Sermon 3/10/2019 “Not by bread alone”
Preacher: Jo J. Belser
Locations: Church of the Resurrection at Immanuel Chapel, Virginia Theological Seminary
Text: Luke 4:1-13
Day: 1Lent, Year C (March 10, 2019)
Sometimes a story is so familiar we don’t really hear what’s being said. Sometimes this is all we want, the story’s comfortable familiarity. Like when children beg us, “Tell the story again,” and we do.
Today’s gospel lesson isn’t a comfortable story. Jesus’ being tempted in the wilderness by the devil stretches us beyond comfort. And no amount of retelling makes THIS story easier to accept, starting with the notion that the Holy Spirit led Jesus into temptation. No wonder Jesus later prayed to Our Father, “Lead us not into temptation!”
I was going to fluff up your comfort level by explaining the story this way: “We all fantasize about using our superpowers for our own advantage. But we must reject these impulses to squander our lives on fame, power, and wealth and instead do good works.” But then I read in the newspaper that a lot of people are giving up the use of plastic for Lent.
Lent is supposed to be for examining our spiritual life and for repairing our relationship with God, as needed. If we are giving up plastic for Lent, we are being diverted from our mission. So, I decided to leave comfort behind and suggest we interpret today’s gospel lesson in a different way, in this way:
After being bathed in divine approval at his baptism, Jesus wondered anew about who he was and what he should do with his many divine talents. He knew what his superpowers WERE, just not fully yet what they were FOR. Jesus knew God had stirred him into public action, and people were beginning to follow him, but Jesus would have used his super-functional brain and concluded that putting his superpowers to work in the public arena could have only one logical outcome: his death. And Jesus probably would have estimated the time range of his death as within five years, once people knew what he could do.
How would he use his time? How would he spend his superpowers before the Romans, the Temple leaders, or even his own people did away with him? Why not use those abilities to do spectacular works so the people would know who he was and understand that God’s Kingdom was at hand?
So, Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit—in other words, full of himself—went on a Vision Quest to sort these questions out. He needed to settle his identity and mission questions, decide who he was and how to accomplish his purpose in life.
In the wilderness, Jesus was isolated, near starvation, and very tired (because no one can sleep when near death from starvation). These are all the conditions we need to reboot our human connection with God, as we learned last week. And Jesus’ Quest worked, but maybe not in the ways we might expect. Jesus connected with a spirit all right, just not the right spirit!
This is where some people find this event fantastical. Some people—even very devout Christians—just don’t believe in “the devil” who appeared to Jesus. The devil has been so successful, he’s managed to convince us he doesn’t exist. This is a lie. The devil is evil—not a person, not logical at all, not a bit of truth in him. All guile.
The goal of evil is to undo creation. Evil thrives on untruth and chaos:
- Evil thrives on convincing good people they aren’t good enough for God.
- Evil wants us to believe there is no forgiveness.
- Evil thrives on loss of hope and in turning joy into sorrow.
We cannot perceive evil directly because evil isn’t a being, isn’t a thing. Evil lurks for opportune times to take control. We shouldn’t feel shame that there is evil lying in wait for us. Evil whispers suggestions that SOUND like good things but are designed to turn us from our mission just a little bit, just enough to divert us from using our superpowers to do what we were given life to do.
All three of Jesus’ temptations must have been things he had contemplated; they wouldn’t have been very good temptations otherwise. The first was for Jesus to turn stones into bread and eat the bread. Jesus might have done this under other circumstances. He DID do this later, when he turned a few small loaves into bread for thousands. On those future occasions Jesus did so out of compassion for those who had were hungry. And each time, the people followed Jesus to get more free food.
Jesus would have known that, would have known that being Bread Man wasn’t his mission. And so, Jesus said, “NO.” Not because feeding hungry people is wrong. But because Jesus would have become Bread-giver instead of Life-giver. If Jesus had said “Yes” that day, his mission would have subtly been turned from “life” to “death.” Why? Like manna, bread rots. Bread sustains us, but then we die. And Jesus’ mission is life.
Giving hungry people bread is a good work. But we need to always remember our primary mission is to tell people about Jesus.
Jesus told his tempter, “One does not live by bread alone.” Meaning he had more important things to give the world: himself, defeat of death, and life in this world and in the world to come.
How will you spend your Lent this year? I urge you to use it to connect or reconnect with God. And then tell others about Jesus (even while you give them bread).
