Sacred Journey

Tonight, God willing, I will be getting on a plane to the Holy Land. In a few hours I will be standing at the Jordan River. I might even be standing in the Jordan River. Just like Jesus. The big difference is, when I leave Jordan’s stormy banks, I’ll be going to a nice hotel with clean sheets, hot water, and, for all I know, room service.

Jesus, on the other hand, left the scene of his baptism to go into the wilderness. Today, on this first Sunday in Lent, you and I are invited to go with him. As every student of the Bible knows, the wilderness is where God’s people learn, through testing, what it means to belong to God.

There’s a sense of unremitting progression in the Gospels of Mathew, Mark, and Luke. Everything seems headed toward Jerusalem. That progression is perhaps strongest in Mark, whose two favorite words seem to be "must" and "immediately." The pace in Luke is a bit slower, but each event in Luke’s account still brings us a step closer to Jerusalem, the scene of Jesus’ passion. I’ll be there in a few days, but as a pilgrim, not as the victim in the Passion story.

Today, without so much as passing through airport security, we go with Jesus from the banks of the Jordan into the wilderness, where, Luke says, Jesus is "tempted by the devil." No. That’s not quite right. Jesus doesn’t just go into the wilderness. Luke says he is "led by the Holy Spirit" into the wilderness. He does not go on his own initiative and he doesn’t go alone.

Temptation is not something to be invited. Jesus doesn’t say to the devil, "Bring it on!" Instead temptation comes in the course of following God. Perhaps you have noticed that those who are most engaged in the way of God seem to experience most intensely the opposition of evil. Even "the presence of the Holy Spirit does not mean the absence of temptation" (Fred Craddock, Luke: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, p. 55).

What was true for Jesus is often true for us. Temptation comes most intensely when we are closest to God’s will.

Now, give the devil his due. His timing is perfect. Jesus is still wet behind the ears. He has yet to preach a sermon, cast out a demon, or heal a sick person. That he is the Son of God has been declared. How he will be the Son of God is still anybody’s guess. As Jesus reacts to each of the tempter’s proposals, he confirms for himself and for us what it means to be baptized.

First the tempter suggests that, since Jesus is hungry, he should eat. Nothing evil about that. But something deeper is at stake. Will Jesus’ ministry be one of service to others or to himself? "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread." A lovely, warm, tasty, nutritious loaf of bread, just like the kind Kathleen Engstrom bakes for us on Wednesday evenings. Nothing wrong with that! But Jesus is fasting for a reason, and his hunger to do God’s will is even deeper than his hunger for bread.

Jesus quotes an alternative script for his emerging role as the Son of God: "It is written, One does not live by bread alone." As he will later tell his disciples, "I am among you as one who serves" (22:27).

Next the tempter offers Jesus a political route for living out his calling. Nothing wrong with politics. Politics could use a few good folks like Jesus. Think of the good Jesus could do as the benevolent dictator of the world.

Think of the good Jesus could do.

There’s just one catch. Jesus will have to worship not God, but someone or something else. "Worship me," the tempter says, "and you could accomplish so much good for the world. Worship me and all the kingdoms of the world will be yours."

Again, Jesus quotes the alternate script: "It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’"

I’m convinced there is a way for the baptized to follow Jesus in the realm of politics, wilderness though it be. There is, I think, such a thing as the righteous use of political power. The problem is, we so often have to sell our souls to the devil in order to acquire it, and having acquired power, we tend to worship power instead of God.

As Reinhold Neibuhr pointed out so often, the worst evil is not done by obviously evil people, but by righteous people who do not know the limits of their righteousness.

Jesus rejects a political route for himself. That is not his calling. It might be ours, however, so long as we are serving him. "Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him."

The tempter’s third proposition is in some ways the most tempting of all. He suggests that instead of trusting God to be faithful to God’s promises, Jesus could force God’s hand. He could stage a miracle.

The tempter takes Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple and invites him to prove his special relationship with God. "Go ahead. Jump. Surely God won’t allow anything bad to happen to you. Surely God will send angels to bear you up, lest, as scripture says, "you strike your foot against a stone." "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here."

Later, come Holy Week, mockers at the foot of the cross will say much the same thing. "If you are the Son of God, save yourself! Come down from the cross." At this moment in the wilderness, as later on Calvary, Jesus refuses to be his own deus ex machina. He came not to dazzle, but to serve.

And so he tells the devil, "It is written, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test."

Having played his last card for the moment, the devil now retires "until an opportune time." Make no mistake. He will be back. He has tried working on Jesus in the lonely wilderness. Later he will seize opportune moments to work on him through his closest friends. He will use the impetuous devotion of Peter. He will seize the soul of Judas. The wilderness is not the only place Jesus will face temptation. To be baptized is to live not only in God’s grace, but also in those moments the tempter finds opportune.

The temptation you and I face is similar, but not identical, to that faced by Jesus. Nobody will ever ask us to make bread out of a stone or to defy the laws of gravity. That’s not the way temptation works. We are tempted to do not what is beyond our power, but what is within it. "Temptation is an indication of strength, not of weakness" (Craddock, p. 56).

I remember a conversation I had a while back with a nurse in the intensive care unit of one of our hospitals. She was checking the video monitors and the various gadgets attached to a 93 year-old woman who had neglected to sign an "Advanced Directive" before having a stroke. She had been on life support for several weeks while her children fought with each other long distance about whether to pull the plug.

I guess it had been a long day, and the nurse’s defenses were down. "I know we have the technology to do this," she said. "We can keep this woman’s heart beating for weeks to come. I know we can do it. But should we do it?"

Temptation is not about being weak. It’s about how best to use our strength.

In Judith Green’s novel Ordinary People, one character is a middle-aged-man going through a classic mid-life crisis. The guy’s a mess. Every time he overhears a conversation in an elevator or a restaurant that begins, "Now I’m the kind of man who …" he tunes in, hoping to learn some wisdom. But he never does. Finally he admits, "I’m the kind of man who hasn’t got the foggiest idea what kind of man I am."

On his journey toward Jerusalem, Jesus discovers what kind of person his is, what kind of baptized child of God. He is the kind of person who acts as though life is more than bread alone. He is the kind of person who won’t manipulate power for himself, who won’t try to take the place of God. He is the kind of person who refuses to be "successful" if success requires him to be less than everything God calls him to be.

What kind of person are you? How do you find out?

Luke is telling us how. Certainly, you don’t have to go physically and stand at the Jordan River. But you do have to start with your own baptism. You start with your baptism and move on from there. Move on with Jesus. Walk with him as he walks with you, and by the time you get to the other side of Easter, you will have your answer.