Until An Opportune Time
Luke 4:1-13
by Jim Westmoreland
Today, is the first Sunday of Lent. Today, we talk about temptation, Jesus' temptation in the wilderness and our own temptation day by day.
I recently read a story about a little boy named Bobby who desperately wanted a new bicycle. His plan was to save his nickels, dimes and quarters until he finally had enough to buy a new 10-speed. Each night he asked God to help him save his money. Kneeling beside his bed, he prayed, "Dear Lord, please help me save my money for a new bike, and please, Lord, don't let the ice cream man come down the street again tomorrow."
Jim Grant in Reader's Digest told about someone else who faced temptation. An overweight businessman decided it was time to shed some excess pounds. He took his new diet seriously, even changing his driving route to avoid his favorite bakery. One morning, however, he showed up at work with a gigantic coffee cake. Everyone in the office scolded him, but his smile remained nonetheless. "This is a special coffee cake," he explained. "I accidentally drove by the bakery this morning and there in the window was a host of goodies. I felt it was no accident, so I prayed, 'Lord, if you want me to have one of those delicious coffee cakes, let there be a parking spot open right in front.' And sure enough, the eighth time around the block, there it was!"(1)
Temptation is no stranger to us. We know what it is to enter the wilderness of temptation. Temptation is an unescapable experience of the human condition.
In Luke's dramatic narrative, Jesus had just been baptized. A voice from heaven declared him to be "beloved," and the Spirit descended on him like a dove. Have you noticed what follows this gloriously affirming moment? How is this Beloved, Spirit-anointed one treated? He is led directly out into a harrowing zone to be assaulted by the devil himself! One-on-one combat with the devil? Forty days without food? Or we should clarify: forty days and nights. The nights are harder, aren't they?
Consider the terrain: from Jericho, tourists today lift their gaze westward and see Mount of Temptation. An ancient monastery is carved into the cliffs to mark the memory of Jesus' temptation. This wilderness is not a vast expanse of sand with an occasional cactus or tumbleweed. But, there are a rocky, daunting zone of cliffs, caves and wild beasts. People avoided this area believing demons and evil spirits ranged there and knowing that thieves lived near and worked this area. We know the dangers of the road to Jericho from the story of the Good Samaritan.
Luke says that Jesus was led there by the Spirit. How silly are we to think that if the Spirit leads it will be to a smooth, comfortable, pleasant place. The Spirit that leads us led Jesus. Temptation always follows vision, commitment and new directions. Jesus was not immune and neither are we. When we decide to do something significantly to reach people for Christ, know and prepare for temptations of great variety to come to distract us.
Jesus himself refuses rule over the earth! Jesus "did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant" (Phil 2:6). Our downfall is when we try to be God instead of letting God be God (Gen 3:5). For all of us, the more we have, the more stuff we accumulate, the more personal clout we wield, the graver our spiritual danger.(2)
Barbara Brown Taylor, and Episcopal priest and religion professor, tells a story about seeming opulence in an unexpected place as she visited a Benedictine monastery in California. She writes, "It was a gorgeous place, with a courtyard garden full of fragrant orange trees and a retreat house full of antiques. When I first came through the door, one of the brothers glided up to me and said, "I know what you're thinking: 'If this is poverty, I can't wait to see chastity!'"(3)
Jesus is the true inheritor of the earth, its ultimate lord, but he exercises that lordship not by possessing but by emptying himself, not by heavy-handed controlling but by leaving creation to be itself, free, vulnerable. Jesus could have come to earth in the flaming chariot imagery of Enoch's Son of Man as a conquering hero-type Messiah. But he didn't. He was divine power self-restrained and self-limited by love.
Can you hear the background music to this story? Jesus' combat with the devil mirrors Israel's testing in the wilderness. They grumbled and plunged into idolatry. Fortunately for us all, Jesus passed the test they failed.
Jesus' battle also recalls the Garden of Eden episode. Adam and Eve crumbled swiftly under the pressure of temptation. Lucky for us, Jesus did not seize the forbidden fruit, and His victory is our salvation.
How strange it us for us modern folk to give thought to fasting and self-denial during Lent. We moderns, whose daily quest is the satisfaction of every desire, stopping to consider Jesus who chose not to eat when he could eat and refused to turn rocks into bread, seems odd. Jesus knew that if you satisfy every little earthly whim, your deeper craving for God gets caked over with dust. It grows numb, and you forget that your deepest hunger is not for "bread alone, but for every word that proceeds from the mouth of God" (Deut 8:3). So, the Christian chooses renunciation and periodic fasts, not in order to be miserable, but to discover our hunger for God, to discover our dependence upon God.
Notice how Jesus responds to temptation, to evil, not with his own brains or muscle, but with scripture. Ready with a verse for any occasion, Jesus was "armed with the sword of the Spirit" (Eph 6:17), knowing the Bible isn't something nice or spiritually neat. It's a matter of life and death, of having half a chance to fend off evil, or the seductive lure of our culture . . . so we constantly read, re-read, memorize, and make the scripture the spectacles through which we see the world.(4)
Luke adds that the devil "departed from him until an opportune time" (Lk 4:13). Former Prime Minister of Great Britain, Margaret Thatcher, once said, "You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it." Evil lurks, waiting for an opening. It is not like we are tested once, and then never again. In choosing to follow Christ, each day we give as much of ourselves as we know to as much of Christ as we know. Well, when we do that, there is a reaction. It is not like Newton's third law of motion, where for each and every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
But, temptation always follows vision, commitment and new directions. It will try to stop us, to freeze us with fear of the unknown, with analysis paralysis, with uncertainty. It will try to divert us to doing things that drain our energy and resources, but don't reach people. All that we try to do as a church is based on the commitment and vision of individuals who faithfully involve themselves with others from our church to worship, to teach adults, youth and children, to minister in the community, to be welcoming to all who come to worship with us.
Could the opportune time for temptation come because of pride that we are asserting ourselves? Could it come because our weakness is our desire to control our lives or the life of our church? Could the opportune time come because, in the midst of doing something, we have self-doubts?
Jesus went through the temptation experience, and He knew that He would be tempted again and again. In Gethsemane as He prayed that this cup be taken from Him, Jesus dealt with the temptation to avoid the cross as He said to the Father, "Not my will but yours."
Temptation is not grounds for throwing in the towel, getting discouraged or complaining. It is something to face and to work through, because God has something for us to do on the other side. After the temptation is when Jesus begins His ministry. And, he can call us to repent and be faithful, because he was faithful. Using a frontal and all-out assault to get Jesus to compromise His methods and His obedience to being a suffering servant, the Tempter tried to get Jesus to take the easy way. He ultimately wanted Jesus to worship him, promising Jesus that He could have the world. He tried again, and often, with his final assault being Jesus' cruel death on a cross.(5)
In Death Valley there is a place known as Dante's View. There, you can look down to the lowest spot in the United States , a depression in the earth 200 feet below sea level called Bad Water. But from that same spot, you can also look up to the highest peak in the United States, Mount Whitney, rising to a height of 14,500 feet. One way leads to the lowest and the other way to the highest. From that point, called Dante's View, any movement must be in one or the other direction.
There are many times in life when we stand where the ways part and where choices must be made. It is often easier to trip along downhill than to walk the steady, or maybe rocky, uphill path. But the path uphill leads to a cross, an empty cross. And the One Who walks beside us is the One who hung there and defeated it.(6)
Temptation tries to blind us to other possibilities. A business man driving home from work one day, saw a little league baseball game in progress. He decided to stop and watch. He sat down in the bleachers and asked a young boy what the score was. "We're behind 14 to nothing," he answered with a smile.
"Really," he responded. "I have to say you don't look very discouraged."
"Discouraged?" the boy asked with a puzzled look on his face. "Why should we be discouraged? We haven't been up to bat yet!"(7)
Are we going to live by faith or fear? Instead of the opportune time being a time for the Tempter to come again, why not make the opportune time a time for God to lead us to prepare for ministry and reaching people for the next 50 years? Amen.
Century Christian Church, February 25, 2007 - Sermon by Jim Westmoreland
www.centurychristian.org
1. Lee Griess, Taking The Risk Out Of Dying, CSS Publishing Company.
2. James C. Howell, "The Torment of Love," Pulpit Resource, Vol. 35, No. 1, Jan-Mar, 2007, p. 34.
3. Barbara Brown Taylor, "Physics and faith: The luminous web," Christian Century, June 2-9, 1999, 613.
4. Howell, p. 34.
5. Ibid, p. 35.
6. Glenn E. Ludwig, Walking To, Walking With, Walking Through, CSS Publishing Company.
7. Brett Blair, www.eSermons.com