Paved With Good Temptations

A Sermon Preached by

Rev. Paul Debenport

February 21, 2010

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Hear God’s good Word to us from these verses in Matthew 5: 1—9:

Then Jesus began to speak, and taught them saying:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure I heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

And from Mark 1: 9—13:

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.

And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the

Spirit descending like a dove on him.  And a voice came from heaven, “You are my

Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.  And the Spirit immediately drove

Jesus out into the wilderness.  He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted

by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

The Word of the Lord.  Thanks be to God.

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          Both of her parents had broken their wedding vows with other partners destroying their marriage, and their 17 year old daughter, profoundly disillusioned and distressed, tearfully poured out her anguish to me:  “Isn’t there anything pure left?  Where is goodness?”

          Goodness knows what I answered [I hope it helped], but I’ve never forgotten her anguished questions, though this happened many years ago at a former church.  Now I know her questions were poignantly profound and encounter most of us when we are confronted with the reality of evil in our world.  Now I know that she was beginning a serious spiritual journey, both hungering and thirsting after righteousness and being tempted to give up on God, on others, and even on herself.

          As is everyone, whether we recognize it or not.  We all hunger for goodness.  We all thirst for God our Creator.  Life’s deepest and most pervasive journey is in search of our spiritual center, our spiritual home—the kingdom of God on earth as in heaven.  But we all often have difficulty finding the gateways to God, and wonder how we find a way to a deeper and authentic spirituality.  But with all of life’s pressures and distractions, this search is easy to ignore, until we have a crisis, sometimes an unexpected encounter with evil like my young friend Edith.  It can be a health crisis, a job crisis, a family crisis, or the pain of encountering the massive traumas and tragedies and blatant evils in the world.  These crises are when our hunger and thirst for something more, something deeper, something bigger and more profound than ourselves presses to the forefront.  We hunger for righteousness; we thirst for God.  And we will be filled, Christ promises, if our hunger is recognized and acted upon.  We have to seek if we are to find. 

          But where?  Where is a gateway to the kingdom of heaven and how do we enter it?  “Follow me,” Christ invites, and I will lead you there.”  And Christ does lead us to where we need to be struggling.  He does not magically remove us from all strife—quite the opposite, really—but he does show us which specific struggles will lead us to the kingdom of God.  Beginning today and picking-up again in two weeks, this Lent we shall seek to follow Christ into the deeper waters of a deeper spirituality.  We shall seek to enter the same gateway that Christ himself struggled through, and from which we can learn that “the road to God is paved with good temptations.”

          Seeing Jesus’ temptations as a gateway to God may sound counterintuitive, mainly because we tend to think of temptation itself as evil and that the only way to manage temptation well is to avoid it.  Which in some cases we should and must.  Removing ourselves from tempting situations is often a wise way to respond.  But not always.  As with Jesus’ temptations, some temptations are unavoidable, and conquering them—sometimes over and over again—is necessary if we are to follow Jesus to the kingdom of God.[1]

          Although we should and do pray with Jesus “lead us not into temptation,” sometimes God does lead us into times of testing.  Today’s text from Mark clearly states that Jesus was “led by the spirit of God” into necessary, hence, good temptations.  It was not Jesus’ idea or desire to go into the wilderness of temptation, nor did “the Devil make him do it.”  No, it was God’s Spirit that led Jesus to the place where the crucial struggle must happen if he was to be who and what God called him to be.

          So the first thing about temptation this passage forces us to face is the mysterious truth that one of the “facts of life” God has set for us in this world—without any say on our part—is that we all shall be exposed to evil, both from within and from without.  Whatever the ultimate source of evil may be and whatever our responsibility for evil may be, we cannot escape living in the midst of it, and are led by God to deal with it.  Like Jesus, we must learn to recognize evil for what it is, recognize and overcome our own self-deceptions, and renounce it, no matter how enticing it may be.  And facing and facing down evil, amazingly enough, is a gateway to discerning both God and who God created us to be.  Temptation is the crucible where not only character, but also faith are born and re-born.

          The next truth from Jesus’ struggle with evil is that temptation does not usually come when we are ready for it.  It often comes when are depleted, hungry and weak as Jesus was in the wilderness.  When we are weak in body and spirit, weak in knowing who we are and what God is calling us to be and do and not do is when we can expect serious temptation and struggle.  It is also where a gateway to God is present.  Again, this process is counterintuitive, for when we are weak is also when often we feel that God is most absent from us; sometimes even that God is punishing us, rather than feeling like we are being led into a difficult, but promising process of renewal and transformation.

          But God’s ways are not our ways.  It was just after Jesus’ baptism and immediately after the voice from heaven proclaimed, “This is my Son, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased,” that Jesus was led by God’s Spirit to be tempted.  Hence, here we can learn that God is not displeased with us when we, too, are weak and tempted.  Neither does God abandon us in our times of trial, but our deepest trials are not to be avoided, but conquered.  And the miracle is that this is a gateway to God and to God’s good way for us.

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          “Where is purity, Paul?” my friend Edith anguished.  Which was her, and is our first temptation:  to try to seek a spirituality that is separate from the world and separate from the world’s evils and even our own.  But the three basic temptations of Jesus, which we shall explore in some detail this Lent, can reveal to us that:  we cannot escape from temptation, nor from the reality of evil; that we must learn to take evil seriously, to recognize temptation and call it what it is, and consciously face it and to face it down with all our strength and courage.  And trusting God that in the struggles, we will discern God and God’s goodness and purity in the only one who is pure, Christ Jesus, who conquered temptation, and promised: 

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they will be filled.”

In two weeks I’ll try to take on The Tempter, often personified as Satan or Lucifer in scripture.  In the meantime, if you can get free to be here on Wednesdays at noon

for a brown bag lunch, together we’ll explore this difficult, but useful topic then.

Now, let us sing of Jesus’ temptations and ours.

Amen.