Year A

Matthew 4:1-11

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

Standing Strong in Christ

Lent arrives once again. Lent for the church is a season of self-examination-looking within, prayer, and recognition of our vulnerability, frailty, and sin. We start the journey with Jesus in his slow walk to Jerusalem to the cross and we begin, as we always do, with the story of Jesus in the wilderness and with the topic of temptation. Immediately after Jesus’ baptism, with its disclosure of his identity and relationship with God as the Son of God, the Holy Spirit leads Jesus the beloved Son out into the wilderness to be severely tested by the devil. The topic of temptation is no stranger to any of us. Temptation is part and parcel of our lives, for we all experience it and we do ourselves an injustice when we minimize it. Temptation is like a wedge.

In the world of physics, in the mechanical world, there is no more powerful application than the wedge. Once you get its thin edge in, it’s only a matter of time and force before it splits things apart. No matter what it is, nothing is able to resist the power of the wedge to drive it apart. Temptation is like that. It is the wedge of the devil’s desires that seeks to wear us down and tear us apart. This desire began in the Garden of Eden with the temptation and fall of Adam and Eve. Someone once said, ever since Adam and Eve fell into sin, “forbidden fruit has led to many a bad jam.” How true! 

Adam and Eve were given absolute freedom in making the choice between God’s account and the crafty serpent’s account of what would happen if they ate of the fruit. And we know the rest of the story…as they say. God gave humanity the gift of being able to make choices for our lives and making choices is essential to using our freedom but how do we know what choices to make? While having some options is essential for a healthy psychological state, having too many can be problematic. For instance, several psychological and sociological studies have tracked how an increase in consumer options since the 1970’s among the population of the United States can be correlated with a decrease in general happiness.

Writing in a Scientific American article summing up these studies, psychology professor Barry Schwartz argues that there comes a point when the benefits of having options becomes outweighed by the increased misery of having to many choices. One need not be a psychologist to recognize this phenomenon. Many of us who were content not so many years ago with five television channels find ourselves unable to find anything to watch when we have a multitude of channels to choose from; and what about all the choices on some restaurants menu’s? We are not able to handle such a wide range of options. Too much freedom can be debilitating and it opens us to error.

There is no shortage of evidence of our errors or brokenness that is sin. Were we to trace every sinful act back to its beginnings, we know it would be rooted in fear, hurts, and angers on the one hand and our inability to understand or accept our limits on the other. We are a people defined by selfishness and insecurity, pettiness and pride, and a need to control the things of this world. Paul argues today that we are all trapped by the sin of Adam. Granted, Adam knew what God told him, but he had no experience from which to draw from. On the other hand, we have a whole history of sin and consequences to draw from when we make our choices and we have all chosen sin over God at some point in our lives. Jesus, on the other hand, also represents us all and has shown us that we can choose right over wrong, good over evil, God’s way over our own way. 

Today, we find Jesus after fasting for “forty days and forty nights” faced with the challenge of his freedom of choice. Having just experienced the Spirit descend upon him in his baptism with power, Jesus faces the temptation to use this freedom given to him by the Spirit, self-indulgently. The temptations start with the simple lure of a meal when he is at the point of starvation, but quickly increase to special divine protection and eventually encompass a promise of all the kingdoms of the world. Jesus resists self-gratification, and meets each temptation by turning in devotion and service to God’s calling. He counters the temptation for food with trust in God’s word, the temptation to receive extraordinary attention from God with humility before God, and the temptation for power with praise for the Lord.

This is good news for us today. We have hope and help, as we deal with the freedom of choice the Holy Spirit has given us. Because Jesus faced temptation and overcame it, there is one who stands ready to come to our aid. He showed us that the key and remedy to temptation is more than willpower or just saying no to the devil. It would be easy if that were true. But it isn’t as simple as that. Perhaps Mark Twain was right when he said: I can resist anything expect temptation. The key to overcoming temptation and making good choices is not in our willpower but in God’s power. It is allowing God’s Spirit to fill the void within us to empower us.

Jesus gave us the answer: we have to fill our hearts and lives with the Word of God, the way of God, and the truth of God as our sure defense; just as our Lord centered his heart and life in God. The traditional Lenten practices of worship, prayer, study, simplicity, service and devotion to the needs of others can help us center our hearts and minds in the life of God. They are guides to help us appropriately exercise our freedom in response to God’s grace. For instance, instead of choosing a lifestyle that demands more and more for ourselves, the Lenten discipline of simplicity, reminds us that we are freed and empowered by the Spirit to lead a life of service to others in love.

Lent is the time when we engage the weak places in our lives, that we may come face to face with them, name them, understand them, and seek forgiveness for them…over and over. It’s not about guilt. It’s about freedom from all those things that seek to wedge us apart and away from God, to amendment of life and new beginnings.

A group of mountain hikers came across an old woodsman with an axe on his shoulder. “Where are you going?” they asked him. “I’m headed up the mountain to get some wood to repair my cabin.” “But why are you going up the mountain?” they asked? “There are plenty of trees all around us here.” “I know,” he said, “but I need strong timber and it grows only on the highest elevations, where the trees are tested and toughened by the weather around them. The higher up you go, the stronger the timber grows.”

And this is what God desires for us, that through the winds of trail and the storms of temptation we would grow strong and live on a higher level—strong to resist the devil’s urging, strong to serve God, and strong as we stand together in faith and service to one another. We can be confident that God loves us and wants to help us. God certainly knows our weaknesses and our failings and loves us anyway. We are children of Adam’s legacy of sin. But on the other hand, the hand marked by the nail of the cross, we are children of Adam’s legacy in Jesus Christ and victory belongs to those who make the choice to follow Jesus through the trails and temptations of life.