THE DEVIL COMES CALLING
A Sermon Preached by
Rev. Dr. Randle R. (Rick) Mixon
First Baptist Church, Palo Alto, CA
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Text: Matthew 4:1-11
Recently we have considered how Jesus came up out of the baptismal waters to God’s great words of affirmation and the Spirit’s blessed presence upon him – “…he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:16b-17.) In today’s text, without a further word, we find Jesus in the wilderness, embarked on a kind of vision quest to understand what has just happened to him and how he will live out this calling.
As I said a couple of weeks ago, I am intrigued that Jesus comes to these events relatively late in life. In a society in which men were often dead by 36 or 37, he was not the young man of artistic rendering but, at 30, a mature man, like some of us. Where had he been all these years? What had he been doing? These are mysteries into which we have little or no insight. We can speculate that he had spent all the preceding years living toward these moments, listening for God’s voice to call him to this time and place. He may have spent all these years in preparation, and yet he was not done. For immediately after his baptism and God’s powerful affirmation, he is in the wilderness.
I take this to mean that it is no easy thing to discern God’s will for one’s life or to see clearly the way God would have one walk. Throughout the accounts of his ministry, we find Jesus going, or attempting to go, away from the crowds to be alone in prayer. To walk God’s way on this earth requires faithful and challenging preparation, an openness to searching for God’s guidance, a willingness to wander in trust, obedience and hope, and a desire to be centered always in God’s presence. It shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who has had the proverbial “mountain top experience” to remember how you were almost immediately faced with some of the greatest challenges of your life – experiences that should not happen to one who had just been so elevated, difficult questions about the nature and meaning of life in light of your new-found understanding, people attempting to devalue and knock the props from under your special experience, a sneaking suspicion that the great moment might mean something different for you than you first thought.
This is something like what happened to Jesus in those first days after his baptism signified his acceptance of God’s will and way for his life. The ongoing vision quest, the desire to understand completely God’s call, the longing to live ever more fully into God’s mission for his life – this was Jesus’ Spirit-led wandering into the wilderness. How many of us have or would be willing to consider such a solitary journey, such an intensely focused quest for God and God’s will and way for us? I confess that I find the idea intriguing – and scary. Yes, I have had my own spiritual journeys into a variety of wild and lonely places, but to let the Spirit lead on a long, sustained and intentional journey like the one Jesus’ undertook is frankly frightening. I have always had great admiration for my friend, Mark Liebenow, who for many years spent a week each October alone, wandering Yosemite. Those treks always filled me with awe and wonder and a little fear. Some parts of me would say, “Let’s go try it” and others say, “Well, but…” I do know that Mark had some wonderful and truly God-graced moments on those wilderness journeys because he has written beautifully about them.
I say all this because I think we should be clear that Jesus did not go to the desert in order to get attacked by the devil. This was not some ambush pre-ordained by God. Rather Jesus placed himself in a very vulnerable position in relation to his growing into God’s call, desiring God’s will, seeking God’s guidance. Here it was that the devil came calling. You are free to decide for yourselves whether some other worldly figure came to Jesus in reality, whether these visions came from a kind of delirium brought on by fasting, or whether they are symbolic expressions of the very real struggle Jesus went through in trying to understand and accept what it meant for him to be the Son of God. The writer says he wandered around a very real and treacherous wilderness alone and fasting for forty days and forty nights, which, at the very least, we know meant a long time.
The devil appears and begins with a phrase that I see as a fourth temptation – actually, I would rather call it them tests, as we have come to associate temptation to being seduced into doing something naughty or engaging in evil. These tests, which Jesus faced, are not unlike tests of responsibility you and I face every day as we seek to walk God’s way. These were his tests, real for him as ours are real for us. We are not likely be confronted with the same, exact tests, especially, this first, fundamental test for Jesus, which underlies all the rest. The smooth-talking one begins, “If you are the Son of God…” Don’t you imagine that is part of what Jesus has been turning in his mind, over and over in his wilderness wandering. “What does it mean for me, a carpenter from Nazareth, a day laborer from Galilee, a mature man, facing the down slope of life, to be the Son of God?” Now I don’t necessarily mean to imply that Jesus had never considered this question before, or that he had no messianic consciousness prior, but I do believe that Matthew’s gospel, in particular, shows Jesus, throughout his ministry, growing into this identity. It seems to me to underscore our common humanity to see Jesus’ understanding of what it meant to be God’s Son, God’s chosen one, God’s Messiah, unfold and evolve over time. So, it is first and foremost a real test for him to identify as the Son of God.
Not only was he struggling with questions of identity and mission, very practically, he was also famished. In spite of our country’s epidemic of overeating and obesity, we might yet be able to draw up a memory or two of what it means to be hungry. In this case, we have to imagine that Jesus was seriously hungry and so the test is personally real for him. Some scholars also associate the stones-to-bread test as relating to his mission to feed the hungry. Presumably he does have the power to turn stones to bread. So, the test is whether or not he will use his power selfishly, to his own advantage, both in alleviating his personal hunger in the moment and in buying the allegiance of followers with the magical creation of bread from stones. Later, he does engage in the miraculous feeding of large crowds, but this comes only after he has centered himself and committed himself to the belief that “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Part of what may be learned here is that God does speak powerful words for economic justice, for the poor and hungry, homeless and imprisoned, and it is our responsibility to ensure that those words become a reality. That is part of what it means for Jesus to be the Son of God and for us to be followers of Jesus and children of God. Such just practices must flow straight from the heart of God. God cannot be circumvented in any quest to feed the hungry because it is true that we need more than bread to find real and abundant life.
Well, the tempter is foiled in round one and so he escalates his challenge. He takes Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple, into the very heart of Jesus’ religious tradition. “So, bread alone is not enough to seduce you. Well, then, if you are the Son of God [the basic test, again] stir up the crowd by plummeting right off this tower into their midst. We know the Bible says God will send angels to keep you from even stubbing your toe.” This would certainly be a means of attracting attention and finding followers, and the promise of protection is indeed there. This is the Herod of Jesus Christ Superstar urging Jesus to “prove to me that your no fool, walk across my swimming pool.” “Wait, you’re asking me to put God to the test, to engage in some stunt just to prove God at her word. No, I won’t be part of such a display. Besides, followers gained this way would always be on the look out for the next spectacular trick. They’ll want some bigger and better display day by day. You and I know this is not God’s way. Yes, I could pull it off, but would anyone really see God as a result? I don’t think so.”
By the third test, the devil seems to have lost patience and dropped his mask of seduction. As he watches Jesus enter more fully and firmly into his role as Son of God, he makes a last desperate grab for power and control. “The power! The glory! I can give you the splendor and might of all the kingdoms of the world. All you have to do is bow down and worship me. All you have to do is acknowledge that power and glory, splendor and might is what it’s all about and I’ll set you up to rule over it all.” This time he really has gone too far. For the Son of God has come to see and understand that, wherever his journey may take him, his primary relationship is with God. “Away, with you Satan…my truth is this… ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.’”
In the words of a group of writers on Living the Christ Life, we, as Jesus once did “… turn to face our own vulnerability. We come to healing and wholeness by allowing our former self to come apart…We have to let go of many kinds of illusions which hold our false sense of security together. We have to let go of ‘false’ attachments – anything we attach our souls to instead of to God. We have to open to what’s real and face the shadows.” This is what Jesus learns and models in his time of testing, to let go of false attachments and attach himself to God. We are invited to do the same.
The writers go on, “Like the prophets of old, we go through our ‘dark night’ [our own time of testing] to become the whole persons God intends. Risking coming apart, we come together anew in ‘at-one-ment.’ To be whole is to be at peace with God. Atonement is the peace of God, a peace the world without God cannot give. Atonement frees us for justice and kindness” (Louise Mangan, Nancy Wyse, and Lori Farr, Living the Christ Life, quoted in Seasons of the Spirit Congregational Life, Lent, Easter 2008, p. 37.)
In the end, the devil’s boldest test and baldest grab for power got Jesus’ strongest response. Whatever lay ahead for Jesus, and I would venture to say whatever lies ahead for us, individually and collectively, is of less importance than a basic understanding of what it means to be children of God. The baptismal vow is to worship and serve God. Whatever else one does, wherever the journey may lead, whatever tests we face, worshipping and serving God will see us through. Because Jesus walked this way, we, too, may walk in confidence that he will walk with us…all the way. Amen.