University Presbyterian Church - Chapel Hill, NC

The Reverend Anna Pinckney Straight

University Presbyterian Church

February 25, 2007

“True Temptation”

Deuteronomy 26: 1 – 11

When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, “Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.” When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the Lord your God, you shall make this response before the Lord your God: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.” You shall set it down before the Lord your God and bow down before the Lord your God. Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.

Luke 4: 1 - 11

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’” Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” [1]

I remember the moment when my worlds collided.  It was at a wedding, in Spartanburg, South Carolina.  A very southern, formal, white-tie wedding.  The bride was the cousin of a good friend of mine who had asked me to be his date.  A friend of mine from seminary.  The seminary in New York City from which I had recently graduated.    At this very formal southern wedding, we were the couple from New York City.   We traveled that weekend on my date’s Harley Davidson.   My life in New York was one of social justice and Birkenstocks.  My life in Charleston, South Carolina, where I had grown up, had been one of etiquette books and cotillion.   Halfway through the wedding, one of the guests realized that they knew my parents.   And for the rest of the evening I wasn’t sure how to act.  Had I said anything I wouldn’t want my parents to hear about?  Was I the proper single young woman from Charleston or the outspoken feminist from New York City?

My worlds had collided.  It wasn’t a bad thing.  It was about time that I started reconciling where I had come from with who I had become.  Learning that these two parts of myself weren’t enemies, they were partners in a greater mission.

Most of us have this in our lives to some extent, I think.  Worlds that we keep separate, whether intentionally or accidentally.

For most of us, however, most of the time, having some worlds that we keep separate is not anything calculated.  It’s just something that happens in the busy-ness of our lives.  Job.  Family.  Church. 

Sometimes, it seems like the only way we can survive is to put things in categories and separate worlds.

Jesus’ worlds collided in the wilderness after those forty days of fasting.  He was in the wilderness preparing for his ministry with a time of fasting and prayer.

Jesus had been fasting for forty days when the temptation occurred.  And it’s easy, after years of reading this text, to forget that this was not some compulsory or rote exercise, this was genuine temptation for Jesus.  Jesus was not incapable of sin, he avoided sin even though tempted,[2] and this temptation was huge.  A temptation directly related to how Jesus was going to integrate the two, up to this point, separate parts of his life, his humanity and his divinity.

First he was tempted with food, the very thing he had given up for the last forty days.  Would he use his divinity to feed his own physical desires?

Next there was the temptation to use his divinity for power.  For glory.  To be adored.  Would it be easier to speak the truth or be beloved?

And finally, the devil tried to get Jesus to doubt, to question what he knew to be true, to ask for his life rather than faithfulness. Would the son of God test his divinity or trust it?

Jesus had to determine how to use his divinity, to make his life easier or to further the proclamation of the Good News.  I believe that Jesus had a choice, or this was not truly a temptation.  And though tired and hungry, Jesus chose the God.  Chose Faith.  Chose both his humanity and his divinity, all for the glory of God.

This time, recorded in Matthew and Luke, this time of wilderness journey and temptation, it is a significant moment in the life of Jesus, a time of fasting and prayer, and more often than not it is this time that we remember during the season of Lent.  We honor this time with our own sacrificial actions.

As we honor Lent in our own ways, some of us will give something up, something that isn’t good for us anyway.  Desserts.  Soda.  Smoking.  One year I tried to give up sarcasm.

That went well.

Or instead of giving up something that could be considered a vice, some try and follow Jesus’ example a little more literally, giving up something important.  Like reading.  Or News.  Or the telephone.

And still others don’t give something up, but instead take something on, like claiming a time for prayer each and every day, or a commitment to a specific forgiveness.

We honor Lent because we know that at the end of this journey is a Holy Week.  Holy Week.   Jesus spent this time in the wilderness to prepare himself for his public ministry.  We spend this time in Lent preparing because we know that at the end we will be invited to walk with Jesus through Palm Sunday to his Last Supper, to when he gives himself up for us.  His trial, crucifixion, and finally the resurrection.  It is a journey most of us are not naturally predisposed to make.  And so we take these forty days to prepare.

This year, however, I have to tell you, I haven’t given anything up or taken anything on.  Instead of thinking about Jesus’ forty days of fasting I have become transfixed by the temptation that came at the end of the fasting, and the way in which Jesus’ worlds didn’t collide but merged and worked together.

Because I know, that even after all of these years, there are still places where I treasure my different worlds, where I like to keep my own stuff away from God’s reach.

As Anne Lamott wrote,  “…when you ask God into your life, you think [God] is going to come into your psychic house, look around, and see that you just need a new floor or better furniture and that everything needs just a little cleaning—and so you go along for the first six months thinking how nice life is now that God is there. Then you look outside the window one day and see that there’s a wrecking ball outside. It turns out that God actually thinks your whole foundation is shot and you’re going to have to start over from scratch.”[3]

Or even better, the words of Greg Brown,[4] 

Oh Lord, I have made you a place in my heart

Among the rags and the bones and the dirt

There's piles of lies [and the love gone from her eyes]

And old moving boxes full of hurt.

[Pull up a chair by the trouble and care

I got whiskey, you're welcome to some]

Oh Lord, I have made you a place in my heart

But I don't reckon you're gonna come.

Tried to fix up the place, I know it's a disgrace,

You get used to it after a while

With the flood and the drought and old pal's hangin' out,

With their I-owe-you's and their smiles

[Bare-naked women keep comin' in

And they dance like you wouldn't believe]

Oh Lord, I have made you a place in my heart

So take a good look and then leave

[Oh Lord why does the fall get colder each year

Lord, why can't I learn to love

Lord, if you made me, it's easy to see

Y'all make mistakes up above]

But If I open the door

You will know that I'm poor

And my secrets are all that I own

Oh Lord, I have made you a place in my heart

And I hope that you leave it alone."

How many times do we say we want more faithful lives, but in our actions we tell God, in no uncertain terms, that this hurt or that desire is off limits?

I’d like to think that I’ve done a pretty good job of integrating my worlds, but I have to tell you there are still places where I’d rather not admit that I am a minister.  Like when I am negotiating with a car salesman.  Something that I love and have even offered to do for friends and family.  The last thing I want a car dealer to know is that I am a minister.  The robe gets in the way.  It takes all of the fun out of the negotiations.   Playing hard ball.  Walking out the door.  Making a ridiculously low offer just to see what will happen. If they know that you are a minister, you just can’t get away with some of that.  And God help the car salesman, and thankfully there are only a few, who insists that he needs to deal with my husband instead of me.

Or this past Wednesday night, at the Ash Wednesday service, when right in the middle of a meditative moment a car with the heavy bass was on Franklin Street.  And the sanctuary pulsed not with the Holy Spirit but the beat of that car stereo.  And I was, at first, incensed.  Don’t they know that we are worshipping in here?  Don’t they know that this is a sacred time?  And as it continued I realized how wrong I was.  How odd it is that there are these boundaries between, these different worlds of in here and out there.  Not that there is converting to be done but that the world was not created to serve the church, we were created to serve others.  When it was over, I was not incensed, I was reminded of just how much there is yet to be done.  Just how much God is hoping we will live.

The passage we heard this morning from Deuteronomy was about how to mesh stories, worlds.  The Israelites telling the story of how they came into the land.  They tell the good parts as well as the painful.  That they are the chosen people of God.  That a wandering Aramean was their ancestor.  In a land where having land is everything, admitting that they have been slaves and land-less is not speaking a word of pride, it is an acknowledgement of honesty, knowing that it is all of those things that have brought them where they are, and it is opening themselves, without reservation, to God that will enable them to step into positive future.

This year, this Lent, I am thinking not about what I can give up or take on, but how I can open up.  More of my life.  More of my heart, to the God who wants to redecorate, the God who wants full access.  Forgiveness and possibility.

The life of faith does not accommodate different worlds, instead it invites us to live one life, one faith, one hope.   

Faith that is present in our work, our relationships, our play, and our actions.  Faith that is present in what we say and choose, vote and decide.

We have no divinity with which we must wrestle, only our full humanity, a humanity created in the image of God.

The Good News reminds us that we have nothing to fear from worlds colliding.  Nothing at all to fear.  The one who fasted for forty days and withstood more temptation than most of us can fathom has paved the way, and went all the way to tell us this, we have nothing to fear from the invitation from God to accept and share love and forgiveness, bread that sustains our bodies and the Bread of Life that sustains our souls for faith.  For life.  One life.  One world.  Thanks be to God.