I went back into my sermon folder and discovered that I preached the first Sunday in Lent last year as well, and low and behold I saw where I opened my sermon with some jokes about temptation. So, in order to stay within this rich vein of tradition, here are a few really bad jokes about temptation.
My wife threw a pack of turkey and a lighter in the cart and my God the temptation was strong… It was just last week that I quit smoking cold turkey
Last Sunday I found a wallet packed with money down by the church.”
Did you give it back?" "Not yet. I'm still trying to decide if it's a temptation from the devil or the answer to a prayer.”
The temptation to sing The Lion Sleeps Tonight...... is always just a whim away a whim away a whim away.
OK, I probably should not be making jokes about temptation on this first Sunday in Lent, especially when our Gospel Lesson is about the temptation of Jesus by the devil in the wilderness, but as the great Charlie Chapman once said, To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it.
For when we break it down, we discover that temptation is rooted in our pain, in our fears and desires to be liked and accepted by others. It is rooted in our lust for power, prestige, and privilege. It is rooted in out distrust of other, and the strong desire to be in control. For behind every temptation there lies the essential question, Can God really be trusted?
And temptation it is common to us all. The truth is, if you are breathing this morning, you too are vulnerable to temptation. For if Jesus was tempted by the devil in the wilderness for 40 days, you better believe we will face temptations every day.
I have a very distinct early childhood memory of being tempted in the second grade by the other boys at the lunch table one afternoon, to prove my strength by attempting to bend a lunchroom fork. Now you must understand just a little context to this story. I was the shyest momma’s boy you had ever met. I mean painfully shy. I was so introverted that it was really difficult for me to make friends.
When the opportunity arose to fit in, to be like the other boys and to do what the other boys were doing, the temptation was just too great. When it became my turn to prove my feat of strength, I bent my fork into an almost perfect circle.
The whole table was astounded and immediately I felt that deep sensation of being accepted, of being admired, of being one of the boys for the first time, and it felt so good. The only problem was, unlike the other boys and their bent forks, mine could not be bent back into shape. Everyone at the table tried to bend it back, and everyone failed, including myself.
When lunch was over and it came time to put our forks in the little fork basket that was passed around the table, all I could do was place my bent fork, which looked more like a bracelet at this point, into the basket and hope it would go undetected.
Well guess what? That didn’t work! When pressed by the teacher to confess my transgression, I was quick to break and rat out all my fork bending cohorts as well, and we were escorted to the principal’s office to receive our just punishment.
Catholic theologian and writer Christopher West said it best, Every temptation comes down to this one fundamental temptation: It is the temptation to believe that the satisfaction of the deepest desires of our hearts is totally up to us.
Behind every temptation there lies the essential question, Can God be trusted?
We can trace this pattern all the way back to the Garden of Eden where the first temptation was ever laid before our first parents, Adam and Eve. In Genesis chapter three we read, and this is from the Message paraphrase Bible,
The serpent was clever, more clever than any wild animal God had made. He spoke to the Woman: “Do I understand that God told you not to eat from any tree in the garden?” The Woman said to the serpent, “Not at all. We can eat from the trees in the garden. It’s only about the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘Don’t eat from it; don’t even touch it or you’ll die.’”
The serpent told the Woman, “You won’t die. God knows that the moment you eat from that tree, you’ll see what’s really going on. You’ll be just like God, knowing everything, ranging all the way from good to evil.”
When the Woman saw that the tree looked like good eating and realized what she would get out of it—she’d know everything!—she took and ate the fruit and then gave some to her husband, and he ate.
Immediately the two of them did “see what’s really going on”—saw themselves naked! They sewed fig leaves together as makeshift clothes for themselves. When they heard the sound of God strolling in the garden in the evening breeze, the Man and his Wife hid in the trees of the garden, hid from God.
Behind the first temptation there lay the question, Can God really be trusted?
And if we perceive that God cannot be trusted, and if it is truly up to us to fulfill our own desires, then what gives birth is bound to be sin and death. Let’s look at the aftermath of the first temptation: the knowledge of evil gave way to shame and inadequacy and the desire to cover up and hide from each other and from God.
This is what I mean by sin and death, separation from God, separation from community, from life giving relationships, and even separation from our own true nature as made in the image of God. When God walked into the garden, he called to his children who were hiding in the garden. And why were they hiding? Because God could no longer be trusted.
Did God’s loving nature toward his children suddenly change after the fall? Of course not! But temptation gave way to evil, and the knowledge of evil distorted their vision of a good and loving God. So, they hid from him, from each other, and from themselves. Cut off from relationship, cut off from life itself.
And so, God’s call to his children, Adam, Eve, where are you? went unanswered throughout the whole history of Israel, went unanswered for 400 years. That is until the birth of Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten Son, made flesh, one of us, yet true God from true God, of one being with the Father; He moved into our neighborhood.
And as we heard in the transfiguration story last week, and again at the baptism in the River Jordan that takes place just before our wilderness scene this morning, we hear that unanswered call to the human race now finally answered in Jesus Christ, this is my well beloved Son, listen to him.
And so, Jesus enters into the wilderness for us, to do what we could never do on our own, to resist the devil and defeat temptation.
The wilderness recalls the place where Israel was tested for forty years, and the forty days we see here in Luke allude also to the fast of Moses upon the mountain of Sinai.
As we say in Godly Play whenever we introduce an Old Testament story from the wilderness, the wilderness is a dangerous place. People die in the wilderness. One never goes into the wilderness alone.
It is in the wilderness we see the Son of God trusting in his Father’s promises, in his Father’s plan for his life, even while in the midst of great trials and difficulties. You see, Jesus as Son of God did not mean that he did not face great difficulty in life.
In the same way, being a Christ follower does not mean that God removes us from the difficulties of life.
Being a Christ follower does mean that God is always with us, that Jesus is Immanuel, the God who shows up when we need him most. Jesus teaches us that in the wilderness God can be trusted.
What does the wilderness mean to us today on this first Sunday in Lent?
Well, I believe our best interpretation of the wilderness is found exactly in these next forty days as we journey together through another season of Lent, a penitential season that calls us to remember that although we are dust, we do not travel alone. Jesus is Immanuel, the God who is with us.
Just as the baptism of Jesus includes us in his life, death, and resurrection, so does his victory over Satan in the wilderness. And although we might at times feel lost and bewildered in our own wilderness, Jesus has delivered us, is delivering us, and will deliver us from the knowledge of evil.
We are not cut off, we are not alone, Jesus has answered the call we could not. Adam, where are you? Israel, where are you? Thomas, where are you?
Yes! Here I am Father! answers Jesus upon the cross… I have them, I have them all and I’m bringing them home to you.
It is Jesus’ yes that allows us to say no to the devil’s temptations.
Or perhaps another way to think of it is that Jesus does the impossible, what no other boy could do that afternoon so many years ago at my lunchroom table. Jesus can bend back the fork. He can make it straight again. What I could not do myself.
Through his faithfulness in our lives, we are coming to believe this. Through his presence in his community, we are beginning to see a loving Father. We are beginning to see that the satisfaction of our heart’s deepest desires are not left solely in our own hands.
As CS Lewis says, If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
As we follow Jesus through the wilderness, through these next forty days of Lent, may we come to realize that God can be trusted; that Jesus’ yes to the Father for us allows us to say no to the temptations before us, all because, in Christ, we belong to God, and are included into his family.
As it is written in our Collect for today, may we each find again, and again, and again, that He is a mighty, mighty, mighty God to save. Amen.
Works Cited:
2. Godly Play Foundation
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