TheFirst Sunday in Lent
February 10. 2008
~The Rev. Steve Smith

Do you remember when we were back in school, and the teacher would spring a pop quiz on us? Man, I used to hate that! Invariably, I was never prepared, and I had to improvise answers to the questions that I knew were way off the mark. I remember one teacher in particular, a Miss Fogg in eighth grade, who took great delight in serving up pop quizzes. Her absolute assumption was if you were in her class, you better be prepared at any time, in any place, in any state of mind, for her tests. If you weren’t, then God help you!

So here’s a little pop quiz for you this morning. What brings you here today? And by here, I mean, to this place of worship, this house of God, this sanctuary of faith. And what is it that you believe, exactly? How are you working out your own faith in fear and trembling?

Let me play the devil’s advocate for a moment, for this is essentially what is happening in our story from the Gospel of Matthew this morning. Here is Jesus, still wet behind the ears from his baptism, led into the desert, for a pop quiz from Lucifer, the great Tempter himself. Everything Jesus has been up until this point in his life, all thirty years of his existence, has prepared him for this moment. In this single moment, every ounce of his integrity, every jot and tittle of his character, every last shred of his reputation is on the line. The Tempter knows this. Satan knows this about Jesus. And he knows us intimately enough to test us in the very same way at the opportune time.

For Satan knows how hungry we become. And that our hunger will cause us to do anything to satiate it. We will sell our birthright. We will hoard and steal, we will beg and kill. We will even turn to God, and plead that God turn stones into bread. We come into this world hungry. In the words of chanteuse KD Lang, our constant craving has always been. We crave what we do not have, and once we fill our lives up, with things, with other people, with booze, with drugs, with knowledge, with whatever, once our lives our filled, we only crave more. Yes, Satan knows this intimate detail about our lives, better than we know this about ourselves.

He comes to Jesus and says, “Command these stones to become loaves of bread.” He comes to us and says, “Go out and shop till you drop, consume, hoard, amass, build bigger barns to accommodate all the things you possess, fill up your gas pumps. Eat, drink, be merry. You are the master of your own destiny.You do not need to worry about the future. The future will worry about itself.”

And is this not what we believe? That we live by bread alone? How else, then, do we explain our deathgrip on our unsustainable lifestyle ? How else can we rationalize our self-indulgent ways?

Pop-quiz. Are we ready and willing to renounce with Jesus our attachment to the things of this world, and claim our utter dependence on our Creator God?

But Satan is undeterred. He knows how fear tears our hearts asunder. He knows our deep longing for security. And because he knows this, he has become the master of our affections, particularly in the times we now live. Think about what you and I do for the sake of security. Our scheming. Our insurance policies. Our retirement plans. Our vast military preparedness. Think about how it animates our politics, our best intentions, our hopes and dreams. All for the sake of security.

Satan takes Jesus up to the pinnacle of the temple and says, “Throw yourself down, for your angels will come and break your fall.” And he comes to us and says, “You really can get through this life without pain and suffering, without death. All you have to do is wish it all away, all you have to do is pray a little harder, spend a little more, plan a little better, protect yourself behind gates and fortresses. All you have to do is sacrifice your mortality.”

Yet, isn’t this what we really want? Security from terror. Security from suffering. Think about it. We have spent nearly1 trillion dollars already this century to “secure” our world and our borders.

Pop-quiz. How secure do you feel this morning? Are we willing to put God to the test? Or at long last, are we ready to claim as our creed the words of that great hymn: O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home?

Satan finally goes for the jugular. For he knows our lust for power. After all, it was this that got him thrown from heaven in the first place. He knows our egos, how they need to be stroked, and how much attention they demand. He knows how easily they inflate, and how easily they get slighted. He knows how dazzled we become with ourselves and the prestige we can garner in this life. Follow the trajectory of human history, and it all heads in the direction of becoming bigger and better.

So when he takes Jesus upon a high mountain and shows him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor, Satan does so because in every age and place, he has held the allegiance of those willing to bow down to him.

And this is the final crucible for each of us. For while this world seeks to inculcate in us a love of power, Jesus leads us in the way of humility.

Humility is the path Jesus chooses in this life. In the end, although divinity is in his grasp, Jesus chooses to be human, and nothing more. He teaches us that humility is the condition by which we receive the mystery of God and by which we find our true selves.

Pop-quiz Can we dare to be human, in all its wonder and terror? Can we worship God alone, and serve only God?

These are the hard questions of Lent. But at the heart of our incarnational faith, there is one inescapable truth: God’s divinity is known in Jesus’ humanity. And in Jesus, and through Jesus, our humanity is the path to knowing God.

No one better understood this in recent years than theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was martyred by the Nazis just weeks before the Allies liberated Germany. In his prison cell, he wrote many letters and among them he left us these words: “I’m still discovering up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness, I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures. In doing do, we throw ourselves into the arms of God, taking seriously not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith.”

Pop quiz: Is this the faith we that we, too, are willing to live?