Tempted … Again

When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, he didn’t seem to agonize over what to do.  I wonder what we can learn from his encounter with these temptations …

Tempted … Again …

Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16; Luke 4: 1-13 

The devil asked Jesus the question we would like to ask him: Who are you, really? And because he was the devil, he phrased the question in a provocative way: If are the Son of God, then …” He made it sound as if everyone knew what the Son of God would think and do, and so the only question was whether Jesus would meet those expectations or not.

Would Jesus’ behavior match the truth of his inner being?

Well, Jesus was used to devilish questions, and he was not fooled by this one. He knew that what was wrong with the Devil’s question was not about him, but about what everyone thought they knew about the Son of God. Everyone knew that the Son of God would be able to perform miracles, and would be a mighty ruler, and would be able to do supernatural deeds.

But Jesus did not answer the Devil by arguing about the public understanding of the Son of God. Instead he answered the Devil’s challenges by offering an alternate view of how the Son of God would act. The Son of God would not be ruled by his own hungers; the Son of God would not worship anyone but God; the Son of God would not put God to a trivial test. That’s who the Son of God would be.

I think it is important to notice, too, that Jesus did not engage in a mighty act of self-control to resist the temptations that were put to him. His responses in the wilderness were not full of agonized effort. Instead, his responses were drawn from a rich familiarity with words of scripture – words that defined for him who he really was. His resistance to temptation didn’t come from being virtuous or strong-willed or from worry about possible negative consequences; his resistance came from a clear understanding of his own essence. Jesus answered the devil’s questions – but as he would so often do in his ministry, he answered without getting trapped by the form of the questions. The devil asked Jesus who he really was, and Jesus answered.

The temptations that come to us come in that same form: they ask us who we really are. Are we really persons who work for peace? Are we really people who value the truth? Are we really people of compassion, healing, and reconciliation? Are we who we say that we are?

We hope, of course, that the answer to all of those questions is “yes.” We hope that when we are faced with temptation, we will affirm our convictions by acting in accordance with our most cherished beliefs and values. We hope that we are people of integrity – that our outer behavior is consistent with our inner ideals. And often, that is true; there is a congruity between our inner and our outer lives.

I want to propose this morning that the congruity between our inner selves and our outer selves is theologically important as well as ethically important. The theological issue about Jesus is incarnation: the true and living presence of God embodied in human form. For Jesus to be the incarnation of God – the en-flesh-ment of the divine – his inner and outer selves had to be one. For him to be the incarnation of God, Jesus had to be clear what it mean to be himself, and then he had to behave in those ways. In my reading of the gospels, Jesus grew into that understanding and into that behavior; moreover, like all human beings, he sometimes embodied God’s self more consistently and effectively than other times.

I believe the issue of incarnation is also our issue – though in a somewhat different way. When we are faced by a temptation – by a moral or ethical dilemma – when we are faced by temptation, we are being asked whether or not we are going to regulate our behavior according to the values we purport to hold. Sometimes the question is asked in a positive and encouraging way, as parents do when we are teaching our children. Sometimes it is asked in a negative and subversive way, as though it was coming from the same devil who tempted Jesus. Either way, the question is clear: are we who say that we are?

When the answer is yes, we can act with confidence and some satisfaction. When the answer is no, we have two choices: we can change our behavior, or we can change our idea of who we are.

Much of the time we conclude that the issue is our behavior. Like St. Paul, we lament that we do not do what we mean to do, and we do do what we intended not to do. We resolve to change our behavior to match our inner standard of behavior and our inner vision of the kind of person we are supposed to be. We use words like “trying harder” and “being more consistent,” and “cleaning up our act.” We are, I am afraid, rather harsh with ourselves, and then disappointed that we are not more successful.

We might well notice that Jesus did none of those things when he was tempted by the devil. He did not try harder or attempt to be more consistent or commit himself to cleaning up his act. What he did was to challenge the idea of what he was “supposed to be,” and substitute a more authentic, faithful version of what he was “called to be.”

I think that might describe the spiritual journey, the formation of faith: moving from what you are supposed to be, believe, and do, to what you are called to be, believe and do. Temptation is perilously close to vocation, and our task is more often discerning between the two than it is simply overcoming the former.

I need to pause for a moment here to notice that we don’t use the word “temptation” very often in our everyday speech these days. When we do use it, we are more likely to be talking about chocolate than about adultery or economic exploitation. We have trivialized the word “temptation” until it refers only to the small guilty pleasures that are not of much consequence in our lives or in our world. We also sometimes talk about being “tempted” by a larger TV, a smaller cell phone, or a more luxurious home. These enticing items are not in themselves temptations, but they are often clothed in the language of temptation by those who advertise them – the promise that we will be happier, smarter, or more admired if we own them.

But the significant temptations in our lives are those that leave us wondering whether we are being tempted or called. If a young person longs for travel and adventure, is an opportunity for overseas mission work at temptation to get a free trip or a call to use that longing for the good of others? If a manager finds meaning in leading her organization to growth and prosperity, is that a temptation to feed her own ego or a call to use her skill for the benefit of those she works for? If a man chooses to leave the academic world and turn to farming, has he succumbed to the temptation to squander his intellectual gifts or heeded the call to return to a more grounded way of living?

Those are not questions of moral strength or resolve; those are questions of spiritual discernment. Answering them requires investing our prayers, our spirits, and our minds in careful discernment – discernment that is genuinely open to any answer that we may find. But we are not entirely on our own in that discernment. We have the wisdom of our religious tradition, the attention of our faith community, and the companionship of the Holy Spirit as we sort out the complicated landscape of our own motivations, rationalizations and vocations.

All of this is to say that when we face a temptation, the way out of our personal and ethical dilemma may not be to change our behavior; it may be to chance the convictions upon which we stand. That is why I believe so deeply in the importance of ongoing faith formation for people of all ages. The questions that tempt us, challenge us, and potentially call us do not abate as we move through life. On the contrary, new questions arise at every turn; the process of discernment is not something that we use once or twice in life in times of crisis. The process of discernment is something that we use every day to have lives of integrity, meaning, and wholeness.

So the devil asked Jesus the question we want to ask him: Who are you, really? But Jesus asks us the question we must ask ourselves: Who are we, really? Are we those who are captive to temptation, or those who are liberated by vocation?

Amen.

Prayer for February 28, 2010

Almighty and everlasting God, creator of all things seen and unseen, hear now our silent prayers, as we open our hearts to you in the sacred quietness.

God of faith and hope, we bring before you our prayers for those we have named this morning – we especially remember … Bring to each of them the gifts of mercy and grace that are most needed, according to your wisdom and love.

God of every season, we come to you this morning with our winter prayers.

We pray first for our neighbors for whom the winter weather is a hardship and a threat, rather than just an inconvenience. We particularly remember those who have no homes, and those whose dwellings are neither warm nor safe. Let the hard winter weather remind us of your call to provide shelter for one another.

We also pray for those who need shelter of other kinds – those who suffer from mental illness or love someone who does; those who suffer from addictions or alcoholism, or love someone who does; those who are lost in anger, despair, or sadness, or who love someone who is. Bring to all of these, we pray, the comfort of your presence and your holy protection during times of healing and reconciliation. Help the rest of us gather in a community that offers hope and strength in times of discouragement, and that promotes healthy ways of living together and meeting life’s challenges.

We remember this morning that you are as close to us during the dark and windy days as you are during the bright and calm ones. Open our spirits to recognizing you as we move through our everyday lives; show yourself to us even when we are preoccupied or distracted.

And help us, we pray, to notice the cold and wintry parts of our own lives – the times we fail to offer hospitality to the stranger, the times we hoard our treasures instead of sharing them, the times we stay safely by the hearth instead of pushing out into the world. Where we are frozen in indecision, paralyzed in uncertainty, and stuck in our old habits, blow the fire of your Holy Spirit on us, to thaw out our reluctance and warm up our resolve.

Oh Holy One, we know in our minds that winter is a blessing for the earth; help us to see that it is a blessing for us, too.

We ask all this in the name of the one who brings light even in the season of darkness, even Jesus the Christ, and we pray together in the words that he taught us …