“So Tempting”
1 Lent B –
Mark 1: 9-15;
Brothers and sisters in Christ, Grace and Peace to you from our Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Driving home from the grocery store yesterday, I heard a radio ad on WMEQ. It was for a made-for-cable TV movie coming up Monday on the Lifetime Channel. The title of the film escapes me, but it was about a woman who finds herself in some kind dilemma or situation that requires a very difficult decision. The ad’s teaser line was exactly what you’d expect: “She faces the ultimate temptation, caught between what she knows and what she most desires.”
Mercifully, we don’t have cable. But if any of you happen to catch this flick, let me know what that “ultimate temptation” turns out to be. Because whatever it is, I can assure of you one thing: it is most likely not the ultimate temptation. I wonder if the woman even understands what she most desires or only thinks she does? Where temptation is present, our tendency to fool ourselves is usually close by. Satan relies on it.
I wonder if the woman really understands what she most desires or if she only thinks so? Where temptation is present, our tendency to fool ourselves is usually close by. Satan relies on it.
No, if you want the ultimate temptation, just listen to Mark, chapter 1, verses 12 and 13: “and the Spirit immediately drove him [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.”
Jesus was tempted by Satan. Perhaps continually for forty days, Satan tried not so much to capture Jesus for the dark side, but to him and, in the process, begin to move Jesus away from His Father in Heaven. To what Jesus might be moved and how completely moves there really doesn’t matter. Temptation is Satan opening the door just a crack. Will Jesus want take a peek? Will you want to?
True temptation is in the wanting, not the being made to. And like the door cracked open just a hair. C.S. Lewis remarked in the Screwtape Letters that the road to hell has a very slope and it is very interesting trip – up to a point.
We so often think of temptation is terms of stark opposites: black and white, good and evil. Of course there are such clear temptations. There is truth in the little cartoon devil on one shoulder. The cartoon angel on the other. Just ask Martin Luther. But a casual sequence of gray temptations ones will do the trick just as nicely.
Brian Stoffregen points out an important fact: This story of is the only time in the entire gospel of Mark that word temptation is used in connection with Satan. In every other use of the word the tempters are people – the Pharisees, our church leaders, friends and neighbors, family. And their temptation is the same get Jesus to move away from his true identity and relationship with God.
But somehow the picture of an angel pulling Jesus one way and Satan tugging him in another direction, doesn’t really fit the ultimate temptation. The problem for us is to hear and see what the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness says about Jesus and why it is good news for you.
We’d like to see him as a moral model; You know: “What would Jesus do?” We should face our temptations as Jesus does. So we should stay on good terms with the angels. Fast, pray, do all the spiritual disciplines – all the things we talk about during Lent. Are you beginning to see a connection here? Why this text is the gospel on the first Sunday in Advent?
But if we understand these things but still see temptation of Christ as only a moral decision against Satan, we will miss the deeper reason Jesus’ temptation is the ultimate temptation and why that is good news for us.
Consider the first words of Mark’s gospel: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God.” The story jumps immediately to the baptism of Jesus, the Spirit coming down out of heaven, and the Father’s naming his Son as His beloved. Then, Bang! That same Spirit immediately drives Jesus into the wilderness and the temptation. Also followed immediately, by the start of the proclamation of the Good News promised at the start of the gospel.
Baptism – Spirit – Temptation – Ministry – Death – Resurrection.
Epiphany – Lent – Holy Week – Easter: This is the primary rhythm of the church year. This is also the rhythm of life in Christ. His entire life, death and resurrection – not just his moral choices – become the shape for our lives, too.
The good news here is that our gospel proclaims that in this rhythm of life temptation is not something out of the ordinary, something to beat ourselves up over when we are tempted. Temptation can be seen as preparation for ministry.
But the even better news is that Jesus’ journey to the cross begins in earnest in the wilderness. It is not too much to say that the shadow of the cross falls across the wilderness. In the desert, Jesus empties himself so he can fulfill, he lets go so he remains connected to the Father. He obeys the Spirit and spends 40 days among beasts who see him only as a potential meal – and here is the really, really good news: He did all this in your place, for you, just as he dies on the cross so that you will live.
Back in our Genesis reading today, God makes a covenant, consisting of promise, to Noah and to every living thing after the Flood: Never again shall all flesh be cut off the waters of a flood. Never again shall there be a flood to destroy the Earth. This Old Testament covenant was expressed in God’s word and the sign of the rainbow, which connects heaven and earth.
Today we hear and see the unfolding of the New Covenant in the concrete act of God’s Word made flesh as he underwent forty days of temptation. And what was that concrete act: continuing to say “Yes!” to the Father. You remember the famous line from the movie Jerry Maguire, “You had me at hello.” Satan didn’t have to get Jesus to say No to the Father. Satan would have had him at “Maybe.” But he didn’t. Jesus said Yes to the Father in complete obedience and No to Satan the entire time he was there
And that gospel “Yes”, is given to you in grace through faith, for your own personal use in those moments when you are tempted to say “Maybe” or even “No.” When you take one of those tiny steps of disobedience to the command of God.
And when we fall to the temptation, as we do daily, we receive Jesus himself and him crucifed, through word and sacrament as our promise of forgiveness. That is what young Dylan is receiving today, along with the Spirit, and God’s gracious claim on him as his child. God today says, “Yes” to Dylan. And his sponsors and parents respond on Dylan’s behalf with a Yes of their own.
Rainbows, beautiful as they are, were not enough. Covenants no matter how caring and merciful were not enough. Only Jesus himself, his life, his death, his resurrection, his body and blood given and shed for you, his own Spirit – only He is enough.
In Him alone will you will face the ultimate redemption when what you believe and what you most desire are one and the same – his name is Jesus. Amen
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