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Sermons
The Life & Ministry of Jesus
Christ,
Part I: Jesus’ Temptation
“Who
Are You?”
Deuteronomy
26:1-11; Luke 4:1-13
Rev. Kenneth M. Locke
The Downtown Presbyterian Church
One of the things I clearly remember from
my High School was every year being flooded with college students doing their
student teaching. There were actually
more colleges than High Schools in my hometown so student teachers were almost
a dime-a-dozen. You could always tell
them from their suits and ties and fancy dresses. We had to call them Mr. or Mrs., no nicknames
for them. They didn’t hang out
with us or make small talk or God-forbid try to be friendly. They must have been tempted to. They were only a few years older than
us. We listened to the same music. We had many of the same joys and
worries. We admired them and wanted to
know about college life.
Looking back I realize they were doing
their best to prove that even though they were only a few years older than
their students they were not their students.
Though only a few years were separating us from them they were not
us. They had a new identity and it was
very important to them that we knew who they were.
If you have ever been in a long-term,
committed relationship you know when you enter that relationship your identity
shifts and you have to behave differently than you did before. My wife was the first in her set to have a
serious boyfriend after college. And it
really hurt some of her friends that she wouldn’t just drop everything
and run off and do stuff with them.
I’m sure there were times she was tempted to do so. But instead she was always taking me into
account. Taking me into account was part
of living out her new identity as a person in a serious, committed
relationship. It was part of who she
was.
When you’re promoted at work your
friends throw you a party and everyone wishes you well but you and they know,
tempting as it is to do otherwise, you will have to let go of some old
acquaintances, embrace new acquaintances and acquire new responsibilities. It’s all part of living your new
identity.
As we go through life this is one of the
things with which we’re constantly grappling. Who am I?
How do I live out who I am? What
does it mean to be an employee, a committed person, a teacher a lawyer a banker
a parent – in terms of how we behave?
How does our identity as an artist, a musician, a friend, a lover, how
does that get played out in the day-to-day of our lives? Who are we?
And what are the temptations to deny who we are?
Now obviously we are not the first in the
world to have to grapple with this question.
The Who famously asked it.
“Who are you? Who,
who? Who, who?” But it was not original with them. The devil beat them to the punch by almost
2000 years.
Just before our Gospel Lesson from Luke
this morning is Luke’s account of Jesus’ baptism. You remember, because we talked about this
last week, that Jesus is praying and suddenly the heavens open up and a voice
says, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”
Jesus has a baptismal identity. He is the Son of God. And now he has to live out what that identity
means. And the devil is testing whether
or not he knows what that identity means.
The temptations the devil uses are not
random. In fact, they are foreshadowing
the rest of the Gospel. All through his
ministry people are going to say, “Come on Jesus, make some more bread
for the crowd. And make something
special for yourself.” All through
his ministry Jesus is going to here people telling him to go ahead, be the
powerful Davidic king of authority and glory who can drive out these Roman
oppressors. All his days, Jesus is going
to be tempted to test God, to ask to be delivered from his tortures, from his
crucifixion and death.
In this short scene, Jesus is facing all
the major temptations of his ministry.
And despite the variety of temptations, underneath they are all the same
temptation. “Who are you, Jesus?
What’s your identity, Jesus?
Are you the baptized Son of God, or are you somebody else? Do your actions match your words? Do you really know what it means to be who
you are?”
Can we relate?
Themes like “have it your way,” and
“you deserve a break today” are outdated, certainly. And intellectually, at least, we know the 80s
mantra “greed is good” is indefensible. But all our commercials and all our advertisements
are directed at one thing. Whether
it’s a new car or new cosmetics or a new type of cough syrup the message
is the same – give in to your appetite.
Live by bread alone.
And so it goes down the list. We want power, whether it be at home or at
work or at church. Some people get their
power and their kicks by being passive-aggressive, others do it by being
nakedly aggressive. Either way, the temptation is always there to bow down
before the gods of power and glory and authority, to worship the brass ring of
being a company vice-president or having our own record label or being reviewed
in all the best journals. Worship the
power and the glory from the top of the mountain, not God.
And who has not asked God to let some cup
pass from them? Who has not walked away
from a chance to minister because stopping and sharing a cup of cold water with
that person would be like drinking poison, or would at least mess up our
schedule? A student wants to talk to us
after class, a struggling painter wants a little advice, our neighbor wants to
come over and pour their heart out on our day off when we’d really rather
be doing other things. “Please
God, deliver me from this ministry. Not
thy will, but mine be done.”
The temptations Jesus faces with the devil
are the every day temptations of his ministry.
The temptations Jesus faces are our every day temptations. The common element of all the temptations
Jesus is facing is to deny his baptismal identity as the Son of God and live
not as God wants him to live but as he wants to live.
The common element of all our temptations
is to deny our baptismal identity as beloved children of God and live not as
God wants us to live but as we want to live.
Jesus resists temptation by remembering
who he is and how God wants him to live – not by bread alone, not by
worshipping other gods, not by testing God, but in loving relationship with
God. Putting God first, worshipping only
God, trusting God.
Likewise we resist temptation by remembering who we
are and how God wants us to live – not by bread alone, not by worshipping
other gods, not by testing God, but by
living our lives in loving response to God.
This is not a new concept. It’s very ancient. It even predates Jesus. Our response to God’s generous love is
clearly spelled out in our Old Testament Lesson. Our response to God’s generous love is
to be generous and loving to God and those around us. Bringing what we have and laying it before
God, sharing it with the widows, the orphans, the unemployed, the powerless,
the marginalized. Doesn’t say
anything about only sharing with people who could be just like us if they
wanted to. Doesn’t say anything
about sharing with people who will be grateful.
It’s only about sharing it with people who are in need. That is who we are. That is how we live out our baptismal
identity.
A week or two back I attended our
Presbytery’s annual mission conference and found myself in a forum on the
issues of urban poverty. One gentleman
strongly stated that all those people who are homeless are that way because
they want to be homeless. What I heard
there were two voices. One was the voice
of ignorance. The fact is many if not
most of the hard-core, intransigent urban poor to whom we minister have a drug
problem. They’re either taking a
drug they shouldn’t be taking. Or
they’re not getting the drugs they need.
Either way, they are not in a place to make logical, rational decisions.
But the second voice I heard was the voice
of the devil. And that voice was saying
to us all, “If you are baptized children of God, live your lives in the
joy of the promised land of God’s love.
Politely disregard those who aren’t able to cross the
Lent is God’s gift to us. It is a time for stepping back and listening
to the voices of our culture calling out to us the same questions the devil
asked Jesus: who are we? Are we really
God’s baptized children? Do we
know how to behave as God’s baptized children? Does it show up in how we live our
lives? Are people looking at us the way
the centurion looked at Jesus on the cross and saying, “Surely this man,
this woman, this child, is a child of God”?
Lent is a time for asking ourselves,
“Who are we?” My prayer is
the next time we are tempted we will know, and we will respond that we are the people
who do not live by our appetites but by every word that comes from the mouth of
God, who worship not the power and glory the world offers but who worship the
living God, who do not tempt God but who embrace the cross, the grave and
beyond. That is who we are: baptized
children of God.
May God be with us during this solemn
journey of Lent. Amen.
© 2003 The Downtown Presbyterian Church All Rights Reserved