Focusing
This Sunday is the first Sunday in Lent – a season we’re not really sure what to do with. We don’t have a lot of special Lenten activity here at Fifty, and I’m sure we’re missing out on a good opportunity for growth in our relationship with God, in our own spirit, and in our faith. Kind of silly to give up Lent, for Lent, isn’t it?
The reading this week is the story in the Gospel of Matthew about Jesus’ 40 days and nights in the wilderness just after he was baptized into his identity and mission as the messiah, after which he was tested by the devil on how he was going to go about it. It’s the archetypal Lenten experience, and I wonder how we see it.
I mean, 40 days and nights of fasting, followed by a series of face-to-face tests by the devil!
Was Jesus some kind of super-man, a strong, rugged hero able to prove that he was up to anything the devil could throw at him? Someone we can turn to, like Shane or the Man with No Name, to fight our battles for us? And then ride off again into the distance and leave us alone, once his work is done?
Or does the story mean that he struggled, too, and that before being able to be and to do what God called him to, he had to be humbled – even broken a bit. Had to learn a few things, and become reliant himself in even deeper ways on God and the angels? In other words, is he someone like us, who we can happily follow and learn to be like in our own lives?
Scripture reading: Matthew 4:1-11
Lent is a season to let our hearts be cleansed and focused in particular ways to make us ready for new levels of life with God, and with others. Jesus also went through seasons like this. Being human as we are, he needed times to cleanse his heart, to clarify his motives, and to renew his openness and readiness for whatever was God’s purpose in his life.
In this reading, Jesus has just been baptized and anointed for his work of teaching and healing. To prepare for what will come, and to be ready to fulfill his calling in God’s way, he is led by God into a time of intense and intentional cleansing.
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But Jesus answered, “It is written,
‘One does not live by bread alone,
but by every word
that comes from the mouth of God.”’
Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written,
‘He will command
his angels concerning you’,
and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.”’
Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ “
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain
and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”
Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,
‘Worship the Lord your God,
and serve only him.’ “
Then the devil left him, and immediately angels came and waited on him.
Reflection
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished.
What are you hungry for? After 40 days and nights in the wilderness. Or maybe, after 40 – or more, years of life in this world what are you hungry for, and really wanting? Looking at it another way, after 227 years of being a church in this place, what are we hungry for as a ongoing community of faith?
Exercise:
· Name fifteen things you have, that you count on for your life to be as you want, and that you’d really miss if they were taken away
· Name five things you want to have, or have more of, that would make your life better or more enjoyable
· When you think of our struggles and the future of this church, name five things we could use, or use more of, to survive
It’s probably not hard to come up with the lists above. So it really hits home, and we feel the devil understands our situation when he starts off the conversation saying, “If you are the Son of God – if you are here by the good will of God, to do some good in the world, and God really loves you … then command these stones to become bread. Focus your energy, your God-given powers and gifts, and what you know of the good will of God, to get what you need in this world to survive and to thrive. Because … really … what good will you be, and what good will you do, if you don’t start with enough bread.”
To which Jesus replies: It is written, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
What I hear Jesus saying here is that God knows what we need, God will provide what we need to do able to do what we are meant to do, and it’s usually less than we think we need. And, even more to the point, what’s the point of getting and having what we need if we aren’t actively living in the world as God desires? If we are not intentionally and as much as we can be, a living breath of God, breathed day by day into the life of the world? If our life is not a holy word spoken into the world’s conversation? And our body – what’s the point of having our bodily needs met, if our body is not a day-by-day vessel of God’s Spirit? If we are not living God’s Word – at least whatever we know of it?
And I put it that way – “at least what we know of it,” because of a comment shared by a young woman in the congregation who was partnered with me in a conversation with a few confirmands. We were talking about the Bible – how it came to be, why it’s our Bible, and how we read it today. And her closing comment to the group conversation was that the important thing is not that we know all the Bible, but that what we know, we really live.
To which the devil says, “Okay. I get it.” (The devil really is quite accommodating, and usually ready to work with us wherever we are and with whatever we say we believe, and then to work with it in his own way.)
“Okay, I get it. You want to live as God’s child and do God’s work in the world. That’s good. So, let’s go to the pinnacle of the temple. Get as close to God as we can. So close and so open to God that you can know your mission. Come up with a church mission statement. Develop some goals and objectives. Form some personal resolutions. Re-commit to the kingdom.
“And then print it all out in big letters. Put it up somewhere. Throw it out there on your website or your Facebook page or Instagram. Just put it out there for all to see. And let God take it from there. Let God carry you. Let God bless your gift to the world’s awareness.”
To which Jesus says, “No. That’s not quite it.
“The point is – when we’re on the pinnacle of the temple – the way down from here to make an impact on the world is not just to put it all out there in some grand leap, and either make a giant splat, or have God save our prideful skins and make people see they should follow us. The way to make a difference in the world is to take the stairs. Go back down the same way we came up.
“The way to go is not a free-fall into glory, but to come back to the world step by step. Patiently and humbly. Stage by stage. Season by season. With steady commitment to a good direction. Knowing that this is the way God also submits to.
“Yes, there are stories of God miraculously intervening. But what makes them miracles is that they are exceptional. 99.99 % of the time, God gets things done in the world by way of multitudes of little steps, tiny nudges, soft and fragile motions of butterfly wings.”
I think here of the Chair of our Church Council, and the career change he made a few years ago. He was a fund-raiser for the McMaster Children’s Hospital, helping to plan and implement campaigns among mega-donors and ordinary contributors to raise bundles of money to help the hospital do what they wanted and needed to do. A good thing, and no doubt deeply satisfying. Money – when you get it, is a magic wand to bring into being what you want to be.
But a few years ago he changed career paths. He left the corporate fund-raising, and he’s now a hands-on home renovator. Going in to work day after day with tool belt, hard hat and boots, to remake and renew old homes and offices and buildings to help them be better suited to the present day and what it requires. And doing it nail by nail. Screw by screw. Cut by cut. One step at a time. Patiently and steadily.
I wonder if the hand of God is somehow at work in him being the chair of our church Council. If this new career path, and the intentional choice of it, is somehow exactly the image and metaphor we need to guide us in what we do and how we do it as a church.
“Okay,” the devil says. “We’ll take the long road. The ordinary road. The day by day road.
“But first… (and here he gets that old glint of a dark gleam in his eye) … first, let me show you where this will take you. Just so you don’t lose heart. Just to help you keep on with the journey you’ve chosen. Just so you know why it’s worth it.”
So the devil takes Jesus to a mountaintop, and shows him all the kingdoms, the bounty and the gifts of the world before him at his feet. And he says, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me. Even on the path you have chosen, I can help you get what’s coming to you. What the goal is. What you deserve as the good, well-committed son of God that you are. I can help you not to miss – or miss out on, the reward.”
To which Jesus says, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’“ Then the devil left him, and immediately angels came and waited on him.
What I hear Jesus saying is, “The point of it all – the point of me being who I am, and what I am doing, and how I am doing it, is not that world is where I get what I want and what I need for me to be number one. The point of me being a child of God living out God’s Word, is that the world is where I give who I am and what I have and what I have been given, for the good and well-being of others.”
Jesus knows – and we don’t take this seriously enough – Jesus knows that God is not really up high on a throne, no matter how often we imagine it, but instead is more really down on the ground right among us, especially where it’s most painful. And when God is lifted up at all, it is not to be in control, but to be on a cross.
And saying that, it’s not meant to be heard primarily as a tragic tale of grave injustice and of dying tragically. It’s meant to be known as a sacred tale of lovingly giving one’s self and what one has for the well-being of others.
I think here of an elderly woman in our congregation who has just returned to her room at a retirement home after another in a series of hospitalizations. Over the last few years, she has lost a lot – her husband, their home, her independence, her mobility, her health. Even now she knows she cannot stay long in the room that has been her home for the past few years. The process has already begun to find a place in a long-term care facility where she will have more of the care she needs.
But … each time she has suffered a loss and has had to move to a smaller, more dependent place, after a few hours or a day maybe of discouragement and lament, she returns honestly and consistently to accept the reality of her condition, to entrust herself to whatever place God will lead her to. Because she knows it will be for her good, and even more it will be a place where she can and will be of some good to whoever she comes to know there, and to whoever comes to know her. She doesn’t need much. Just a place – any place God chooses, for her to live out God’s love, and give what she can of her faith, her hope and her love to others around her.
Just like Jesus.
Because, think about where Jesus goes after this time of great fasting and deep purification. He does not go from the desert to Jerusalem – not at first, anyway, and even then he goes there really only to die. Nor does he go to Rome or Athens or Cairo. Rather, he goes to Galilee – back to the backwater of Galilee, to its towns and villages and countryside, and to its ordinary people.
To lose himself in and to the Galilean ordinariness. Not at all unlike we do in our Winona, Hamilton or Grimsby everydayness.
He doesn’t leave the desert with a grand plan and global strategy. Even though at times he attracts crowds, how many of the stories about him are of small gatherings, one-on-one conversations, interactions and healings and invitations offered just to whoever he happens to meet, and is met by along the way that day? Just step by step, day by day, person by person sharing the love of God for all? In the same way we do.
In one sense, nothing that the world counts as important is resolved in this test with the devil. Jesus is still poor and of low status and estate in his time. He is still dependent on the openness of others and the kindness of strangers. He is still vulnerable and at risk, with no institutional structure or security to draw on, fall back on, or be protected by. He has no strategic global plan other than openness to the working and leading of the Spirit, and commitment to knowing and living the Word and love of God in the present moment, with whoever he is with.
Which means, though, that he has resolved within himself what really counts. And what makes his life truly count.
And he does this not to save us from having to do this ourselves. He does it to show us the way, so we can follow.
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