Healing the Demons

                                    Isaiah 40:21-31

                                    Mark 1:29-39

                                     

As you reflect on the New Testament passage for today, what things stand out for you?  The part that always strikes me is summed in the last sentence of the New Testament passage, “And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.” Jesus sees two aspects to his ministry.  First, he is proclaiming the message – and what is that message?  According to Mark it is “the good news of God, that the kingdom of God is near” - (Mark 1:14-15).  This was once again in direct contrast to the message of the Pharisees and Scribes who were insisting that God and God’s kingdom were far away, holy and separate and required strict obedience to the law.  Instead, Jesus is saying that God is close – God is ABBA, which literally means “Daddy” – not a distant father figure, not someone who stands in judgment and concern about following rules, but a close Daddy, a loving, close parent.  The kingdom of God is not inaccessible, but present, here, standing in front of them.  Proclaiming that is Jesus’ first job. 

The second part of that passage says that he was doing what?  Casting out demons.  In other words, he was making that kingdom of God present for the people in his community at that time who were isolated, who were ill, who were rejected and outcast and who were unable to be the whole people God created them to be. 

These are the two things that made up Jesus’ ministry during his life: proclaiming that God’s reign was here, and bringing God’s realm to earth, just as we pray every week in the Lord’s prayer: “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”  This is what Jesus did and he mostly did this in the form of healing – at all levels – those around him.

Today I want to focus on that second part of Jesus’ job; the part about casting out demons. This is language which is different from what we are used to. We don’t usually talk about demons or demon possession. But it is not really that we are afflicted differently from the people of Jesus’ time. It is, rather, that we don’t use the same name for those things that USED to be believed to be demons.  To put it another way, we still experience things that prevent us from being the best versions of ourselves, the most effective, most fulfilled, most giving, most serving, most present, most whole, most holy versions of ourselves.  For example, it used to be believed that schizophrenia and other mental illnesses were demon possession. They certainly can prevent people from being the best God-servants, or the most whole that they can be.  Addictions are also "demons" in this sense.   If it is an addiction to drugs or alcohol, these can also prevent people from being active, contributing, helpful members of society.  They cause us to act badly towards other people, to be irresponsible.  Other addictions can injure or possess us in other ways that maybe only affect us internally, but still do not allow us to be the fullest, best, most whole people God calls us to be in our bodies as well as in our minds and spirits.  We can often see these kinds of demons from a long way off, we recognize these problems or issues that others have and we know they need to get them under control or exorcised or "fixed" in order for people to reach their greatest potential.  Jesus, in his ministry, cast out these demons. 

There are other obvious burdens or handicaps that also make life hard for people to thrive in this world: poverty, lack of education, a lack of resources and the knowledge of how to “work the system” leave many people in places where they cannot be the best they were created to be.

But, using this same language of demons, I think there are many other kinds of "demons" that are harder to see - or that are so common that we forget how limiting and problematic they really are. Fear is at the top of this list. Fear stops us from being generous or caring for others ("if we give what we have, there might not be enough for us!").  Fear stops us from reaching out to those most in need ("I can't go into that neighborhood - I'll be hurt!" and "Those people are just going to take advantage of me!"). In an extreme amount fear stops people from loving ("I might be hurt: might be rejected") and we know that phobias prevent people from living.

There are other demons as well: low self-esteem keeps some people from being able to respond to opportunities, or stops people from being allowed, at times, to really be of use to other people. Guilt, shame, regret: these can be useful in small amounts - helping us to see where we need to change, what we need to do to grow. But in large amounts these too can be debilitating, stopping us from taking the risks needed to be whole people, preventing us from living in joy and love and hope. Depression, loneliness, anxiety, jealousy, even grief - all of these can be debilitating, limiting and can feel like we are carrying unwanted demons around with us.

How do we, in today’s society, overcome these challenges? Counseling, groups, education, in some cases medicine. But I believe that we would be better able to overcome these if we also recognized the spiritual aspect of each of these problems, or in a sense, returned at some level to seeing them as "demons:" demons that need to be sent out and away, demons that we no longer wish to carry within us, but hope to ban from our beings, demons that need to be spiritually treated as well as physically, emotionally, mentally. I can't help but wonder if the rituals that used to exorcise demons didn't help people to overcome them in a way that we have lost. If we were to use ALL the resources at our disposal in order to overcome these trials - counseling, groups, education, medicine, friends, AND the spiritual rituals that call on God's help in a community of people all praying and surrounding the one hurting with those prayers, and that commitment to asking God for help, we would undoubtedly have more success. 

Most of us in our churches are comfortable with prayer.  But there are other spiritual gifts, spiritual disciplines, spiritual practices that we engage less, or that feel uncomfortable to some of us. Asking others to pray for us can be uncomfortable, but God gives us this community to help us. Meeting in faith based groups to ask specifically for the purpose of healing is not as common but can be a very helpful spiritual tool.  Bible reading: especially praying some of the psalms of anger and lament can be spiritually healing.  We often feel it isn’t “polite” to cry out in anger or frustration to God, but many of our psalms are prayers which do exactly that and give us both the models for how to do that as well as permission to express our feelings, all of our feelings to God. Fasting, Meditation, the laying on of hands, and speaking the truth.  All of these are tools that we have with us all the time. 
            Jesus’ ministry was in large part about casting out these demons.  I realize that Jesus isn’t walking among us and I believe that God does send us the counselors and doctors and others who help us with these problems today.  Also, it can be problematic if we rely solely on prayer, and don’t use the other tools God has given us for healing.  For example, you’ve all heard of faith healers who, when they aren’t able to heal someone, accuse that person of not having enough faith.  That is hugely problematic, especially since, as Paul tells us, faith is a gift from God, not something someone can “muster” or increase on their own.  I’m not suggesting that we ignore the gifts of healing that surround us in our medical fields.

But failing to turn to serious prayer, to the power of the community of the faithful to surrounding a person, to the spiritual guides and practices and gifts that God gives us to help us with these problems is failing to recognize that half of Jesus’ ministry was about moving people out of their pain, isolation, the depth of their sorrow and into healing.

I think the power of 12 step programs is that they bring back into the struggle with addictions, a spiritual connection, prayer and spiritual disciplines.  The 12 steps of looking at yourself, giving up your attempts to control what is really God’s to control, facing those things that you can control and that you have done: offering amends, asking forgiveness, learning to forgive yourself and others – these are all spiritual disciplines.  These are all ways of releasing the things that block our relationships with God.  These are all ways of re-connecting with God, whatever God is for you, and recommitting to that relationship with God.

Frederick Buechner says this about healing in his book “Wishful Thinking” :

The Gospels depict Jesus as having spent a surprising amount of time healing people… 

This is entirely compatible, of course, with the Hebrew view of man as a psychosomatic unity, an individual amalgam of body and soul whereby if either goes wrong, the other is affected.  It is significant also that the Greek verb sozo was used in Jesus’ day to mean both to save and to heal, and soter could signify either savior or physician. 

Ever since the time of Jesus, healing has been part of the Christian tradition.  In this century it has usually been associated with religious quackery or the lunatic fringe, but as the psychosomatic dimension of disease has come to be taken more and more seriously by medical science it has regained some of its former respectability.  How nice for God to have this support at last.

Jesus is reported to have made the blind see and the lame walk, and over the centuries countless miraculous healings have been claimed in his name…  You can always give it a try.  Pray for healing.  If it’s somebody else’s healing you’re praying for, you can try at the same time laying your hands on him as Jesus sometimes did.  If his sickness involves his body as well as his soul, then God may be able to use your inept hands as well as your inept faith to heal him.  If you feel like a fool as you are doing this, don’t let it throw you.  You are a fool of course, only not a damned fool for a change….If God doesn’t seem to be giving you what you ask, maybe he’s giving you something else.”

            Jesus was a healer.  He cast out demons of all kinds.  And he invites us to help him in the recovery, in the healing, in the movement towards wholeness of all we encounter.  That has to start with our faith.  From that place of faith we can help people find the ways to heal physically, emotionally, mentally, and especially spiritually.  We are called to see others as the whole people they are, and to address them with every tool God has given us.  Thanks be to God that Jesus was the master physician, that the Christ continues to be the master healer, and that God calls us to follow suit, proclaiming the good news and casting out demons, in all that we do.  Amen.

Loneliness

      I believe we are living in a culture that is experiencing an epidemic of loneliness.  I see it in the social media boom: people "talk" constantly through their tweets, Facebook and other social media as a way to try to connect to others.  People seem much more compelled to "speak" through these media sound bites than to actually spend time together.  Often, now, people become fixated on their social media even when they are with other people.  The other day I was having a very intense personal conversation with a friend who wouldn't put down his phone and was Face-booking and responding to emails even as he asked me personal questions.  I felt strange talking to a bowed head and the back of someone's phone.  It felt almost shaming to have a person ask me something very private while not making eye contact with me, but while, instead, typing away on his phone.  I felt invisible.  I clearly wasn't the priority in that moment.  But since he was asking me personal and deep questions, I also didn't know how to deal with the situation.  Looking back, I probably should have said, "I can wait until you are done" before continuing, but in the moment, that did not occur to me and I couldn't think how to be polite but also clear that I was not going to have that intimate conversation with the back of someone's phone.
      I found myself wondering why emails, Facebook and tweeting are so much more compelling than actually talking to the person in front of you.  Perhaps it's because it feels like we are talking to a whole bunch of friends at once.  We also don't have to worry about being interrupted.  We type what we want to say, taking the time we need to be specific and thoughtful about our words (or not), we don't always know who will respond or "listen" but we can expect that at least someone out there will.  Also, it is fast and we can disengage as quickly as we want.  We can, in a cyber way, connect with someone else for 30 seconds or for ten minutes without the pressure of an entire conversation, or with the awkwardness of beginnings and endings to one's time with someone else.  In our instant gratification society, that quick fix of a five minute interaction with a group of folk may feel very satisfying.  Some of us are more observers, others more sharers, but on social media we choose whether we just browse and read others' comments, respond to them, or start a line of conversation ourselves.  It seems perfect. It takes away the loneliness, gives us instant support when we need it, an instant entertainment otherwise.  It does not require much from us, we only engage it when we want to for the length of time that we choose.  We get to engage more than one person, usually, at a time, and we can talk about anything we choose, saying whatever we want in the time and space we want to say it.
      Sounds ideal, right?
      Except for the long list of downsides to this.  First, we are forgetting how to really talk to each other, how to truly build relationships, how to go "deep" with another person, something that takes time and intentionality.  We are physically isolated in our homes with only our electronics to keep us company.  We no longer touch and engage real people.  I ask you to consider, how many close friends do you have at whose homes you could just show up at any time?  Most of the real "talking" we do with close friends is still done through electronics, mostly done by text or by phone.  How often in a week do you get together with friends to just be together?  It's not like the way it used to be when people saw each other daily and met for coffee in each other's homes with regularity.  We live in our little boxes, rarely know our neighbors, those who actually live and breathe and work and eat near us.
      This also means that we tend to only be friends with people who have similar ideas and visions to ourselves.  We are friends with those with whom we work, perhaps, or those in the same fields.  We aren't pushed to know the next door neighbor who has radically different politics or a different faith from us.  We only connect with like-minded people, and we are the ones who lose out as a result.  Our ideas are not expanded, only supported by others who are similar to us.  Our vision and thoughts aren't pushed or challenged.
      Another obvious problem: people can become mean behind the anonymity of media.  It is easy to forget that the person you are talking to is a real, flesh and blood human being with feelings and thoughts and worries and histories and experiences which make them vulnerable, fragile, REAL.  We've all read about the damage done through cyber bullying, the teens at risk because of the cruel words spoken to them or the images sent to them that damage psyches and sometimes lead to suicides.  This happens to adults, too, in case you were wondering.  The habits of anonymous and cruel cyber bullying grow with the cyber bullies into adulthood and become a pattern of terrible meanness that injures far more people than we will probably ever know.
      All of this also leads to further emotional, psychological and even physical issues.  There is a wonderful video out about the causes of addition that suggests that a large part of our personal problems stem from social isolation, from loneliness, from a lack of support. While I don't agree that this is the only cause of these problems, I do think that we need to start looking at the social causes (and social solutions!) to these issues with much more seriousness.
      We know our politics are becoming much more polarized as we forget how to talk to each other, and more, how to listen to one another.
      What if, for one day a week, everyone were to put down their phones, computers and other electronic "friends" and actually go spend time with their real human friends, or, even more radically, with their neighbors?  How would our lives change?  How would things be different?  Might we start learning to talk and listen to each other again?  Might we begin to close some of the gaps in our thinking and understanding and visions for the world?  Might we learn and grow and deepen in new ways?  And, most of all, perhaps we would find we aren't so lonely anymore.  And that would not be a bad thing!

Sermon from 5/1/16 - Do You Want to be Made Well?

John 5:1-9
Luke 17:11-19
5/1/16

In today’s lesson from John, Jesus asks a man who has been ill for 38 years if he wants to be made well.  What is interesting is that the man doesn’t say “yes.”  Instead, he makes excuses for why he is not yet well.  “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.”  He has been sick for 38 years, and yet he has not been able during that whole time to get himself into the waters that he believes will heal him?  Hmm.
Do we do this?  Sometimes it is hard to take the steps towards healing that we need to take.  Sometimes we become used to the way things are, even if they are painful and difficult, and choosing to step forward into new life, into something different is so frightening that we simply cannot do it.  Change is hard for all of us, even if we know it would be better for us in the long run.  It is so hard that sometimes we are even willing to die with the way things are rather than changing things to what they might be.
I’ve mentioned to some of you before that I volunteered for a while on a crisis line for battered and abused spouses.  And what I heard again and again was that despite the threat, not only to their bodies, but to their very lives, these women could not leave their spouses.  They just couldn’t.  Help was there – we had a secure and hidden shelter that led into retraining programs, job counseling, help finding places to live, therapy for the children and women, and legal help in getting divorces and restraining orders.  But still, most of the women we counseled could not or would not leave their spouses.  Even when their children were being threatened or harmed it was extremely difficult.  And it wasn’t that they couldn’t leave because they were afraid of being hunted down.  It also wasn’t so much that they loved their spouses, though sometimes this is the reason they would give.  In my experience listening to these women it was more that the idea of change was so hard, the idea of trying something new was so daunting, they had gotten used to the life they had and just could not envision something different.  Changing was too hard, too scary.  But I think it was even more than that.
We hear about this in church communities as well.  People say they want things to be different: they want more children and more young adults in the church, for example.  But often times they aren’t actually willing to do anything that will change what they know even if it would successfully bring in those people.  We say we want change, we want things to be different, but it is hard to be willing to make the changes that will make things different.  One of my good friends is currently pastor of a congregation that is facing what many congregations are facing – his congregation is experiencing a slow atrophying death due to lack of growth and loss of financial support.  They have explored the possibility of being a church without walls because it is their building that is costing them so much strain and difficulty.  But again, they can’t do it.  They would rather become what is becoming more and more known as a “chaplaincy church”, a church that has made the decision to stay the same and to simply die out rather than trying something different.  Another friend was pastor of a church that was in the process of joining with another congregation and made the decision to close instead.  It was easier to close than to envision being church with other Christians, other Presbyterians, other...  And again, we ask, what is that really about?
In the passage from Luke we have a story in which 10 lepers are begging for Jesus’ help, but when he heals them all, only one returns to give thanks.  Our first tendency on hearing this story is probably a bit of righteous outrage.  Why wouldn’t they thank Jesus for turning their lives around?  For saving them?  For healing them?  We can imagine these people today, as modern day lepers – those whose lives have been consumed by their “illness” or situation.  Today those “lepers” might be drug addicts, prostitutes, people from the middle East, homeless persons, people with a mental illness like schizophrenia, gang members, ex-convicts, immigrants, Muslims – in other words, anyone who might make us feel uncomfortable or who we might fail to see as anything other than their condition, situation or other quality, or fail to include because of one of these aspects: those would be today’s lepers.  We can imagine what it would be like if Jesus came to them today and offered them healing.  He would be offering to them a place back in society, he would be offering them acceptance once again into their communities.  Why would anyone not want that?  Why would anyone not be grateful for that?  The ten lepers in today’s passage were healed.  Shouldn’t they be grateful?
The question is, what makes these changes, even these really positive changes, so hard to embrace, to accept, and to be grateful for?  I think at the deepest level, at the deepest level, we come to accept what is into our beings in a way that not only becomes familiar, but actually comes to define who we are.  Our very identity becomes mixed up with those things that are part of our lives, or that are part of our daily living.  We do this to other people and we do it to ourselves. Whenever we refer to a person by a label we are doing this.  I saw a sign in a women’s restroom recently that said, “be aware of purse snatchers”.  And it struck me that by calling them “purse snatchers” we claim that as the whole of their identity.  It wasn’t “be aware of people who snatch purses.”  It was “be aware of ‘purse snatchers’.”  That, then, is who they become for us.  They aren’t mothers or fathers who are potentially in need.  They aren’t people who are struggling like us, to find their way.  They aren’t people who have lives outside of snatching purses. They aren’t children of God.  Instead they are “purse snatchers.”  We can do this with anyone with whom we are uncomfortable.  People without homes become “bums”.  People who struggle with addictions become “addicts”.  People who join gangs become “gang members” or “juvenile delinquents” or “thugs”.  It becomes their identities.  For us, and even for them.
In both of today’s gospel lessons, it wasn’t just that others had applied these labels to the “lepers” or those who were sick.  The people in today’s stories applied those labels to themselves.  Jesus actually didn’t.  He refers to them as “people with leprosy”, “people with disease”. My guess is that their identity, though, became tied in to their illnesses, to their struggles, to their societal labels.  Is it any wonder, then, that these things that defined them would be hard for them to give up?  Who are we when things change?  For the battered and abused spouse, who is she once she leaves her home?  She is no longer the married woman, she is no longer living in the same house with the same friends or company.  Often an abusive spouse separates his or her partner or spouse from his/her support system, so often the person who finally has the courage to leave is left with no other support people to ground them, to care for them.  Who, then, do they become?  Sometimes there is no choice about this change in identity, but that doesn’t mean the change in identity is any easier.  A spouse dies and we are no longer “the wife” or “the husband” of so and so.  Instead we get a new identity “widow” or “widower”.  We get divorced and for the rest of our lives on the forms we fill out, we are not “married” or even “single” anymore, but “divorced.”  We get a new identity, one that is not so very attractive.
In the movie, Pleasantville, the characters are stuck in sameness, in black and white, in a life that is calm, expected, “pleasant”, but in a life that is also uninteresting and not lived to fullness.  They are “languishing” or failing to live life deeply, to live a life that has any excitement or real meaning in it.  But things begin to change in Pleasantville and some people begin to live with passion, with intensity.  With it, though, their identities change.  And that change in identity is shown as they become “colored” – or rather, they go from being black and white to having the normal colors that we associate with life, with living.  This becomes extremely threatening to many of the people to whom the old identity is so important that they cannot face the possibility of change, even when it means adding passion and interest, real LIFE to their living.  They cannot do it.
This is what happens in both of today’s stories.  Jesus comes and offers healing to the one man in John.  And that man has all kinds of reasons why he has been unable to accept healing.  But my guess is that it is a deeper issue for him.  He has been sick for 38 years.  Who will he be without his illness?  Who will he be if he is really cured?  It is easier to come up with reasons to not step down into the water, to find reasons why he hasn’t been able to do it than it is to take the step that means his life will be completely changed.  His life would be changed for the better, we know, but he may not be so sure.  Who will he be?  And the same for the lepers who were cleansed.  Why did they not return to give thanks?  Well, my guess is that for some of them, they weren’t thankful.  Maybe the gifts they thought they sought came to them and they realized they no longer knew who they were or how they would be after the healing.
Still, Jesus doesn’t leave us there.  We are challenged to grow, we are challenged to heal, we are challenged to find new ways of being in the world.  The man in John never said to Jesus that he wanted healing, but Jesus gave it to him anyway.  The lepers said “Have mercy on us” which was the phrase used to ask for alms.  They, too, were not actually asking for healing.  The gifts of healing, the gifts of challenge and change may change our identities, or rather our sense of who we are.  But God loves us too much to leave us with identities that are less than wholly who we are called to be.  God loves us too much to leave us without opportunities to work towards healing.  God loves us too much even to leave us “comfortable” when God can bring transformation, shalom, and wholeness.  Will it be hard?  Of course.  But it will be healing.  And it will bring us closer to the whole people God calls us to be.  Amen.

Sunday's Sermon - Temptations

Luke 4:1-13

Luke wrote his gospel in a highly organized, pointed way. I would encourage you to actually look at the layout of the gospel at some point for yourself. But I am going to take my job as “teaching elder” more seriously this morning and talk you through some of his organization. The gospel of Luke begins with his prologue and dedication to Theophilus, Chapter 1:1-4. Luke then begins the gospel narrative with the infancy stories, explaining about John the Baptist and Jesus’ conceptions and births. That story is told beginning in Chapter 1:5, continuing through 2:21, the verse where Jesus is named, and then on through verse 39, his presentation at the temple. All of these verses are for the purpose of showing, proving, providing the signs that Jesus was the chosen one, that Jesus is the messiah, the son of God. These verses establish for the listeners Jesus’ divinity. These are followed in Chapter 2: 41-52 by the one story we hear of Jesus as a boy in which he was preaching in the temple. As I’m sure you remember, his parents couldn’t find him, and finally when he was found in the temple, Jesus scolded them for not understanding his role, his job, his position as a temple leader. In the gospel of Luke, this story again serves the purpose of showing us Jesus’ special calling and unique place in the history of the Jewish people. In Chapter 3 John the Baptist prepares the way for Jesus, baptizes him, and then Jesus is marked by the descent of the holy spirit pronouncing him to be God’s son. Finally, chapter three ends with Jesus’ genealogy. For the Jewish people, this would be like giving his credentials to prove that he really was a person who was qualified to be the messiah. While for us in the United States, this genealogy may not seem like an important sign of Jesus’ kingship, try to understand this as a blood line monarchy. Descent is important for a king to be considered legitimate. This was especially true for the divine monarchy. Jesus’ genealogy would have been a critical, crucial part of identifying and understanding who Jesus was.   

Today’s scripture reading about the temptations of Jesus then follow this genealogy.  And in these verses as well, Luke is about the work of establishing for us who Jesus is. Up to this point, Luke is telling us that Jesus is in fact the Messiah, the chosen one. With the temptation stories, Luke tells us what this Messiah is to be like. Or rather, these verses are key as they lay out in exact terms who Jesus is NOT, what the Messiah is NOT going to be, despite the expectations and hopes of the Jewish people of the time.

The Jews around the time of Jesus’ life were expecting the Messiah, and looking for the Messiah. But they had very specific ideas in mind of what that Messiah would look like, who he would be, and what he would do. They believed the Messiah would be one who would rid them of oppression, of poverty, and of hunger. And so Luke tells us that Satan first tempted Jesus to perform the miracle of making stone into bread. In this story, Satan tempts Jesus to make the bread to feed himself. But I think it would have been very easy to justify giving in to this temptation for the sake of other people. For the ability to turn stone into bread, the choice to create food where there was none could have been used for the good of the people; Jesus could have given in to this temptation and chosen to end poverty and oppression for all people simply by turning stones into food, necessities, the things people need. But Luke tells us this temptation came from Satan: this was not Jesus’ job. Jesus was not called to simply wave his hand and make everybody comfortable. And this story tells us that he resisted the temptation to do so. 

Many Jews at the time believed the role of the Messiah would be to reestablish the kingdom of Israel, overthrowing the Romans who ruled over the Jews and all the land of Israel at this time in history. The second temptation addresses this. Satan offers Jesus the power of the world, all fame, all authority. Jesus could have used this gift for good as well. He could have overthrown any power, like the Roman rule, that was oppressive and dominant, and establish a new rule, led by himself, that was for good, that was just and kind. But this, too, was not what he was called to do. We know this again because Luke tells us it is Satan who offers this. This was not Jesus’ call, and so this temptation, too, he resisted.

Finally, many simply believed the Messiah would be a priest who would, through his power, protect the people, care for the people, warding off all evil that might threaten their lives or their comfort. And so in Luke, Satan tells Jesus to test God’s call, God’s love, the power God has given Jesus. He asks Jesus to jump off the temple, and throw himself into the arms and mercy of the angels. But this temptation, too, comes from Satan and Jesus resists.

I’m guessing that all of these temptations, all of these images of the Messiah are ones we would wish for Jesus to claim as well. We, too, would want a savior who would make sure we were fed, would lead us as a king, as the President of the United States and of the world, acting

with justice, thwarting all evil, leading us as both a political and as a religious leader, doing miracles and acting with power to insure that all are safe, happy, and secured of God’s grace even when we do stupid things that might look like throwing ourselves off of buildings.

But Luke tells us very clearly this is not Jesus’ call. This is not who Jesus is. He did not cater to his own needs, he did not reach for power or popularity, compromising his beliefs or calling, he did not test God’s love for him; and, despite what everyone wanted him to do, he did not “fix” the problems of the world instantly. Instead he began a ministry which angered people because it did not support the hierarchy that had been set up. He began a ministry which eventually got him killed because he told the truth to those in power about their unjust and evil behavior, and he called them to change. He began a ministry of good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind and freedom for the oppressed, but not by ridding the world of these problems. Instead, he worked through the people themselves, through empowerment, through love, and through calling all of us to likewise carry out this mission, this plan. He did his work one person at a time, and sometimes in communities of people.  But he never took away free will, he never took over power, he remained humble yet continued to speak and act with love and truth. 

We are called to follow in Jesus’ footsteps. We are called to be his disciples, and to do the work that he has begun. That means that in the face of similar temptations, we, too are called to resist and to follow Jesus’ way instead. We too are called to resist the temptation of feeding ourselves first, of seeking power and fame and popularity, of testing God’s love for us, but also, of taking the easy way in the face of the great needs and oppression of those around us. We are called to remember in everything that we do that the ends do NOT justify the means, that the way we get where we are going is just as important as the end result. And taking away people’s freedom, people’s choices does NOT get us where we are called to be.  Acting, even to save the world, must be done with love rather than hate. And we are called to resist the temptation to say that it’s okay to grab for our own needs because we can use them to do good for other people. 

            The truth is that I think all of us are tempted by the same things. And as people of faith, we tell ourselves that we want these things to serve and care for others. If we only had enough food, comfort, power, popularity, wealth, surely we could change the whole world for the better. But these temptations sometimes cause us to face hard day to day decisions that are not always in the best interest of others, of our communities, of the world. For example, we might have the face the choice to do something in a job that is questionable, but we do it because we need to support ourselves and our families. We might justify doing something questionable because if we don’t have a job, what use can we be to anyone? Sometimes we debate between what we believe we need for ourselves and our families and giving to those who are truly, deeply in need of basics. This is a temptation I believe we face every single day. Do we give to those most in need, who are struggling to simply survive? Or do we use what we have for ourselves and our families. We don’t want to be afraid that we or our families won’t have enough. And we sometimes lose sight of the fact that somehow our ideas of what is “enough” expand based on what we actually have. Similarly, how many times do we keep quiet, keep our mouths shut about important values or things we hold dear in order to not “upset” people when maybe we are called to do exactly that? To take a stand for something we value? 

These are things I struggle with as well. As pastors we talk about this. As I’ve mentioned before, the larger Church across the country is shrinking at an alarming rate. Across denominations our churches are dying out. We can’t, therefore, we tell ourselves, or perhaps Satan or evil or temptation whispers in our ears, afford to speak the truths that we hear in scripture, that we read there every day, when we fear it may alienate people in our congregations.  People might get mad at us if we said when we really know, think, or believe. So we fail to do it. Francis of Assisi actually put it another way when he said that people of God should never be put in positions of high authority in any institution because our job then becomes preserving the institution rather than telling the truth. But this is not what we are called to do. How is the church relevant if it isn’t looking seriously at what the scriptures say, are and do? How are we doing our jobs by failing to speak those hard truths that many would rather not hear? 

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A colleague of mine wrote, “So I asked my three year old boy ‘Honey, if we were at a store, and Dad and I were in one aisle, and you were in another aisle, and there was candy, and the devil said, “You should take some!” What would you say back to the devil?’ A genuinely sweet grin lit up his entire face and without hesitation he replied, "Oh! I would say thank you!" It is far easier than not for us to say, "Thank you," when temptation comes calling. (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary - Feasting on the Word – Year C, Volume 2: Lent through Eastertide.)

But as we know, giving into temptations is a slippery slope.  There once were a couple of kids who wanted ice cream. The ice cream truck was coming, they could hear it coming up the street. So they asked their mother for money for ice cream and she said no. But they REALLY wanted the ice cream, so they were scouring the house for money but couldn’t find any. But then they found their mother’s wallet. And they took the money and used it to buy ice cream. So now they’ve done two things wrong. They had ice cream when their mother said no. They stole money to get it. But then the mom saw chocolate on their faces and asked them if they had had ice cream. And they added to their mistakes by lying about it. She knew they had, so then the next question was where did you get the money and they lied about that as well. One “sin” or mistake or error led to another, and another and another. Eventually one of the brothers gave in and told the truth. The other became angry and punched the one who told. Another wrong-doing. And it goes from there. 

In this world where there are hungry people, where there is oppression and injustice, where people are fleeing their countries because of genocides and other acts of mass violence, the bigger temptation, the biggest evil, is apathy, is inaction, is passivity. The biggest temptation for all of us is choosing to take care of our own and to not think that care for those who are out there is our job. But we are not called to be passive. We are not called to solely take care of our own. We are called to act out of love, for ALL people. That love should affect everything we do. Where we shop, paying attention to what stores are paying fair wages to people in this country and abroad. What we buy, paying attention to who has made or grown the things we buy, the food we buy and if they are treated fairly, if the land is being treated well. What we do with our money, who we vote for, how we talk to people, how we talk to strangers. All of these things, every choice we make should be informed by Love. Hard? Of course. For all of us. But that is the call. Anything less is giving into temptation.

The truth is that all of us become tempted, and all of us fail at times. The good news though is that God gives us more and more chances every day to make different choices. The good news is that God gets it because Jesus, too, was tempted. And the Good News is that Jesus models for us what to do when those temptations come. Jesus responded to his temptations by quoting scripture back to Satan. To put it in more modern terms, Jesus responded to the temptations that he faced by re-grounding himself in what he believed, in his relationship with God. And he models for us similar choices. Prayer helps. Confession helps. Meditation helps. Remembering what you believe, what is important, where God is in your life and that God calls us to love others because in doing so we are made whole. Remembering that…all of that can help reground us. Staying present so we are focused on what needs to be done now, right this minute for the good of the one in front of us, for the good of God’s creation. And again, that can be done best with God’s help. We pray each week, “lead us not into temptation”. But we will find ourselves tempted, and when we are, the prayer needs to be continued, “(and when we are tempted), deliver us from evil” both the evil of others AND our own.  Amen.