What Is Lent Like For You?

Sermon-1 Lent-March 13, 2011
Matthew 4:1-11
4Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. 3The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” 5Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” 7Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” 8Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; 9and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” 10Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” 11Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

“Lord Jesu! Teach thou me, that I may teach them: Sanctify and enable all my powers; that in their full strength they may deliver thy message reverently , readily, faithfully, and fruitfully. Oh, make thy word a swift word, passing from the ear to the heart, from the heart to the life and conversation: that as the rain returns not empty, so neither may thy word, but accomplish that for which it is given. Oh Lord, hear, Oh Lord, forgive! Oh Lord, hearken, and do so for thy blessed Son’s sake, in whose sweet name we pray. — George Herbert, 1593-1633
Each Sunday in lent I will use a different prayer to begin my sermon. This one was the prayer George Herbert, a Welsh born English poet, orator and Anglican priest. began his sermons with in the 1600s.
by Kate Huey
In "Lenten Discipline," her sermon on Luke's version of the temptation of Jesus in the desert, Barbara Brown Taylor gives a wonderful description of how Lent came to be (after all, it's not in the Bible). Many years after Jesus had not returned as quickly as expected, church folks "decided there was no contradiction between being comfortable and being Christian. And before long it was hard to pick them (Christians) out from among the population at large. They no longer distinguished themselves by their bold love for one another. They did not get arrested for championing the poor. They blended in. They avoided extremes. They decided to be nice instead of holy and God moaned out loud" (Home by Another Way).
and so we began the season of Lent.
We hear today’s story every year on the first Sunday in Lent. Jesus has just been baptized. He hears God tell him that he is “God’s son, the beloved”. And in the next scene Jesus goes and fasts 40 days in the wilderness. And then the tempter comes to him and makes 3 “offers”.. The temptations are in a different order that they are in Luke.
What is Lent like for you? Is it usually a time of failure or success? Do you get stronger or weaker in Lent? Does your faith grow or lessen? This is a season of preparation, a season of “training” if you will. So, do you usually get better or worse in Lent? Is this season of Lent, “working” for you?
For years every Lent I gave up smoking. Never made it. Couldn’t stop. Maybe a day, sometimes two. Couldn’t do it. Prayed, struggled, did everything. Couldn’t do it. Arrived at Easter every year for years feeling weak and rotten about myself. People would come up to me and say, “well, don’t worry about it, you’re only human.” After several years I started hating that phrase, “you’re only human.” It reminded me of failure, weakness, disappointment. No one ever says, “you’re only human” when you succeed, when you accomplish something, when you succeed-only when you fail. And usually fail badly. It’s used especially when we give in, or fall short in temptation. Listen for the next time somebody around you says , “well, you’re only human.”
I learned a lot every year in lent by failing. I knew a lot about temptation. Here is one thing I learned -a lot of times it’s about taking shortcuts. It’s about trying to get to the finish line too quickly. 1)The first temptation for Jesus is to feed himself after fasting for 40 days. Katerina Whitley writes, “It is significant that this particular temptation comes when Jesus is famished and physically at his weakest. ….What makes it temptation is the shortcut to the miraculous: “Use your powers as the Son of God to change these stones into bread.” “Take the quick way, you must be famished” the tempter says. Isn’t this what we hear every time we want something, really really want something? “who does it hurt? It’s a victimless crime?” Take the shortcut. Jesus does eventually turn bread into more bread-but not for himself, not for his own hunger. Not to show off, or to convince, never to prove who he is, or how much God loves him,-only when there was human need. Shortcuts. The first temptation.
No. 2-The easy fix. Listen again to Katerina Whitley: The answer that Jesus gives, He who could have thrown himself from the pinnacle and survived, is that even when we ask for things using the words of scripture, putting God to the test is yielding to the temptation of the easy fix without considering the consequences.
How many ways do you think there are to help people lose weight? To get stronger? TO STOP SMOKING? How many times do you bargain with God, make deals, ask God to help-just this once? We asked Rae Thom once to come over and teach the youth group some basic maintenance skills before we went to repair homes in Appalachia. He told the group, “okay, you can do things the right way, or the slow way-because if you get hurt, have to do it over, or don’t do it right, it will take a lot longer.” 5Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” 7Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
The third temptation, now you’re on top-you’ve done well, you’ve fought the devil and won. The third temptation, for me, has always been when I was successful. I can’t count the number of times I stopped smoking, for awhile, and thought to myself, “well, I can handle it now-one won’t bother me, I am in control.” You know when I am at my weakest? When I have just had a success. The tempter takes Jesus to the top of “a very high mountain” (remember last week I told you that Matthew always has Jesus’ holiest moments on mountaintops?). Satan shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and asks if Jesus wants them. Power. Money. Control. How can you say no to this? What do we say, “I can handle it”, what do we say, “I can do a lot of good with this”, what do we say, “if things don’t go well I can always get out, I’m strong enough to quit.”
Do you know how you are with temptation? Do you know how you are with shortcuts? with easy fixes? with success? I know how I am-and it’s not always pretty. I struggle. But after all, I’m only human, right?
David Lose, a preacher I like a lot, points this out about the first reading about Adam and Eve: “Might it be that a part of being human is being aware that we are insufficient, that we are not complete in and of ourselves, that lack is a permanent part of our condition? To be human, in other words, is to be aware that we carry inside ourselves a hole, an emptiness that we will always be restless to fill. Adam and Eve behold the fruit and conclude in a heartbeat that their hole is shaped just like that fruit. Yet after they eat, the emptiness remains. Today we might imagine that hole to be shaped just like a new car, or computer, or better house, or the perfect spouse. But after laboring and sacrificing and obtaining these things, the emptiness remains. Blaise Pascal once described this essential condition of humanity as having a "God-shaped hole," and this is what Jesus demonstrates. There is no filling of that gap, no permanent erasing that hole, except in and through our relationship with God. Yet that, also, isn't quite the full picture. To be Christian is not to have that hole, that need, that awareness of finitude erased once and for all. Rather, to be human is to accept that we are, finally, created for relationship with God and with each other. Perhaps the goal of the life of faith isn't to escape limitation[s] but to discover God amid[st] our needs.”
Every time the tempter speaks to Jesus, he offers Jesus something that isn’t bad-food, faith, power. But the offer is always about Jesus giving up a part of himself to get those things. In other words, he has to become weaker to have what is offered. Do the right thing-for the wrong reason. I have told you before what that old Bishop of mine I used to say, “it’s funny how the Holy Spirit always called me to a better paying church.”
It’s Lent, the season the church created because we are “only human”- we get comfortable, we take shortcuts, we rationalize what we do, and we believe we are in control of our lives and so much stronger than we truly are. Lent isn’t supposed to be a season of failure-or victory. It’s supposed to be 40 days of being honest with ourselves. About seeing the God shaped hole in our lives. To see, clearly, how we are made for God. It is not easy. There are lots of temptations, shortcuts, lies we tell ourselves, false victories, and easy ways out.
This Lent, try to be a little more honest with yourself, a little more sincere, a little more truthful. Try to fill the God shaped hole in yourselves with God this year. That would be a great way to be “only human”. Amen.