Taking God Seriously
Robert Montgomery
Third Sunday of Lent—March 7, 2010
First Presbyterian Church, Pulaski, TN
OLD TESTAMENT: Isaiah 55:1-9
Listen, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live.
I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.
See, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples.
See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.
Seek the LORD while he may be found, call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the LORD, that he may have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
GOSPEL: Luke 13: 1-9
At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 He asked them, "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? 3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. 4 Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Silo'am fell on them--do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did."
6 Then he told this parable: "A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. 7 So he said to the gardener, "See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?' 8 He replied, "Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. 9 If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'"
If “giving something up for Lent” is a traditional way of talking about intentionally placing a period of time in God’s hands so that God might increase our faith, as I suggested last week, then repentance is the far more familiar way of talking about that same basic movement in our lives. Repentance, as I am sure you have heard, simply means “to change one’s mind,” or perhaps more accurately, “change one’s outlook or direction.” If you have ever started out to do something, only to discover that your first decision was inaccurate or even plainly wrong, and you have “course-corrected,” then you know something about what “repentance” means.
But just as “giving something up for Lent” can become a spiritual cliché, as well as a literal one, “repentance” is a word that can conjure up all kinds of feelings and thoughts that may or may not be very helpful.
For me, because I have been swimming in church waters and in Southern church waters for so long, part of me imagines repentance to be a demand from God that I completely reinvent myself. It feels not so much like “repair and restoration,” as demolition and new construction. And the truth is that I simply cannot do that. Perhaps some people really can, but what I discover is that no matter how much I try to do a complete overhaul on myself, I wind up with the same basic lump of play-doh, which is my oh-so human, flesh and blood self.
Perhaps you have discovered the same thing when you have determined to go on a diet or dramatically improve your use of time, or revive your prayer life or finally set aside the time to read your Bible regularly. Maybe you have succeeded dramatically, and if so, I celebrate with you. But if you are like me, you find that your commitment fades and are left to wonder what good it did to try to begin with.
I don’t mention this dilemma to discourage us from trying. Far from it. In fact, the point I want finally to make is that all these efforts really do matter, just maybe not in the way I or my ego might expect or want. Part of this dilemma, I deeply suspect and actually strongly believe, is a sign that if you and I ever think we can do things entirely on our own or out of our own will power, then we are on the wrong road to start with and will need to do some “course-correcting,” some “repenting”, very near the start.
Because, inherent in the faith of Abraham last week, or the message of repentance this week, is the discovery of how serious God is about God’s promises and our own decision to take God seriously in response. Above all, that means we stop looking for ways to separate ourselves from God, and from others, by acting as though we are somehow in a category all by ourselves, disconnected from everyone else.
I hear this blaring out of the text from Luke this morning. “Do you really think that the people whom Pilate murdered, or the people on whom the tower of Siloam fell, were really different from you?” Jesus asks. Ouch. The truth is that as fallen human beings we actually want to say, “yes, surely they were.”
It may be out of a fear of facing our fragile humanity, or it may be out of an even more ugly self-righteousness, but we resist recognizing that what happens to other people, like an earthquake in Haiti or Chile, or a bus accident in Arizona, or any other tragedy that scares us—that those things really could happen to us. And in failing to recognize that with a sense of humility, we are headed down the wrong road, as far as Jesus is concerned.
Imagine that you have just suffered the loss of a person you love, or your house burned, or you were in Haiti and have been devastated by an earthquake, and you got a card from a friend of yours. You open it and inside it reads, “Looks like things finally caught up with you. I am so happy it didn’t happen to me. Love…”
I don’t think many of us would appreciate a card like that, or think it was appropriate. But Jesus tells us why. Such thoughts reflect a confidence in our own goodness and a latent hatred of the people who have suffered. On the one hand, it reflects the sin of self-righteousness, as if I have no need for any further growth or changes in my life. On the other hand, it reflects a willful failure to love, which is completely at odds with the very reason Jesus, the incarnation of divine love, is there among people as God in the flesh.
So, every time I feel the desire to separate myself from or to take some sick enjoyment of someone else’s misery, I can be sure I need to repent. Because to take God seriously at just such moments is to realize that all of us are fragile, sin-prone human beings, living in a fragile death-stung world, traveling through a vast cold expanse of lifelessness, with nothing but God’s mercy and the power of love expressed within human bodily existence to sustain us. And, that this is true of any of us and all of us. There is “no distinction” when it comes to the fragility of human life and human virtue. What happens to others can, and indeed may, happen to me. For I am not immortal or special. I too need the goodness of God and the love of God and others, just as everyone else does.
There seem to me to be two related lessons to learn from all this. The first is that the failure to take to heart what we see happen to others should be deeply troubling to us all.
I recall a Christmas Eve when Emma and I were coming home to Tennessee from Chicago, and a powerful “snow squall” was blowing across Illinois and Indiana. Now because I thought I was so smart, I reasoned that rather than try to race to outrun the storm as it moved East, we could go west and count on the snowplows to have cleared the roads in its wake. Regardless of what happened in Indiana—we will never know—clearly the decision to go west and take I-57 was a bad one.
The same, sickening pattern quickly took shape. We would all form up, two full lanes of traffic and drive like mad, until the cars up front spotted ice or packed snow on the road and slammed on their brakes. The ten or so cars directly behind them would scatter into the right of way and in the median. But rather than learn anything from what just happened, we survivors would form up into two packed lanes, drive like mad until the cars up front saw ice and slammed on their brakes and the cars right behind them would go flying into right of way and the median. Over and over and over. And I was right in there with them. It was a frightening failure to learn from the suffering of others. And you will notice that none of us were stopping to help those in trouble. We just assumed we were on our own—and just smarter than they must have been.
I am afraid this is how it goes with us, too, especially me. Once I begin to think I am smarter or morally superior to someone else in trouble, it seems to follow like daylight from dark that there is no call on me to help them. What happens to them somehow won’t happen to me—and in fact, they somehow deserve their problems, while I surely don’t.
And when I think that way, I believe I am on truly dangerously slick, frozen ground.
That leads me to the second lesson that I think comes out of this text to us, namely, that what happens to other people actually HAS happened to me, because I am connected to every other creature of God, both because we all come from the same source of life and, even more profoundly, because in the incarnation, God has become one with all of us through the body of Jesus Christ. Therefore, whatever happens to “any-body” happens to Jesus himself and thus to me and to you, just as whatever happens to me and my body happens to Jesus and to all of you. In the body of Christ, we are truly meant to be gathered up—every last one of us human beings—into the body of Jesus Christ. And we live that reality out by reaching out to each other, as Jesus does, both inside the church and beyond the existing, awakened relationships which the church currently shares with the whole world.
It is a similar thought which brought forth John Donne’s famous poem, “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” It always tolls for us, because we are all connected on this small fragile planet, sharing in a fragile, sin-wounded, human, bodily existence, all creatures and companions of the One God who has given us life—and life together.
The idea that I can and will get through life on my own—perhaps with God, perhaps without—or, the idea that somehow I am in my own little car, and it is my only goal to get through to where I am going—with or without you and the other people on this planet—these ideas, I believe, may be the place where most of our genuine repentance needs to take place.
For in neither case am I taking God seriously, and in both cases I am reflecting a decided aversion to, if not hostility to, the reality and the call of divine love.
Certainly, there is much we can do to repent. The chapter before this one in Luke is a virtual catalog of places where repentance might and should begin. Luke 12 starts with a reminder that if we think our private thoughts and conversations are somehow truly private, we have some genuinely new thoughts to start thinking. If we are living our lives based on how we are doing in the eyes of other people, then we have some real course-correction to make. If we really believe that life is found in the amount of money or possessions we have, then we have some hard thinking to do, and maybe some sweat should break out on our foreheads as we do it. If we think we can worry our way into a feeling of security, or if we think we can predict how life is going to go for ourselves or for the world, then we are seriously, seriously in the ditch already.
But it is here in Luke 13, precisely when Jesus is reflecting on the pain and the suffering of others, that we hear these chilling words “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” I can’t take the razor-sharp directness off those words. And we shouldn’t try, because if we can justify being cold or cruel to those in pain or take satisfaction in deaths, we truly are in danger of falling off the cliff spiritually. We need to change direction in a big way. And now.
We see that in the next story, when a woman in trouble comes into the synagogue and Jesus reaches out to her, only to be lectured that it was the wrong day to help someone like her. The one doing the lecturing doesn’t want to have to think about compassion for a person in trouble right now as an essential part of “getting through life” with God. We may want to continue to use religious language—as when I call Emma “dear” but really mean that I have no interest in what she is saying. But down deep, despite the seeming “term of affection,” the real tone of voice says that I want to be left alone and get on with what I want to do on my own. Religious people can fall into that same tone of voice with God.
But there is really no difference between that day in the synagogue and what I recall so vividly one Sunday while standing on I-40. I was staring at the bottom of our church bus at it lay on its side, after it had hit a bridge abutment, gone airborne, crashed nose-first back into the concrete railing and had then flipped tail over nose and had slid backward down the interstate, leaving 53 kids hurt, some of them very badly. I had been driving a second bus following a short distance back, and after I could see the green nose of our bus pointed back at me, I came running up. While I was still staggered by my disbelief, I had to jump out of the way of a commercial passenger bus determined to wind through the wreckage and bodies so that, I assume, it could keep its time own schedule. Never mind the fact that people who did stop to help were frantically looking for a fire extinguisher to put out a fire in the engine, something that commercial bus no doubt had on board. I repented that day of times I had done more of what that bus did than the people who had stopped to help.
I wasn’t through repenting that Sunday, however, because even though a bus failed to stop and help, it “just so happened” that the entire emergency response team for a three-county area was holding a picnic a few miles away, after recently practicing their procedures for a major accident on, yes, I-40. And it “just so happened” that a medical wing of the local air national guard was on a maneuvers just a few miles away in the other direction. So within minutes, ambulances rolled up and military helicopters landed all around me, like angels from heaven, and within 40 minutes of the wreck, everyone from that wrecked bus was on her or his way to a hospital. Every single one of them survived, and all of them recovered, often with astonishing speed. I learned again that day what I do indeed need to work on every day, namely, taking God seriously. To remember that God takes us very seriously indeed, and every action we take for good, no matter how small, truly does matter. Who knew a picnic would be a divine calling that day? We are all on the way, not just to where we think are going, but to where God knows we are needed.
Today let us remember that, as Isaiah says, what we most need God offers, without price, without hesitation to all. Let us receive those gifts and share them in the same way. Let us remember that to acknowledge our need of grace is a very good thing, for us and for all those around us. For in doing so, our hearts and lives are open to the power of God’s love, the greatest power in the world, for ourselves and for others, because God is seeking to bring us all home safely. The love of God given and shared among human beings is the hope of the world. It is the reason why we can, with unflinching confidence, with all humility and all seriousness, rely on the promises of God in Jesus Christ to all of us. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Time in the Hands of God”
Robert Montgomery
Second Sunday of Lent—February 28, 2010
First Presbyterian Church, Pulaski, TN
OLD TESTAMENT: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, "Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great." 2 But Abram said, "O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Elie'zer of Damascus?" 3 And Abram said, "You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir." 4 But the word of the LORD came to him, "This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir." 5 He brought him outside and said, "Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your descendants be." 6 And he believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness.
7 Then he said to him, "I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of the Chalde'ans, to give you this land to possess." 8 But he said, "O Lord GOD, how am I to know that I shall possess it?" 9 He said to him, "Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon." 10 He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. 11 And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
12 As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him.
17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. 18 On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates,
GOSPEL: Luke 13: 31-35
At that very hour some Phar'isees came and said to him, "Get away from here, for Her'od wants to kill you." 32 He said to them, "Go and tell that fox for me, "Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. 33 Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.' 34 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 35 See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.'"
For many of us who grew up in Protestant churches or grew up outside any church, the idea of Lent remains a little, well, remote for us.
To show you how tough it is to be on session, yesterday we were at our annual session retreat, and at the end of lunch, Karen asked us, “So who wants blackberry cobbler and ice cream?” Hands went up. But then to be the trouble-maker, as usual, I had to say, “And let’s see the hands of those who want blackberry cobbler and ice cream, but know they had better not take any.” These are the hard moments of session work, as you can tell.
The truth is that I really wanted that blackberry cobbler and ice cream. Even as I say those words, “blackberry cobbler,” I still want it. I can smell it and taste it. I bet you can, too, by now.
This human experience of “wanting” is at the core of Lent, a very, very old tradition of asking people who want to become Christians to hand over to God the 40 days before Easter, as a period to determine if they truly “want” to be disciples of Jesus.
We human beings “want.” It is at the core of our human nature, fallen and redeemed. Our wants are at the heart of our sins—and at the heart of our Christian discipleship.
At base, then, Christian discipleship—and Lent—are not about learning “not to want,” as if our hearts can be made passionless. But they are about giving our hearts and our wants to God, to teach us, and to free us, to want what God wants for us. It is a lifelong process, to be sure.
So, when it comes to Lent, it raises that question of “does God really want me not to have or to want blackberry cobbler, or desserts or chocolate,” or whatever else we might choose to give up for Lent?
What is it, in short, that God wants to create in us all the time, especially during the “time we deliberately put in the hands of God”? And the answer is the oldest answer of all: what God wants is faith. That is why the Abraham story is such an appropriate text for Lent, because it is a quintessential story about faith.
Now, the first thing I notice about this text is that Abraham is a typical human being, maybe even a really good American. He is worried about his future, and he is so concerned that he won’t ever get what he really wants out of life. What he wants, above all, is a son.
Despite the fact that God appears to Abraham and says, “"Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great", all Abraham can think about is the fact that he doesn’t have what he wants. He thinks he has no time left to get or have what he wants. And it is ruining his life, in his opinion.
I can relate to that, because many are the days that I come to church, and no matter what the Scripture readings are, or what songs we sing, I am focused on what I want but don’t have.
But as we all know, “wanting to have something” and being ready to have it are two very different things, which is a lot of what faith is all about.
We know this, because all our lives we have been told, or have told others, “you are not ready for” something we or they wanted. I may have wanted to drive when I was 7, or I may have wanted a dog when I was 3. I may have wanted my own car at 15, or I may have wanted a motorcycle…wanting is easy. Wanting to have is even easier.
But being ready to be the kind of person who can be trusted with what I want…well, now there is a challenge, and it is the challenge that God faces with all of us, no matter how old we are. Even at 75 years old plus, it is clear that Abraham is not really ready to have a son, as his story reveals so clearly. For, to be a father is different from just wanting “to have” a son—and it is a message Abraham will learn on the road to becoming not just a man who has a son, but as a “father of faith.”
So, the story of Abraham is a story of God promising, Abraham wanting the fulfillment of that promise, and in the meantime, God transforms Abraham into a person of faith. But this is what makes Abraham the man we know, not so much as the father of Isaac, but the father of all of us precisely because we are living our lives in the hopes of becoming people of faith ourselves.
Abraham’s own story is instructive about what it takes for God to create faith in us, because God does indeed reassure Abraham that his worries about what he wants are unfounded: you will indeed have a son, become a father, so that your descendants will be like the stars in the sky.
And for that moment, at least, Abraham listens to God and trusts what God says. “Abraham believed God, and God reckoned it to him for righteousness.” It is a short verse, so simple, and yet one that will become a backbone of the entire history of biblical faith from that point forward, so that today, we are all being constantly beckoned into that place where Abraham stood and allowing his fears to fall away, he trusted that his life would indeed turn out exactly as God had promised.
What follows on that moment, however, is also instructive, because Abraham no sooner “believes” than he does what we all do: he wants reassurance. “How will I know that this is going to happen?” he asks God.
So, God, in patience with his friend, tells Abraham to lay out a very elaborate symbol of just how serious God is about God’s promises. Abraham lays out some animals cut in half, as signs of the fact that God is taking a blood oath, promising to be torn or cut in half before failing to keep the promises God has made to Abraham.
Now, if you are anything like me, you want reassurance, too, about your life. I want it about every 15 minutes. I want what I want, and then I want reassurance that I am going to get what I want. It can be hard to tell which I want more at any moment, the promise or the reassurance, in fact. Because, I do want everything to arrive right on time, too, not hurried but not late, so that it will be just what I want.
So, if I am Abraham, and I want this reassurance, I am afraid that I am just superstitious enough to think that I want “everything to go just so,” as a sign that God’s promises are definitely, definitely going to be fulfilled.
But what happens for Abraham is that a flock of birds of prey land on the carcasses. You and I have seen this scene. Only we call the birds “buzzards.”
We all know what it means when buzzards circle. It’s over. And it’s a sign that is probably time to give up.
But these next few words seem to speak volumes, at least to me. “When the birds of prey came down, Abraham drove them away.”
If you are looking for something to give up for Lent, try “giving up ‘giving up.’” For 40 days, put time in God’s hands, and practice giving up on “giving up.”
Don’t give up on yourself. Don’t give up on your faith. Don’t give up on your prayer life. Don’t give up on your Bible reading. Don’t give up on your generosity.
Don’t give up on other people, or your relationships with them. Don’t give up on forgiving others, or making peace or working for reconciliation.
Don’t give up on our church, or our denomination or the church world-wide.
Don’t give up on our community, our town, our schools, our hospitals, our county, our state or our country. Don’t even give up on our world. Not for these 40 days.
It’s not because the world or any of us are such lovely, winning people. It’s because God has made an unbreakable promise to us not to give up on us. God will be torn in half before God lets God’s promises be broken or torn apart. So, for Lent don’t give up on God, so give up “giving up.”
Get up and chase the buzzards away, from your life and for everyone else’s. Don’t let anyone give up on themselves or others, if we can do anything about it.
That’s a big part of faith. Refusing to let go of God’s promises or letting them be eaten in front of us because we can imagine the worst.
The other part of faith that I see in this story is found in what happens next, namely, that the whole day passes—the sun is going down. It seems a symbol of life unfulfilled, prayers unanswered. The sun is going down, on old Abraham, out there waiting for reassurance about a promise yet in the future.
But precisely in the darkness, the terrifying and frightening darkness, Abraham sees what he is looking for. A smoking pot passes between the halves of the animals, a reminder that the power of God, the presence of God, the very fire of God’s own passion is alert and committed to God’s promise.
In other words, God truly wants to fulfill the promises that God has made, even more than Abraham can want to see them fulfilled.
This ongoing discovery of God’s own passion for the promises that God has made is the greatest mystery in the world, which is at the heart of all Biblical faith. For, God does not ask us to take chances blindly or to take chances to prove something to God. Rather God asks us, very specifically, to rest our lives on God’s own passion for the promises God has made. And this passion is greater than all our faith among all of us in the whole world combined.
Time, for our part, is essential to the creation and the growth of faith, which is why handing time over to God is one of the most profound and holy things we can do. It is an invitation to trust God with who we are and not just what we want. It is indeed a holy offering to give to God the prayer of all prayers, that we might be people who trust in God rather than just be people who have what we want.
For, at the end of the day, as the sun sets, maybe after we have chased away all kinds of buzzards, what we discover and see as the greatest gift is the fact that all our times have been in the hands of God, the times we entrusted to God deliberately, along with those we more or less thought we had kept for ourselves or times when we had thought we were all alone.
Even when the deep and frightening darkness falls upon us—indeed especially in those cross-shaped moments—we are granted the deepest gifts of faith, for we see that what we cannot do, God will do, because God freely wants to do it and will keep the promises God has made, come what may.
This is reason to sleep calmly at night and to journey through each day with a sense of worship and steady joy. It is also a reason to face the future with a sense of unending hopefulness, no matter how many buzzards land near or in front of us, or what time of day or night it is.
Because what really happens in the times that we get up and chase buzzards, or get up in the night to care for our children, or our parents or some stranger who needs our help is that we become what we really want to be. Not just people who have children, or have parents or who have a commitment to love others. It dawns on us, by the grace of God, that we are fathers and mothers, we are sons and daughters, we are the Body of Christ.
That is what life is really all about. It is in the very experience of trust that flows back and forth between us and God that we realize what it actually means to be alive and “to have” God and others in our lives.
Then all the time we sit and wait, or laugh or weep with others, the time we sit and wait and pray—all those are times in which God is with us. And God is daily saying to us what God has been saying all along: "Do not be afraid, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great."
Because we have been given and have spent time with God, rather than rushing through life seeking only to “have” what we want—we know that these words are true. And we indeed have what we most want.
All the while we are also becoming what God most wants us to be: people of faith in the God who promises us more than we can imagine in Jesus Christ.
Those are gifts worth all the time in the world.
They are the gifts that Jesus died and rose again to guarantee to us.
So, it is not strange, not in the least, that God should ask us to want them…and to trust that God will fulfill them. Amen.
“Facing Temptation”
Robert Montgomery
First Sunday of Lent—February 21, 2010
First Presbyterian Church, Pulaski, TN
OLD TESTAMENT: Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, 2 will say to the LORD, "My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust."
9 Because you have made the LORD your refuge, the Most High your dwelling place,
10 no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent. 11 For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. 12 On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone. 13 You will tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot. 14 Those who love me, I will deliver; I will protect those who know my name. 15 When they call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble, I will rescue them and honor them. 16 With long life I will satisfy them, and show them my salvation.
GOSPEL: Luke 4:1-13
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, 2 where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. 3 The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread." 4 Jesus answered him, "It is written, "One does not live by bread alone.'"
5 Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6 And the devil said to him, "To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. 7 If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours." 8 Jesus answered him, "It is written, "Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'"
9 Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 10 for it is written,
"He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,' 11 and "On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'"
12 Jesus answered him, "It is said, "Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" 13 When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.
There are some sermons that are hard to preach, because the honest truth is that I don’t know much about the topic. But today, I have the opposite problem. I know far too much about the topic that is in the Scripture reading in front of us today: temptation.
So, the very first thing that I can confidently say to you is that if you have ever come to church—today or any other day—wondering if you are the only one who is wrestling with some temptation or set of temptations and feeling as though you are in danger of losing yourself in that struggle, you can lay that worry aside. You are not alone. I am right there with you, more Sundays than not.
But that is where the Scriptures today start off by helping us take courage, right off the bat. Because one of the things that jumps out at us today are these words: “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted…” It doesn’t say that Jesus fell weak in his relationship with God and was, therefore, tempted. That may also happen, but the real times of testing and struggle that we feel are the ones where, like Jesus, the Holy Spirit is at work in us, to clarify our vision, strengthen our faith and ultimately send us out into the world as people whose faith, hope, love and mercy have been refined in the fires of courageous, God-centered, real-life human decisions.
So, in facing temptation, here is the first lesson: we are not alone. And we are not being set up to fail or to fall or even to be judged. Instead, we are being transformed, shaped, refined and ultimately called. So, we take heart, as Paul says so often, because the Spirit of Christ is at work in us, in mercy.
Now Jesus is facing temptation in a very intentional way, to be sure. I feel weak most of the time, so the idea of weakening myself by doing something like not eating, feels very odd and dangerous to me. Surely, I want to “beef up” to face temptation. But that is where the first temptation of Jesus speaks to us, before we even begin.
Because all three of these temptations—and as far as I can tell, all temptations—are fundamentally designed to shift our trust away from God and onto ourselves, onto something we can do or something we can force God to do, all as a way of justifying ourselves to someone. We see that very subtly in the language that sets up each temptation. Each one centers on the little word, “you.”
If you are the Son of God…To you I will give all these kingdoms…If you are the Son of God…
Jesus has just been confirmed in his identity by the voice of God at his baptism. “You are my chosen, the beloved, in you I am well pleased.” This is the grace that comes to all of us by the grace of Jesus. It is these words of love spoken over us by the Word of God that say who we are.
But now the identity is challenged. The Word is not enough. We must prove it, we are tempted to believe. We must show it, and silence our doubts, silence our critics, take pride in ourselves and our own ability to be spectacular. We are tempted to “seize” the gifts of God and use them to vindicate our own need for applause, or worse, use them to elevate ourselves over others, especially those who might criticize us. In short, when under pressure, the temptation is to abandon faith in the God who tells us who we are, abandon the ministry of love to which we are called, and just focus on winning an argument for the sake of our own ego.
“If you are the Son of God, show me.” It is what Jesus will hear over and over. “Do a miracle to prove who you are. Impress me,” Herod will say. Jesus knows that behind these voices is a very fallen and ugly desire for dominance and for self-aggrandizement. There is no love, no mercy, no concern to lift others in this. Only raw ego.
But it is indeed so tempting. When you challenge me, bait me, doubt me, criticize me, say that I cannot do something, then my anger rises up, my “dignity” I tell myself. And I mutter the words, “I’ll show you.” And in those moments, I abandon love for a kind of self-centered rage that is determined to destroy the criticism or the doubt and silence the critics or doubters.
What is lost in these temptations is any idea of what God is actually calling me to do, and any sense of what truly transforms people. It redefines entirely what God means by “winning,” because it makes it all about… me. Not about life winning out over sin and death.
So, Jesus makes the direct and simple reply: “There is more to life than bread.” There is more to life than winning a fight. There is more to life than showing other people who you are and what you can do. There is more to life than success and what I can prove to someone else. There is more to life, so much more to life, than tracking down every demon of doubt and playing its game until you beat it. It’s a form of insanity, a dangerous and violent one, that demands that I go out and silence every possible disagreement or doubter or critic until they acknowledge that I am who I say I am. It means that our life’s partners would become the voice of evil itself, because Satan is the Hebrew word for “slanderer.”
Jesus doesn’t bite. He does nothing to prove that he is God’s Son, except to keep his focus on who God has said he is. Jesus won’t be distracted by ego games, spending his life impressing other people or building a reputation or hating those who oppose him.
But Jesus is here to be the bread of life, to bring life, even to those who may hate and reject him, because at the moment, that is everyone he meets. The world is hostile to love, because the world worships our own accomplishments, our own pride and our feeling of being something or having something that others aren’t or don’t. And in that is the antithesis of love that seeks to give what it has to others, in order that they too may know life to the fullest. If Jesus listens to the first temptation, he can be famous, even a Messiah. But he cannot be God’s Messiah.
The second temptation is equally alluring, maybe especially for us Americans, though clearly not exclusively. It is simply this: “if you have the chance, take it. Opportunity knocks only once, don’t you know. Don’t be a fool. Take it, or you’ll miss your chance.” And, of course, what always comes along as the tag line is this, “If you don’t take it, someone else will. Think of how much better it would be for you to do it.”
This is the core of perhaps the most obvious sins we see in the world throughout its history. One person, or one group of people, out to seize everything for themselves, without thinking about anyone but themselves.
“To you… I will give all the kingdoms of the world.” As if life is to be found in the amount of our possessions. It is a reshaping of life into ownership rather than stewardship, an attempt to be God, or at least as rich as we can make ourselves in comparison to God. So that in the end, we will feel secure in who we are—in our own eyes.
Here are found all the sins of greed, war, conquest and violence that has destroyed the earthly lives of so many people and creatures, and come close to destroying the world as God has given it. Seeking to own the world, whether the whole earth or just our little part of it, rather than to entrust our lives to the God who created the world as a gift for all God’s creatures is always tempting, but always directly opposed to the will of God.
So, Jesus answers simply and directly with what is at stake: “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” Jesus refuses to make his life or the world all about “me.”
And finally, the third temptation. Perhaps the most dangerous, subtle, alluring and tricky of all to face. It is the temptation to doubt the faithfulness of God. It is a direct attack on the love of God for Jesus—and for each one of us.
The devil takes Jesus up to the top of the temple, clearly a religious place. And there he challenges him to throw himself off, maybe to be seen by the crowds. But I think more likely as a way to say, “Let’s just see how much God loves you.”It is what will be echoed in the taunts hurled at Jesus like fiery darts while he is on the cross. “Let God save him, if God cares for him.”
If the first temptation is to use God’s gifts as a way to prove who I am in comparison to others and their criticisms, the third temptation is to use our relationship with God as a way to force God to prove his love for Jesus and for us. “Let’s roll the dice and see what happens, Jesus, unless, of course, you don’t think God loves you that much.”
It may be even more subtle, in fact. It may be simply the temptation to say, “Don’t you think that if you have enough faith, God will do whatever you ask.”
Among all the other reasons that this is such a dangerous gamesmanship, two reasons jump out at me, which may reveal more about me than about Jesus or the temptation. But what I hear in this is the assumption that God is aloof, detached and generally uninvolved with us, until we can do something great enough to demand God’s attention. Or, create a crisis great enough that God has no choice but to show us, one way or the other, whether God loves us. Enough of this faith business, this temptation says. Let’s get on with seeing what this God of yours can do.
Implicit in this is also the assumption that God is sitting around doing nothing except enjoying himself, until we find a way to get his attention. And maybe even threaten to embarrass him unless he does what we want.
It means that life would be manipulation, not love. It would mean that we must squeeze God’s goodness in order to get what we need out of God. It would mean that life is a battle between us and God, and we have to figure out how to play the game with a reluctant and self-centered god.
But if that would not be disastrous enough, this temptation also assumes, it seems to me, that angels have nothing better to do than to meet my needs. It is as if my actions have no implications for anyone else.
Surely angels just get to play all day, until I put a fire under them to do something I want done. And really, down deep, the temptation assumes that it wouldn’t cost anyone anything to do what I want done.
I shudder at this temptation because I think it really is a direct and all out assault on the love of God and on love as a way of life. The more selfish I can become, this temptation says, the more likely I am to get attention. And my selfishness has no real impact on anyone else, or even if it does…
If life really is a battle to make God show me much God loves me, then I fear all hope is lost for our world. Because I have an endless capacity to be selfish, and to sit around and dream up things that I think God should—very reasonably in my opinion—do. Surely, it is the same old dilemma we all face as children and parents, as husbands and wives, whether we are “in this together,” or whether you are here to meet my needs and make me happy.
At the end of the day, I believe, every sin is revealed by the fact that it makes life harder for someone else—without their permission.
I pick up beer bottles every week at my family’s cemetery. It’s after they have been smashed against the rock wall that surrounds the cemetery. The assumption is that I have nothing better to do than to pick up those pieces of brown glass. Or, I could just not care. Their actions are an implicit attack on my love of the people in that cemetery.
When I drive like an idiot on a narrow road, I am assuming that either I am bullet-proof (I can jump off the temple parapet and not get hurt like other people would), or that emergency personnel have nothing better to do than come help me out.
When I spend money as if “it is mine to do with as I please,” the assumption is that God has nothing better to do than to fill up my bank account.
If I say to myself, “no one will get hurt” or “I’m too smart to get caught,” then implicitly I am saying that everyone who cares about me has nothing better to do than to support my every decision or take the gamble with me, without my bothering to talk it over with them beforehand.
As Christians, we may find ourselves in risky spots, feeling led to take a leap based on our faith in God. But we can be sure that when we find ourselves there, it will be because our relationship with God has brought us there out of the great love that God has for us and for others, not because we think God doesn’t care unless I wrangle attention out of God.
That’s why I think this temptation so very evil, for it invites Jesus to doubt that God is really going to be with him based on God’s own freely given commitment to Jesus. Gone would be any sense of partnership between God and Jesus in the work of the kingdom of God. Gone would be any trust in the faithfulness of God as the very reality that goes ahead of us into every situation. Gone would be any idea that my life is part of the faithful love of God which is reaching into our world to lift up the fallen, to show mercy who have been beaten and robbed and left for dead. Gone would be any idea that God is out to save and heal the world and that our own healing is revealed to us in the joy of sharing the mercy of God with everyone as a free, unending gift to all.
So, it is truly Good News when Jesus answers, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God.”
It is not that God is not to be asked for help. Jesus makes that clear in his teaching on prayer. No, that is the point. God does not have to be coerced, manipulated or forced to show love to us. We don’t have to do that to each other, either.
The Good News is that the love of God is rock solid, unending, unfailing and ever-present. It is the solid ground underneath our feet and our lives. God’s commitment to us is unbreakable and irrevocable. Self-centeredness and self-pity are both unnecessary and counter-productive, because we are never alone, never forgotten and never out of God’s care and concern.
But the marvelous joy of the Good News is that God is out to save the whole world, and God is totally engaged in that work every second of every day. God has made his commitment sure to all of us in Jesus Christ, and now the joyful work of the kingdom of God is to free all of us from our fears that we are alone or not loved. And to free us from our pride that says I can or must stand alone or above others in order to feel good about my life.
Jesus faces all the temptations to abandon the ways of the God of love. He sees the alternatives and says, “no.”
And because Jesus said, “no” to life lived only for himself and for what he can get out of God, or life or us, he protected life for all of us, live that is lived in freedom and love as brothers and sisters of Jesus the Christ, the lord of life and death, the Lord of love. Thanks be to God for his indescribable love for us in Jesus Christ. Amen.
“Glory and Silence”
Robert Montgomery
Transfiguration Sunday—February 14, 2010
First Presbyterian Church, Pulaski, TN
OLD TESTAMENT: Exodus 34: 29-35
Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. 30 When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him. 31 But Moses called to them; and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him, and Moses spoke with them. 32 Afterward all the Israelites came near, and he gave them in commandment all that the LORD had spoken with him on Mount Sinai. 33 When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil on his face; 34 but whenever Moses went in before the LORD to speak with him, he would take the veil off, until he came out; and when he came out, and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, 35 the Israelites would see the face of Moses, that the skin of his face was shining; and Moses would put the veil on his face again, until he went in to speak with him.
GOSPEL: Luke 9: 28-36
28 Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. 29 And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. 30 Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Eli'jah, talking to him. 31 They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. 32 Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. 33 Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, "Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah"--not knowing what he said. 34 While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. 35 Then from the cloud came a voice that said, "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!" 36 When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.
Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you! I hope it has been a good day for you so far and will only get better as the day goes along. I know it can be a difficult day for many.
For me, I can always count on Valentine’s Day to bring me a huge, heaping, overwhelming delivery of guilt.
It’s not just the normal male guilt that comes on virtually any day that I know matters to Emma, and I am perpetually unprepared for, like birthdays or anniversaries or Valentine’s Day.
No, it’s deeper than that because it was on Valentine’s Day that Emma and I had the conversation that changed my life, because it was on that day that I realized that this is the person I am going to marry.
After years of never believing I would marry, that no one would ever want to be that close to me for an afternoon, much less for the rest of my life, it was on Valentine’s Day that I realized, I am not alone, any more. This really is the woman I am going to marry. So, I remember that particular Valentine’s Day, and I will for the rest of my life.
I have no recollection at all, however, of the real day my life really changed, which was the day that I met or saw Emma for the first time. I can’t recall the first time I was in the same room with her, and then when I did notice her for the first time, I also learned she was dating someone else—up until she dated one of my very best friends. But all that is a different and longer story.
But there were days, several of them, when I am sure I was in the same room or saw Emma and never realized that I was there with the person who would change my life more than any other person, the love of my life, the person who would be my life-long companion. But I was there with her, all the same, without knowing it.
The disciples have been traveling with Jesus for some time now. They have seen him do remarkable things, and Peter has even recognized that they are traveling with the One who is the Christ, the One for whom the world has been waiting.
But then there came a day, the day that Luke tells us about when they went up on a mountaintop with Jesus to pray.
Now sometimes we all like to talk about, dream about, imagine a “mountaintop experience” with God. But the reality is that here are Jesus’ own disciples—who think they know Jesus—headed up to the top of the mountain to pray, but they feel as sleepy as you and I sometimes do in church. They are struggling just to stay awake, not really aware of where they are or with whom.
Suddenly Jesus’ appearance changes into dazzling brilliance, and the disciples see something of his glory. Glory. It is a word that means, “weight” or substance or defining essence. And for a few minutes the disciples realize a little more profound exactly who this person is with whom they are traveling.
It’s a deep paradox that the God of all glory should be willing to take into account our deep uneasiness with events and powers we cannot control, as in the story of Moses’ veil. This is the core of the story of the incarnation. We humans become so disturbed or fixated by events we cannot explain that we do one of two things. We either pull back and start mumbling to one another trying to put the unfamiliar into some kind of explanation that reassures us. Or, we go charging in and try to force the unfamiliar into a shape that we can control. In this case, Peter starts to do what many of us do. He blathers on, just trying to fill up the space that is filling up with uncertainty as they stand there.
We humans crave certainty and assurance. So, what humans find it hard to do, find ourselves unwilling to do when standing in the presence of the glorious, is to listen. Instead, as when we meet a person who we have noticed, and we feel all the nervousness that starts to bang around inside us, we start talking. With no good direction for what we say.
So, it is with Peter. “Let’s turn this moment into a religious shrine, a permanent mountaintop experience that we can show people and let them be amazed and talk about.”
But Luke tells us, “he said this not knowing what he said.” He is just trying not to feel overwhelmed by the scene in front of him, the appearance of Jesus’ own glory.
But glory is not a commodity to be possessed or marketed or even memorialized. Glory is the Presence of God among us. And it is overwhelming, which is why people so often fall on their knees or faces when the glory of God appears.
The incarnation is an unmistakable sign of God’s deep commitment to us as human beings, to appear among us as the Messiah, not in divine majesty but in the form of a humble servant, so that we might not run away but stay and learn and listen.
But we would be mistaken to forget who is in our midst, all the same. And on that mountaintop, the disciples received a divine reminder that it is none other than God at work in their very presence. Although it may have seemed like “just another day with Jesus” or just another time for prayer, at that very moment, God’s glory is present and at work there in the seemingly mundane.
This is what Paul reminds us when he says that we are all being transformed from one degree of glory to another, as we see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. It means that our lives can seem so uneventful, so very human, so mundane, but right here in our midst is the one who will transform our lives in ways we cannot bring ourselves to imagine, even if we actually could imagine it.
But rather than try to nervously chatter our way through an encounter with God’s presence by assuming we already know what is going on or by telling ourselves that we need to run away—glory is reason for silence.
It is the silence that comes over us in the awe of a brilliant rainbow at dawn. Or the awe of Niagra Falls when you see it for the first time. It is the awe that comes over us when we hold our newborn baby. Or when we start down the aisle and realize this is really my wedding. It is the awe of sensing that all along, God has been at work and is even now in our presence. And the best and most holy response is simply to fall silent, take it in, watch and listen.
In this case, a cloud sweeps over the disciples, and the chatterbox Peter, and silences the entire scene. It is not unlike Jesus’ stilling the storm with “Peace, be still.” Only on the mount of transfiguration, Peter’s words are answered from heaven with the whole point of the event. Jesus is the incarnation of the very glory of the only God. Now is not time for words or monuments to show others. Now is the time for silence and for listening because the hope of all the earth is there in arm’s reach.
The incarnation is the proclamation of God’s love that rather than appear to awe us or intimidate us, God has appeared to us in human form.
But because we see a human form, we should never forget who is at work.
Whether it is in a rabbi from Nazareth,
Or what is going on at a wedding in Cana of Galilee.
Or what is going on in the heart of a Samaritan on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho.
It may be we see a woman who weeps over her sins and washes Jesus’ feet with her hair.
Or in a fisherman who was washing his nets after a long night of fishing and catching nothing.
It may be what is going on in a sworn enemy of the faith, on his way to Damascus, and the glory of the Lord shines on him.
I look out this morning, like you, and I see a whole group of seemingly typical human beings. I look at myself in the mirror, and I see a very average human being looking back at me.
But the reality is that as human as we all look and truly are, as human as Jesus appeared and truly was, God is at work among us, because the very glory and Presence of God was and is at work in Jesus. And Jesus is always with us.
Today may seem like just another day. Another church service. Maybe another church service where we are fighting off sleep.
But in our midst stands the One who is fully human—and fully God. Because God loves us, the human matters and the human feels like home for us.
Yet, all the same, it is the glory of God that we meet in Jesus the Christ, whose defining essence is the source of all life and light and hope. This glory is pressing in on us and all the world with an incomparable “weight of glory,” cushioned by the incarnation of Jesus as one of us. Glory that will transform the whole creation into the kingdom of God, by the mercy and grace of the God who loves us and has given his life for us.
We may not realize who we are traveling with, or who is traveling with us. But the glory of God is the truest reality of all.
And there comes a day, when by the grace of God, we are given a glimpse of the glory of God at work for us in Jesus Christ. One can never anticipate what day may become one of those days, but the glory of God is at work all the same, every day.
Just as there will come a Day, when we all with unveiled faces will see the full glory of God as we stand—in silence and awe—before the God who has created us and redeemed and transformed us.
Meanwhile, let us do what we hear—listen to Jesus.
And be willing to be silent, and listen until our human hearts rise and join with all of creation in the song of “Glory to God and to the Lamb.”
Amen.