March 13, 2011, First Sunday in Lent Yr. A

Sunday, March 13, 2011, First Sunday in Lent
Matthew 4:1-11
The Rev. Jo Miller

First, I want to thank everyone who participated in the two Ash Wednesday services.
Both were good. I so enjoyed serving with Father Bingham. I was moved by both services. Since all of you together represent the Temple of God, God’s Spirit was present.

We know that we are in the season of Lent not only because of Ash Wednesday but
because we start the first Sunday with the Temptations in the Wilderness. This reading from Matthew is in the form of a Rabbinic midrash. Which means that it is a homiletic method of exegesis, a way of interpreting a biblical story. The temptation in the wilderness is not intended to convey objective biographical data. It is best read as a lesson.

The Gospel of Matthew was written for Messianic Jews. They understood rabbinic
stories that take an underlying historic truth and build a lesson from it. I have read several commentaries and interpretations of the three temptations. Some commentaries say they are strictly temptations for Jesus. But if true what would the midrash be for the Messianic Jews who were hearing this section following the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple? What do they mean for us as we enter into our Lenten Season? Let’s look at some possible lessons.

Some commentaries say that hanging over the three temptations are the tempting use of
power, the tempting of God, and the temptations of self-righteousness. Let’s look a little deeper. The first challenge is the temptation of turning stones into bread. Perhaps we can say that Jesus refuses to engage in this meaningless demonstration of power. Jesus is nourished through the Spirit in “every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

Perhaps Matthew is telling the early followers who were weary, hungry, tired after the fall of Jerusalem and the loss of the temple that their temptation would be to go back to the broken stones and try to reconstruct the temple, to go back to the old ways because their Spiritual nourishment had come from Temple worship. They had always believed that God was there in the Temple. All through the Gospels we hear Jesus teaching otherwise. God is Spirit, worship him in spirit.

The old ways are easier because we know them. A new situation stretches us, causes
discomfort, makes us work, and can make us feel we are in a wilderness. How many times do we hear the refrain: “But, we have always done it that way.” There are Episcopalians who are still upset with the “new prayer book.” The lesson tells us that God was not in the old stones, their strength is to come from being in the presence of God, in being spiritually nourished by hearing and following the words of God spoken to us through the Spirit.

The second temptation: Jesus is placed on a pinnacle of the temple and is prompted by
the Devil to prove his divinity by throwing himself off the temple. Surely, if he is God’s Beloved the angels will come to him. Do not tempt your God. What midrash lesson would be found here for the Messianic Jews? The people are in pain and their world is turned upside down. The mighty Romans have squashed them. Perhaps because of their choosing to follow “The Way” of Jesus friends and family had disowned them. And, there is also the Gnostic belief that Jesus wasn’t human anyway and therefore could not suffer. Matthew pushes them to understand the deeper meaning of faith in God. He pushes them to understand what trust means. Faith and trust in the mercy, kindness, grace of God are a prevailing messages in Matthew. Having trust and faith does not mean we should tempt God to have God prove God’s self to us.

The third temptation: one of self-righteousness, of setting one’s self above others as being special. TV, radio, magazines, politics, religions are rife with special people. Jesus was special, the Beloved of God, yet he walked the dirt roads, ate with sinners, touched the untouchable. Self-righteousness about one's belief system is a hard lesson. It is a sin that “all believers” are susceptible. It can be a particular problem when we claim our beliefs and our practices are the right ones. Orthodoxy, the system of right thinking and belief killed many people in the early years of Christianity. But, as we travel through Matthew we will see how
many times Jesus draws a distinction between “right belief” and faith. He said to those who were healed, “Go your faith has healed you.”

Last week's reading of the Transfiguration gave us a picture of Peter, James, and John getting smacked down by the light and voice of God. The same light and voice smacked down Saul as he was traveling. Saul had rather seen himself as special as he went about imprisoning Christians. They all ended up with their faces in the dirt, a very humbling position. The disciples and Saul who became Paul all had to walk a humbling road in order for their faith and love in the Divine to flourish.

We can fall to the illusions of power, taking the easy way out, to self-righteousness, but that is all they are illusions. The midrash shows us an example through Jesus how not to fall into those three traps.

Marcus Borg in “The Heart of Christianity” writes about the Christians’ unending
conversation with the Bible, our traditions, and each other. Borg says we can’t get our doctrines right because “Being Christian involves not just talk but transformation of our lives.”

If our Lenten Challenge can do anything for us may it help us to see the difference
between belief and faith. The temptations in a strange way were challenging Jesus’
understanding of himself as the Beloved of God and stretching his understanding of faith and trust in God whom he called Abba.

Faith is about trust in God. It does not mean trusting in statements about God.
Kierkegaard, a radical Christian of the 19th century wrote that faith is like floating in seventy thousand fathoms of water. If you struggle, if you tense up you will sink. But, if you relax and trust you will float. Faith is trusting in the sea of God’s being in whom we live and move and have our being. Faith is a radical centering on God of which our creeds point. This Lenten season our challenge is to deepen our trust and faith in that which is not us, in that which continues to create at the furthermost expanses of the universe, to open our heart, mind, and
soul to the Spirit’s leading and then follow, to let the God of the universe be the Ground of our being through the living Christ by the Holy Spirit.


*Alexander Shaia: The Hidden Power of the Gospel *Marcus Borg: The Heart of Chrisianity