Choosing God

Sermon-1st Sunday in Lent February 21, 2010
The Cloud of Unknowing, "O God, our great companion, lead us ever more deeply into the mystery of your life and ours, that we may be faithful interpreters of Life to each other, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
As you know, we have been involved with Adopt-a-Child-Size program for 20 years. Our best guess is that we have provided complete winter outfits for anywhere from 1300-1500 children in that time. Every year Teresa Moore has had to worry and work about whether we will have enough money and resources to clothe the 600+ kids that she is given each year. A few years ago a large corporation came to Teresa and told her that they were willing to take this program on-give complete funding, pay for everything-at that time about $90,000 a year. It was an incredibly generous and wonderful offer. It took her breath away. There were just a few catches. All the religious language and touches had to be eliminated from the program. That was reasonable. This was a large multinational business and they couldn’t be seen as promoting a faith based group. It was a terrible decision for Teresa to make. $90,000 is a lot of money. Not having to struggle and beg every year to get people to turn in their money, not having to worry and lose sleep over enough clothes. It was an incredible offer, and I have nothing but good things to say about this company. But Teresa was concerned that taking Christ out of this program, might take away the power of the program. She was afraid that the project would lose it’s soul. This was an agonizing decision. This company wanted to do two minor things, little things, that would only change the program in 2 small ways: there could be no blessing of the clothes, and the company wanted to get pictures of the kids receiving the clothes. Two small things. These were so reasonable, so understandable-the company wanted the pr, Teresa and the kids needed the clothes.
Every year, on the first Sunday in Lent, we hear the story of Jesus going out into the wilderness after his baptism, to be confronted by demons. It is a powerful story. Jesus is in the wilderness 40 days, fasting, praying, being tested. Next year we’ll hear the story from Matthew, the year after that a very short version from Mark. The story in Luke and Matthew has the adversary, Satan, challenging Jesus, testing him-asking Jesus to show his power. But just for once, take Satan out of the story. For once, have Jesus debating not with an evil force-but with himself. Just this one time, think about the story as if Jesus is having an internal dialogue, a debate with himself-instead of Satan. It feels much more real, much more like us, that way.
Jesus has come up out of the waters of baptism and God said, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." Jesus had to be feeling powerful, and he goes out into the desert to understand what all this means. His first challenge, his first debate is this-what if I could feed everyone in the world? What if I could take stones and turn them into bread. What if no one would ever have to be hungry, ever again. Most of us have never been truly hungry, but this is relatively new in the history of the world. What if Jesus looked down at his hands and thought, “with God’s power, I could take away the worst pain human beings have ever faced-no more hunger, no more starvation.” What would you do? Jesus realized that with this power he could do it. And Jesus would prove to the world, that he is God’s son by this one great miracle. What an opportunity, what a prospect!
And as he sat there, thinking about the both power that he had and the chance to witness to himself-a second thing came to mind: why stop with hunger? Why not become king and ruler of every nation, every country, every tribe and peoples on earth? Why not be in charge of everyone? That would be better than bread, better than ending hunger-he could be in control of the whole world! . Do you think you could do a better job at running the world than most of the people who have the job? Of course we do. And here is Jesus, realizing that with his power, he could rule the world. What an opportunity, what a prospect.
And as he sat there thinking of this, perhaps the thought would come into Jesus’ mind, that he could do even more than that, he could do the unthinkable-he could end death. You’ve suffered pain and loss in your lives, you’ve grieved-maybe you’re in mourning even now. What if you could stop death forever-would you do it? The ultimate power, the final control. No more death, no more grief, no more loss. What is the question that we struggle with all of our lives, “why do people, especially people we love, die?” And here is Jesus, thinking to himself-I can do this. God will give me the power to end hunger, rule the nations, stop death. If you were offered this, would you do it? If you had the power, the authority, would you?
Of course we would. We hate suffering, we hate pain and hunger and injustice. We hate loss and sorrow and death. We hate them so much that if we were given the opportunity to do away with them, no matter what the cost-we would jump at the chance and never look back. Wouldn’t we? I would. It would be too tempting, too attractive, too appealing, not to.
So why didn’t Jesus do it? He has all this power, all this authority, all this ability-he is given the opening to do what we all would want. Why doesn’t he take it? God is giving him the power to do all this good-we would take it-why doesn’t he? How does he sit out there in the wilderness and say no?
Lent begins with Jesus facing these 3 great challenges-to use power for good-to save others. You know how Lent ends? Look at the last verse in today’s gospel: “When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.” Lent ends with Jesus facing an even greater challenge than these three-the chance, the power, the authority, to save himself.
Jesus says,” no, I will not do this”. I will not choose power, even to do what is right, for the wrong reasons. He had to make the same choice that Teresa Moore made a dozen years ago. It’s easy to say that it’s from the devil and therefore it’s bad. The hard choices are when they come from inside of us-when everything inside of us is screaming, “DO THIS! IT’S FOR THE BEST! IT”S THE RIGHT THING!” That’s where the rubber meets the road-not when we can see the pitchfork and pointed tail and can say, “well, that’s evil.” It’s when we can do the right thing for “sort of” wrong reasons. Jesus was tired, he was hungry, he was weak, and fragile and vulnerable. But he knew that power-even to do good, is a great temptation. Sometimes, he realized, when we are weakest and most fragile, and most vulnerable, we are most likely to give in to that voice that keeps saying, “but it is for the best”, even when we know in our heart that it isn’t.
Jesus chose God, even though it meant that he would not feed the world’s hunger for bread. Jesus chose God, even when he knew that nations would do terrible despicable awful things. Jesus chose God even knowing that that meant he was allowing suffering and pain and death. Teresa chose God, even though she knew that the project would take more blood sweat and tears.
Sometimes we just have to face the demons inside of us telling us to grab the power, advising us to take the shortcut, directing us to do what’s best for the most-even when we sacrifice our faith. We have to face these demons, especially when we are most fragile, most frail, and choose God. Jesus was in the wilderness. Much of the time, so are we. Henry David Thoreau, once wrote, “Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.”And the great 20th century poet T. S. Eliot, said this, The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.The greatest demons aren’t outside of us-but within, always coaxing, always seducing-to choose what we want, instead of God. Today we hear the story of how much it costs to choose God. Amen.