Luke 4:1-13
1 Lent / Year C
25 February 2007
The Church of the Good Shepherd
Wareham, Massachusetts
Preached by the Rev. David Fredrickson
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. Luke 4:1-2
One of the things that I have noticed during the past seven years of my ordained life is that attendance in church often goes down during the season of Lent. One day I decided to ask my spiritual director about this. I said, “Rick, does attendance drop in the Roman Church during the season of Lent?” My spiritual director is a Roman priest in Diocese of Rhode Island. His answer to me was not what I wanted to hear, he said, “No, in fact it usually goes up a bit during Lent.” That conversation started me wondering, what is it about Lent in the Episcopal Churches that I have served that repels people, is it the liturgy, is there too much emphasis on penitence and not enough on forgiveness and grace? Is it the Lenten music from the hymnal that keeps people away? Does it have something to do with me, about how I conduct worship or preach during the season, is that it? As I am sure you can understand, an obsession with these kinds of questions will drive a person mad, so I decided to drop it and hope for the best. Then I went on retreat a couple of weeks ago and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Yes, that’s it. [Pause]
We Episcopalians don’t give much space to our imperfections, I know that I don’t. Most of us show a profound lack of generosity toward ourselves and unfortunately all this gets magnified during the season of Lent. We begin our worship during this season with the penitential order, with the reciting of the law and the confession. This morning we even heard the exhortation which 100 years ago was recited before every service of Holy Eucharist. During this season we will hear difficult and challenging passages from the Holy Scripture and sermons based on these passages and we will hear and sing music that is at its core, penitential. As I said on Ash Wednesday, it takes courage to come to church during the Lenten season. Yes, I understand why people stay away. So I think we need to renew our understanding of the Lenten journey by taking another look at the context for this morning’s gospel lesson.
The lectionary does us all a huge disservice by separating the story of Jesus baptism and the story of Jesus’ forty-day journey into the wilderness of temptation. These two stories really need to be understood as one. The baptism story is always read on the first Sunday in Epiphany on the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord. We then have to wait for six, seven, eight, even nine weeks sometimes to hear the rest of the story, the wilderness journey. Jesus was baptized and then immediately, as Mark puts it in his gospel, he was sent out into the wilderness to fast and be tempted by the devil.
Why should these two stories be so closely linked? Let’s talk about that for a minute and in so doing, go back to the story of Jesus baptism. Luke tells us in his gospel that “when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Now I want you to notice something. Notice that Jesus is not asked to do anything here, he in no way needs to earn God’s love. All he is asked to do is to accept it; accept that he is deeply loved. I rejoice in you, God says, you are mine and you are deeply loved. That’s it. But immediately after hearing God’s voice, Jesus is lead into the wilderness. Notice, he is lead into the wilderness. I am sure that he would have rather sat there beside the Jordan River reveling in the moment, in the beloved ness he was experiencing, clutching onto it, and possessing it. But God did not permit that. You see, Jesus had to appropriate his beloved ness on a completely different level. He had to see it in terms of his vocation. In other words, he had to do something with it. And so he was asked to put it to the test.
We tend to think of temptation as a negative thing, but it is not a negative thing. The temptations that Jesus endured brought him to a deeper self-awareness of grace and truth. And so it is with us. Being the beloved of God is not something that is reserved for Jesus alone, we are all beloved of God and we are all asked to accept that whether we think we deserve it or not. (Repeat) I rejoice in you, God says, you are mine and you are deeply loved. There is absolutely nothing that you and I need or can do to earn that love. Did you hear, that? It doesn’t matter how good or how rotten we think we are, neither you nor I can escape the deep and profound love God has for each of us.
Having said this, it is important to recognize that the Holy Spirit then leads us through the seasons of our lives. There are good times and bad, and there is temptation all along the way. Unlike Jesus we give in on occasion, sometimes with some pretty harsh ramifications. But that doesn’t change the big picture, even at our lowest God says, you are mine and you are deeply loved. God sees us in a more positive light then we often see ourselves. Where in our sight we cannot stand, in God’s sight, we cannot fall. And so we need to treat temptation, not as the enemy, but as a close companion. Temptation is a great teacher, it teaches self-knowledge which can open us out to the world, to others around us. Yet it cannot be separated from the divine love which is always there. When we forget God’s deep love for us, we quickly move from self-knowledge into self-scrutiny and self-scrutiny pulls us into ourselves
Karl Menninger, the great 20th century psychiatrist, said that from his perspective, mental illness is caused in large part from the inability of people to forgive themselves for not being perfect. We Episcopalians don’t give much space to our imperfections. In fact, I don’t think that most people do, Episcopalian or not. But we can’t ignore them or run away from them, they are part of our wilderness experience, they are part of who we are. And through it all, God is there; “I rejoice in you, God says, you are mine and you are deeply loved.”
I want to conclude this morning with a poem written by the 17th century Anglican priest, writer and poet George Herbert who feast day we will celebrate this Tuesday the 27th. This poem is entitled Love (III) and my hope is that it pulls this all together.
Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack’d anything.
“A guest” I answered, “worthy to be here;”
Love said, “You shall be he.”
I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.”
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
“Who made the eyes but I?”
“Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.”
“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?”
“My dear, then I will serve.”
“You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat.”
So I did sit and eat.
In Jesus Name; Amen.
