an end. And Jesus returned to the Father in Heaven, where he awaits those who trust in him. Voyage and return.
We are on voyages of our own. Day by day, year by year, we work, we play, we change, we grow. By God's grace, we grow deeper in our relationship with God and closer to our friend and brother, Jesus. By faith we will be called home when we die, not having defeated all temptation, but having trusted in Christ to defeat temptation for us. We will return to that blessed place before the Fall, a place when Adam and Eve were not tempted to sin, but rather loved the life that God had given them, and worked with contentment and joy.
So as you journey, as you voyage on life's great adventures, you will come across many stumbling blocks and many temptations. There will be times of wilderness for you, times you feel alone and estranged from God. But remember that Jesus has already gone ahead of you in the wilderness. And there he did not succumb to temptation, but rather provided the clear path home for your own voyage and return. Amen.