THE WALK OF HUMILITY

March 6, 2022
1^st Sunday in Lent
Deut. 26:1-11; Ps. 91:1-2, 9-16; Rom. 10:8b-13; Lk. 4:1-13
Rev. Denise Clark-Jones

Reading about Satan’s temptations offered to Jesus in the wilderness seems an appropriate pairing with our news headlines this week. The pursuit of power and glory has taken the top spots: the Russian president Putin’s audacious and brutal invasion of Ukraine and the investigation of former President Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election and to stop the peaceful transfer of power on Jan. 6. Scrolling further down we see stories of sexual harassment in the workplace and their cover-ups. Satan’s playbook hasn’t changed and all of us are susceptible. Even those with very limited power by way of wealth, fame, or authority are empowered by social media, and the abuses of that power have created all kinds of evil.

The bible tells us it all started with Adam and Eve. The snake tempted the couple to become like God and they ate the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden and the only knowledge they gained was they could not be like God. The apostle Paul wrote about Jesus as the new Adam, the one who resisted temptation: “The first man, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. (1 Cor. 15:45)

The season of Lent began Ash Wednesday when we admitted that, like Adam, we are dust and to dust, we shall return. Humility before God is the beginning of our Lenten journey to the cross and resurrection with Jesus. But being humble does not mean we are insignificant. That our all-powerful God reaches out to us in love gives us the assurance that our lives are very significant, indeed. Our scripture readings for today testify that God values all lives, especially those who by worldly standards are not.

Sandwiched between Jesus’ baptism, at which time he received the Holy Spirit, and the start of his public ministry, Luke places the forty days in the wilderness. Forty days is a significant number in the bible. Not intended as a history book with fastidious documentation of numbers and dates, the writers used the number forty to mean a long time during which God was working on something BIG! You must remember that scientists tell us that in ancient times forty years, using the current system of calculating time, was about the average life span. The story of Moses and the Israelites in the wilderness for forty years added a new dimension to the number forty. Forty became associated with hunger – a hunger that God filled.

In the wilderness, Jesus was learning what his public ministry would look like. In our Old Testament reading, Moses was telling God’s chosen people how their lives should be lived once they entered the Promised Land. Our reading from Deuteronomy is a long sermon delivered by Moses. He knows he will not enter the Promised Land with them, so his last task is to prepare them for honoring God’s gift by living according to God’s will. Throughout the years Moses led his people, he always understood he was to follow God’s instructions. God had not called just one man; God had called a people. As a faithful community, the Israelites were to lead the world by example, bringing all the world to acknowledge themselves as God’s people. This is why Putin will never succeed in achieving the power and glory he craves. He does not, and will not, have the hearts of the people he wants to rule, including his own Russian people. His legacy will be that of Stalin, or if he unleashes nuclear weapons there will be no one to remember him at all.

Moses had a difficult tenure as the leader of the Children of Israel. The plan was for the people to worship God alone and to trust God to provide for them. They had been tested in the wilderness many times and often failed. Then, on the verge of receiving what God had promised, Moses made one last call to the people to demonstrate their trust and thanksgiving in God when they were finally given a homeland.

God decreed, through Moses, that the people were to give back the first fruits of the land at a festival of thanksgiving. They were to remember their own history – people who had wandered for generations from Abraham to the present. With this memory, they were to show hospitality and compassion to foreigners who came to their land.

Our Lenten journey calls us to remember that our ancestors were also wanderers, immigrants to a new land. Today, more than a million Ukrainians have been added to the world’s staggering number of refugees who are seeking welcome. God demanded the Israelites share not what they would have leftover from the harvest, they were to set aside their “first fruits” to share with the widows, orphans and foreigners.

Moses reminded the Israelites that when they felt hunger in the wilderness, they failed to trust God. They were ready to go back to pledge their allegiance to Pharoah for want of bread. Then God had fed them manna, which supplied their need just fine until the Israelites decided they wanted more than God was giving them from his very hand. Tired of manna, Pharaoh’s food started looking good to them and they were willing to become slaves to a worldly power to get it. This is the story that Jesus remembers when faced with Satan’s temptation to turn stones into bread.

He quotes one verse from Deuteronomy. Man does not live by bread alone.” Yet, Jesus’ words conveyed much more to Luke’s audience. They knew well the story of the Israelite’s escape from slavery in Egypt and their time of wandering in the wilderness for forty years. The devil’s tempting Jesus to turn stones into bread comes from these words Moses, their leader of liberation, spoke to them in his final sermon:

“Remember the long way that the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments. He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by supplying you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.” (Deut.8:2-

The gospel writers, including Luke, each tell us that Jesus was alone in the wilderness with the devil, the personification of evil. As in the book of Job, a parable on trusting in God when bad things inexplicably happen, this gospel story puts Jesus in the position of defending his trust in God. Jesus understood that what God was asking him to do was to be the Living Bread, the bread that would fill the peoples’ hunger for God. He kept his eyes on the prize, not for himself but for the common good of all humanity. He realized if he turned the stones into a commodity, he would be selling his own life to the highest bidder.

The second temptation Satan offered Jesus was political and economic power.  Jesus could be like the Pharaoh or Caesar, but even greater – he could rule all the nations and have all their valuable resources. Would that not be better than the rule of tyrants? Jesus could share the great wealth of the empires with the people. But the catch was he would have to worship the devil rather than God. Remembering the Israelites who built an idol, a golden calf, to worship during their time wandering in the wilderness, Jesus, again, quotes scripture from Moses’ instructions to the people of Israel on the eve of their entering the Promised Land:

^“The Lord your God you shall fear; him you shall serve, and by his name alone you shall swear.” (Deut. 6:13)

Jesus had come to the understanding that God wanted him to rule with the people, not over them. What the devil was asking Jesus to do was to abuse the power God had given him. During Lent we are challenged to examine the worldly gods that tether us. Are we living to serve God or are we serving other gods? What do we need to do in our own lives to free ourselves to be the people of God living fully in the world, but not of the world?

For the final test, the devil took Jesus to the highest pinnacle in Jerusalem, the Holy City. He challenged Jesus to prove his identity as the Son of God by throwing himself down from this great height. The devil was presenting Jesus with the temptation to advance his influence and increase his following with a flamboyant display of his divine power. Would not this meet the peoples’ expectations of the Messiah? It would certainly make his mission easier. Convincing people to follow him would be easier if he appeared superhuman. But his mission was to show people the way to the kingdom of God by being like him, which they could not do if it required actions beyond human capability.

Are we not also tempted to be what people expect us to be? We expend time and energy, both physical and emotional, to be and do what we believe will give us the image that impresses people or endears us to others. All these temptations the devil put before Jesus – power, authority, glory — are the things that we seek to prove our worth to others. Henri Nouwen, the 20th century theologian wrote in his book, Life of the Beloved:

“Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions…. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the ‘Beloved.’ Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.” Our lives are meaningful and important because God loves us, not because of what others think of us.

When faced with this challenge to his identity Jesus, again, quoted a verse of scripture from Deuteronomy to put the devil in his place:

^“Do not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah.” (Deut. 6:16)

Jesus would proceed with his ministry by inviting people to the kingdom of God where justice, mercy and peace replace empires’ rule of oppression, fear and threats of violence. His power would not dazzle them with superhuman feats. He would model for them how a mortal human being could demonstrate obedience to God and love for his neighbors in simple ways of service.

It is easier for us to see evil’s temptations at work in Washington, Hollywood and Wall Street, but harder for us to recognize in the small decisions with which we are challenged daily. We are constantly faced with the opportunity to serve others or to serve ourselves alone. We are the most vulnerable to the temptation to serve ourselves at the expense of others when we experience fear, discomfort, anger, loneliness, or hunger. We fill our hunger with things other than God. We are masters at self-justification as well as self-delusion. When serving and protecting ourselves becomes a way of life, we distance ourselves so far from God it is hard to find our way back. That is what Lent is about – finding our way back to God who welcomes us with open arms and a love that will not let us go.

With all the physical and emotional discomfort Jesus suffered in the wilderness, Jesus was free. Free will is a wonderful and frightening gift from God. Jesus would continue to be tested in his life, as we are. The wilderness was a daunting place to be, but Jesus was not alone, and neither are we. He had faith that God’s Holy Spirit would be with him, protect him, and guide him. This he was promised at his baptism. We have been given that same promise.

Amen. May it be so!

© Rev. Denise Clark-Jones, 2022, All Rights Reserved
Westminster Presbyterian Church | 1420 W. Moss Ave. | Peoria, Illinois 61606
WestminsterPeoria.org  | 309.673.8501

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“Why am I a member of Westminster Presbyterian Church?  Two words keep  floating up in a rather persistent way  –  “home” and  “family” – and I realized that it is an inescapable fact that is what this church means to me. During my 40 years here, so many life events have happened and Westminster has been there for me through all those times – good and bad.    It has been my home and family.  They say “home is where the heart is” and I’ve found the heart of Westminster to be as open and warm as a family’s!”