The First Sunday in Lent
February 25, 2007 Year C

There’s a bumper sticker that’s been around for quite a while now. Maybe you’ve seen it. It proudly proclaims: “I’m out spending my children’s inheritance.” Very funny, I used to think. But, as it turns out, like so much of what passes for comic relief these days, this funny little revelation speaks volumes about the times in which we live.

For I’m out spending my children’s inheritance. And so are we all. Look around. The signs are everywhere. We are mortgaging the future, building up debt our kids will never be able to repay. Social security will soon go bankrupt, but you won’t hear any politician talk about it. Because, we’re out spending our children’s inheritance. And what about the environment? Climate change? Global warming? Recently I went to carbonfootprint.com and plugged in the various and sundry ways I need to maintain my lifestyle. Well, if everyone on this planet lived the way I do, we would need seven earths to sustain us. But that doesn’t matter. I’m out spending my children’s inheritance. And then there’s our four year old war in Iraq, and looming war in Iran. God knows we need to be praying each and every day for our troops now in harm’s way. But we also need to ask ourselves how much has this war this cost us already, in American lives, in Iraqi lives, how much more are we willing to spend of our children’s inheritance to pursue failed and worse still, duplicitous policies?

Is this all too far fetched? Well let’s bring it a little closer to home. Let’s talk about the church this morning. Let’s talk about our so called Anglican Communion. It seems there was yet another big gathering of bishops in Tanzania this past week. Big pronouncements. Big theological debates. And all of it distilled down to what inquiring minds want to know. You know ever since I became an Episcopalian three decades ago, this is what has obsessed us. It was sex then. It is sex now. And in the meantime, we have drained off all our moral capital, we have squandered our spiritual integrity, we have spent down our legacy to our children, out of our sex-obsessed religiosity.

Friends, the Season of Lent invites us to a time of self-examination and repentance. This is our practice because it was the way in which our Lord Jesus conducted his own life. Things were no different then. The temptation to mortgage the future pervaded his world as well. Satan had as much of a stranglehold on his generation as Satan has on ours. And Lent is our time to go with Jesus into the desolate regions of our own hearts and our world to face the very same temptations he faced.

It was, first, for Jesus, the temptation to change stones into bread. And the temptation is essentially this: if my belly is full, if I have enough things, if I can surround myself with enough creature comforts, life is good and complete. This is, after all, the reigning ideology of our time. This is what market capitalism preaches as its Gospel. This is what has the Chinese and the Indian economies playing catch up with us. This is what drives the rampant materialism of our time. But then as now, these words of Jesus compel us to a different way: Humanity does not live by bread alone. Our spiritual hunger is far greater than our physical. We do not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. If our God is our belly, we will necessarily spend our children’s inheritance, we inevitably will forfeit our future. But if God is our God, we will choose another way, a way in which all God’s children can live in hope and peace, and with justice.

Jesus was also tempted by power. And so are we. Satan takes Jesus up and shows him all the kingdoms of the world, and tells Jesus it can all be his, if he simply bows down and worships him. No one, then or since, would have faulted Jesus for succumbing to this temptation. Indeed, the popular messianic hope of his time was that the Savior of the world would come like a conquering Caeser, with a sword of deliverance in his hand. In our time, the temptation of power consumes us all. In its pursuit, the end always justifies the means. In its pursuit, we bow down before flags, we sacrifice principles for principalities, we worship the gods of this world. Nevertheless, Jesus says to Satan, and says to us: It is written, “You shall worship the Lord your God, and the Lord God only you shall serve.” It is true that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Only in its abdication, only in sharing power equitably, only in being empowered by God in our mortal frailty can there be any hope of giving our children a future of promise. Only in relinquishing power, exemplified in the life of Jesus himself, can we truly seek the Kingdom of God.

Jesus’ last temptation was his ultimate test, and so it is for us. It was the temptation to security. If we are God’s children, the tempter whispers in our ear, then why do you suffer, why do you die, why do bad things happen to good people? Throw yourself down form the pinnacle and see, then, if God will protect you. God does not protect from our mortality, though. Jesus himself dies on a cross. And death awaits us all. There is much in this world that will give false assurance of security. Homeland Security. FEMA. Aircraft carriers and Nukes. Retirement plans and gated communities. None of it delivers, however. We are mortal, formed of the earth. Remember that we are dust, and to dust we shall return. The ultimate blasphemy, the supreme sacrilege is this temptation to security. And to this Jesus responds, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God.” And neither should any of God’s children to this temptation yield. Hope for us and for children, in the end, is not based on security. Our children’s inheritance is not held, finally, in our hands. Our children’s inheritance belongs to God, and is given to us as a sacred to protect, to nurture, and to pass on.

God has given this trust. God has bestowed upon us this blessing. It a treasure of heaven. It is not ours to squander or store up where rust and moths consume, and where thieves break in and steal. No, God has brought us in Christ into a new kingdom, a new land. “And when you come into this land that the Lord God has given you as an inheritance,” the words of Deuteronomy command us today, “ you shall take the first of the fruit you have been given and put it in a basket…and you shall set it down before the Lord God and bow down before the Lord your God.”

So that all of us, whether we are primates of the Anglican Communion, or the President and members of Congress, or Americans or Chinese or Africans, all of us, whether rich or poor, weak or strong, young or old, male or female, all of us may “celebrate with all the bounty the Lord your God has given to you and your house.” So that all of us, following the example of our Lord Jesus, may not spend, but save our children’s inheritance.