Some time ago I read a prayer which grabbed me by the ears and wouldn’t let go. Well, at least one sentence wouldn’t let go: Protect us from the lure of things that do not endure.1 Keep us from being lured into believing that things are what they aren’t. Help us to know our values and to know ourselves as well.
Today we find Jesus being tempted in the wilderness by the devil. It is a story we know well, even if Jesus’ temptations were different from our own. Jesus faced three temptations (food, false worship, and putting God to the test), and, in his case, he resisted successfully. The reason for his success is that Jesus knew who he was.
How many people really know who they are?
In Judith Guest’s novel Ordinary People, one character is a middle-aged man going through a classic midlife crisis. Confused and adrift, 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, and he finally admits, “I’m the kind of man who hasn’t got the foggiest idea what kind of man I am.” 2
I wonder how many other people feel the same way. Probably there are more folks around us who face that same dilemma than we’d ever realize.
How do we know who we are, who we really, who we are called to be? How did Jesus know? But, in his case, knowing who he was made all of the difference in the world. For he was able to withstand a very crafty adversary who threatened to undo his life’s work before it even got started.
Jesus knew who he was because he knew his religion. He could answer the devil because he knew holy scripture, and he knew it in the right context. And he was not afraid to use it as a weapon. He learned his religion by going to the synagogue throughout his formative years. He learned the prayers of the faithful by heart. He heard discussions about scripture and something resembling sermons regularly. In other words, he had spiritual formation which was the basis of who and what he was. Because of that biblical and spiritual foundation, he stood toe-to-toe with the evil one – and he walked away the winner.
There is a lesson in all of this for us. Patrick Palmer said it this way:
The devil prefaces his challenge to turn stone into bread with a taunt that takes a very familiar form: “If you are the Chosen One…” Though few of us get needled for thinking that we are Chosen, the tone of that taunt should remind us of outward and inward voices in our lives: “If you are able…” “If you are a real woman or man…” If you truly care…” “If you are such a good parent…” The root temptation here is almost irresistible. It is not the temptation to do a magic trick, which most of us know we cannot. It is the temptation to prove our identity, which many of us feel we must.
So here is Jesus, who has just been proclaimed by John the Baptist to be the Messiah. Word is spreading, people are starting to believe that the prophecy has come true, and Jesus himself must have been touched by the emotional turmoil of this historical moment. Then comes the devil saying, “Go ahead and prove it.” 3
I can make many unhappy pronouncements about the state of Christianity in general in our society. However, there is one in particular weakness which I find most troubling and that is the fact that most Christians, many of them good, committed Christians, do not know their Bible well, and often know even less about the Faith. Without that essential grounding, they are not equipped to withstand the craft and assaults of the devil. They are easy prey for temptation because they do not know what is expected of them.
Or to put it another way: they are the kind of people who don’t have the foggiest notion of the kind of people they are. They are not equipped to discern what is of true value in modern life and what is illusory and should be jettisoned or ignored. They are easy prey for the devil, who, in the end, usually has his way with them.
One of the ways in which the evil one wins is by convincing us, convincing Christian churches and organizations especially these days, that there really isn’t much that is evil in modern life. Modern society tells us that there are no absolutes, no black and white, that it’s all relative to custom, culture, and time. We have largely sanitized our Book of Common Prayer of significant references to personal sin or to the sinful human condition. Some of us remember the time when we admitted, each week, that “there is no health in us”. And there is no health in us when we do not know who and what we are or who we are supposed to be. There is no health in us when we believe that evil is relative and that whatever works for us is good enough in the overall scheme of things. There is no health in us when we believe that the world revolves around us. And there is surely no health in us when we refuse to recognize God’s plan for us. God’s plan for us calls for each of us to stand in opposition to the ways of the world, the flesh, and the devil.
How many times do we hear that plain truth proclaimed in sermons? Not often enough, I am certain, because the devil is very successful in convincing us that we are really healthy enough as we are right now. Jesus called us to live a life of service to others, but the devil offers us a self-centered life. It is such an attractive alternative to what Jesus wants for us that very few people are able to resist it.
Jesus dealt with those temptations in the wilderness. The conversation in his head might have gone something like this: Instead of walking by faith on God’s terms, why don’t you make God demonstrate saving power on your terms?... [But] Jesus refuses to live any other story than God’s story, to follow any script but the scriptures. 4
Whose script do you and I follow? After, we are confronted with choices on a daily basis and with some occasional dicey situations.
I remember a college student who stopped in to my office some years ago when home on vacation for a talk. She told me that there was a lot of pressure at her school for young people to engage in casual sex. One young man said to her, “Well, why not? Nobody would know.” Her response was simple and direct (and right): “Of course somebody would know. I’d know. And I’d know it was wrong.” She learned that response because she went to church, she learned the Bible, she learned her prayers, and she learned how to respond and to mean it when she said it. Simply put: she knew who she was, and she wasn’t going to be anything other than the Christian she professed to be.
That’s the key to today’s sermon, and it is the key to Jesus’ encounter with the devil in the wilderness. You have to know who you are, who you are called to be, and to whom you belong. Your identity and mine, too, is grounded in the faith. There is no substitute for that, and any fool who tries to tell you that the Sacraments, church attendance, knowledge of the Bible, and reverence for the teaching of the Church don’t make a Christian is clearly in the clutches of the devil already.
There is one final point from today’s gospel reading which you simply must consider and remember. Having been defeated by Jesus this time, “the devil left him, to return at the appointed time.” In other words, the contest wasn’t over, it had only just begun. He will be there “lurking in the shadows” as the events of Lent unfold.
And so it is with us as well. We must always be on guard, ever faithful, ever vigilant, and ever trusting in God’s mercy and strength. Know who you are: you belong to Jesus Christ. And then remember to pray these words: Protect us from the lure of the things that do not endure.
The Very Rev. Theodore W.Bean, Jr.
Dean of the Cathedral
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1 Thomas G. Long, Pulpit Resources, Vol. 32, No. 1., p. 37.
2 Ibid., p. 39.
3 Patrick J. Palmer, The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring, San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1990, p. 105.
4 Pulpit Resources, op. cit., p. 38. |
