On Defeating The Devil
Sermon
Sermons On The Gospel Readings
Series I, Cycle C
At every baptism in the Lutheran church an old question is asked. A question used at countless baptisms all over the world. A question that is almost as old as the church itself. Just before water is splashed in the threefold name, I look at parents and sponsors and sometimes adult candidates across the pool and ask: Do you renounce all the forces of evil, the devil, and all his empty promises?
To tell you the truth, I've been waiting for somebody to laugh at the question. Who really believes in the devil anymore? We've left him behind with the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, relegating "evil" to more manageable and explainable psychoses that can be named and catalogued within the human heart. There's nothing wrong with Hitler, Pol Pot, Timothy McVeigh, Osama bin Laden, and even the fictional Hannibal Lecter that a little pharmacological therapy can't fix, right? I remember approaching my systematic theology professor in seminary and asking, "Do I really have to say that line about the devil and all his empty promises?" I'll never forget his response. My professor smiled at me and said, "Spend twenty years in parish ministry and come back and ask me that question again."
Well, it's been fifteen years. And although I certainly don't believe in the existence of a red-suited man with a pitchfork who can be cornered, named, and thereby avoided, I have seen enough darkness, in my own life and in various other situations, to re-think my theological arrogance. Maybe this so-called "outdated" line in the baptismal liturgy is not so outdated after all. Do you renounce all the forces of evil, the devil, and all his empty promises?
Malcolm Muggeridge, the late British journalist, converted to Christianity in mid-life after years of agnosticism. "Personally," he once wrote, "I have found the Devil easier to believe in than God; for one thing, alas, I have had more to do with him."1 Do you renounce all the forces of evil, the devil, and all his empty promises?
People usually say, "I do," when I ask them this question. It's relatively simple to make a vow -- whether a marriage, confirmation, or baptismal vow. Do you promise? Do you pledge? Do you give your word? "I do." No sweat. The harder thing, as we come to discover, is living out a specific vow in a family or certain community of people. I don't care what you call "the devil and all his empty promises." But I've come to believe that the na•ve person isn't the one who believes evil is real, but rather the one who believes evil can be rationally explained away. Do you renounce all the forces of evil, the devil, and all his empty promises? If we say, "I do," then how does one live out such a vow?
Today's Gospel story offers us a few hints. Jesus sends the devil packing in this story. But how? There's a haunting line at the very end of the story. The narrator reports that "when the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time." This will be an ongoing battle for Jesus, which is a rather interesting idea if you think about it. One theologian has noted: "Being committed to the way of God in the world does not exempt one from the struggle. In fact, it is those who are most engaged in the way of God who seem to experience most intensely the opposition of evil."2 This is not a one-time shot for Jesus in the wilderness. The battle is ongoing. "He departed from Jesus until an opportune time." The narrator, with these words, seems to suggest that the battle is ongoing for us all.
Let me say here that the Bible never describes the appearance of the devil. Rembrandt made a pen and brush drawing of this scene in 1650 and the devil is graphically shown as a skeleton with a tail and bat wings.3 But nowhere is the devil described in this story. Instead, the devil comes to Jesus as a tempter. And, to tell you the truth, offers Jesus three things that look pretty good. There doesn't appear to be anything horribly wrong with the things he offers Jesus. Bread, wealth, and power. The American way, come to think of it. In other words, the devil isn't offering Jesus things that look really bad, things we normally associate with the dark side and point to as horrible social ills. Instead, the devil is offering Jesus things that look, well, quite good. In the Bible and in life, the devil is rarely obvious. That would be too easy. Avoid everything that looks patently evil and we're home free. But the devil doesn't work that way in this story. The devil offers Jesus things that look quite appealing, not things that look obviously bad. As someone once put it, the devil often dresses in drag.
But Jesus prevails. He renounces the devil and his three empty promises. And so let's return to that question of a moment ago. How? How does Jesus renounce the devil dressed in drag? There are two ways he renounces the devil, as far as I can tell. Maybe you've picked these out already.
First, Jesus encounters the devil in the strength of forty days of fasting. And I use the word "strength" in a way that has surprised me this Lenten season. "I have always thought," writes Mark Buchanan, "that the devil was coming to Jesus at his weakest moment: Jesus gaunt, raw-boned, wild-eyed, ready to scavenge any moldy crust of bread or scrape any meat shreds off a lamb's bone ... But I'm not so sure anymore. The more I learn from fasting the more I see that Jesus actually stood at his strongest when his belly was empty. Jesus is in peak condition, a fighter who has been training hard. When he steps into the ring, his opponent doesn't stand a chance."4 So that's the first way that Jesus sends the devil packing. He is spiritually strong as a result of spiritual disciplines as he heads into the encounter with the devil.
Second, watch how Jesus answers the devil's very enticing temptations. Does he toss out some magic totem? Does he rely on strong mental resistance? Does he ask God to rescue him in some impressive way? No, on all three counts. Jesus quotes scripture. Jesus is so utterly bathed in holy scripture that he is able to bring the story that is centuries old forward into his own life. These references are all from the book of Deuteronomy and the wilderness wanderings of his spiritual forebears. But Jesus recasts the words into his own wilderness encounter with the devil. The words are not magic, but they are enough to send the devil packing.
Jesus lived in a world of story. There was, of course, the dominant story of Roman rule. But there was also a minority story. And because the people who told the story were twice enslaved for long periods of time and persecuted for much of their history, special care was taken with the story's transmission. Some people wonder why Jesus' ministry didn't get underway until his thirties. My guess is that he was being shaped and formed by the stories of his religious community. It is true that at age twelve he impressed the rabbis with his knowledge of Torah in the Temple. But Jesus wasn't born in Bethlehem with the Ten Commandments on his lips. He wasn't that precocious. His ministry was formed by a story told long before he was born. He saw himself in the story, not outside of it.
So it behooves the church to recall that one of the parental promises at holy baptism is this: "As they grow in years, you should place in their hands the Holy Scriptures and provide for their instruction in the Christian faith." The stories of the Bible give us the gumption to resist a devil who usually dresses in drag. It will be difficult for us to resist such temptations on our own.
Martin Luther, in his classic hymn, "A Mighty Fortress," makes the same fantastic claim that this temptation story makes today: "One little word subdues him." Jesus would be lost without this Word, without these scriptures.
Will Willimon, chaplain at Duke University, was reflecting on a "Men's Soul-Making Weekend" offered near campus. The publicity poster described the event as "a time for men to recall their boyhoods, become animals and heroes, and honor their ancestors and elders." Willimon's reflections fit the spirit of today's temptations in the wilderness: "If I ever invite you to join me for a $200 weekend to beat drums ... and tell you how deeply significant it is for me to be a white male, act bored. Then remind me that all of that is ultimately uninteresting. Tell me again the story of the Jew from Nazareth who reached beyond race and gender to summon a new people by water and the word, and call me a Christian. My little life has significance only within his light."5 Our personal stories need a much broader scriptural story in order for us to find meaning, purpose, and the inner resources to resist evil. We need a story that was being told long before we were born and a story that will be told long after we return to ash and worm castings.
So, let me pose the question again. Do you renounce all the forces of evil, the devil, and all his empty promises?
Maybe it's a question you're still laughing at, intellectually, deep down. Maybe it's a question you didn't give a whole lot of thought to when you said, "I do," at the font back there.
But if you're beginning to suspect what is truly at stake here, then Jesus gives us some hints as to how to send evil packing. Two things, really. Spiritual disciplines and an immersion in holy scripture. That is what made Jesus strong enough to resist.
And that is what will make you strong enough in this wilderness we wander in today, where "hordes of devils fill the land, All threatening to devour us."6
____________
1. Malcolm Muggeridge, Jesus: The Man Who Lives (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), p. 51.
2. Fred Craddock, Luke (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990), p. 55.
3. Hidde Hoekstra, Rembrandt and the Bible (Weert, Netherlands: Magna Books, 1990), p. 298.
4. Mark Buchanan, "Go Fast and Live: Hunger as Spiritual Discipline" The Christian Century (February 28, 2001), p. 16.
5. William H. Willimon, "Not for Men Only" The Christian Ministry (March-April 1998), p. 39.
6. Martin Luther, "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" Lutheran Book of Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1978).
To tell you the truth, I've been waiting for somebody to laugh at the question. Who really believes in the devil anymore? We've left him behind with the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, relegating "evil" to more manageable and explainable psychoses that can be named and catalogued within the human heart. There's nothing wrong with Hitler, Pol Pot, Timothy McVeigh, Osama bin Laden, and even the fictional Hannibal Lecter that a little pharmacological therapy can't fix, right? I remember approaching my systematic theology professor in seminary and asking, "Do I really have to say that line about the devil and all his empty promises?" I'll never forget his response. My professor smiled at me and said, "Spend twenty years in parish ministry and come back and ask me that question again."
Well, it's been fifteen years. And although I certainly don't believe in the existence of a red-suited man with a pitchfork who can be cornered, named, and thereby avoided, I have seen enough darkness, in my own life and in various other situations, to re-think my theological arrogance. Maybe this so-called "outdated" line in the baptismal liturgy is not so outdated after all. Do you renounce all the forces of evil, the devil, and all his empty promises?
Malcolm Muggeridge, the late British journalist, converted to Christianity in mid-life after years of agnosticism. "Personally," he once wrote, "I have found the Devil easier to believe in than God; for one thing, alas, I have had more to do with him."1 Do you renounce all the forces of evil, the devil, and all his empty promises?
People usually say, "I do," when I ask them this question. It's relatively simple to make a vow -- whether a marriage, confirmation, or baptismal vow. Do you promise? Do you pledge? Do you give your word? "I do." No sweat. The harder thing, as we come to discover, is living out a specific vow in a family or certain community of people. I don't care what you call "the devil and all his empty promises." But I've come to believe that the na•ve person isn't the one who believes evil is real, but rather the one who believes evil can be rationally explained away. Do you renounce all the forces of evil, the devil, and all his empty promises? If we say, "I do," then how does one live out such a vow?
Today's Gospel story offers us a few hints. Jesus sends the devil packing in this story. But how? There's a haunting line at the very end of the story. The narrator reports that "when the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time." This will be an ongoing battle for Jesus, which is a rather interesting idea if you think about it. One theologian has noted: "Being committed to the way of God in the world does not exempt one from the struggle. In fact, it is those who are most engaged in the way of God who seem to experience most intensely the opposition of evil."2 This is not a one-time shot for Jesus in the wilderness. The battle is ongoing. "He departed from Jesus until an opportune time." The narrator, with these words, seems to suggest that the battle is ongoing for us all.
Let me say here that the Bible never describes the appearance of the devil. Rembrandt made a pen and brush drawing of this scene in 1650 and the devil is graphically shown as a skeleton with a tail and bat wings.3 But nowhere is the devil described in this story. Instead, the devil comes to Jesus as a tempter. And, to tell you the truth, offers Jesus three things that look pretty good. There doesn't appear to be anything horribly wrong with the things he offers Jesus. Bread, wealth, and power. The American way, come to think of it. In other words, the devil isn't offering Jesus things that look really bad, things we normally associate with the dark side and point to as horrible social ills. Instead, the devil is offering Jesus things that look, well, quite good. In the Bible and in life, the devil is rarely obvious. That would be too easy. Avoid everything that looks patently evil and we're home free. But the devil doesn't work that way in this story. The devil offers Jesus things that look quite appealing, not things that look obviously bad. As someone once put it, the devil often dresses in drag.
But Jesus prevails. He renounces the devil and his three empty promises. And so let's return to that question of a moment ago. How? How does Jesus renounce the devil dressed in drag? There are two ways he renounces the devil, as far as I can tell. Maybe you've picked these out already.
First, Jesus encounters the devil in the strength of forty days of fasting. And I use the word "strength" in a way that has surprised me this Lenten season. "I have always thought," writes Mark Buchanan, "that the devil was coming to Jesus at his weakest moment: Jesus gaunt, raw-boned, wild-eyed, ready to scavenge any moldy crust of bread or scrape any meat shreds off a lamb's bone ... But I'm not so sure anymore. The more I learn from fasting the more I see that Jesus actually stood at his strongest when his belly was empty. Jesus is in peak condition, a fighter who has been training hard. When he steps into the ring, his opponent doesn't stand a chance."4 So that's the first way that Jesus sends the devil packing. He is spiritually strong as a result of spiritual disciplines as he heads into the encounter with the devil.
Second, watch how Jesus answers the devil's very enticing temptations. Does he toss out some magic totem? Does he rely on strong mental resistance? Does he ask God to rescue him in some impressive way? No, on all three counts. Jesus quotes scripture. Jesus is so utterly bathed in holy scripture that he is able to bring the story that is centuries old forward into his own life. These references are all from the book of Deuteronomy and the wilderness wanderings of his spiritual forebears. But Jesus recasts the words into his own wilderness encounter with the devil. The words are not magic, but they are enough to send the devil packing.
Jesus lived in a world of story. There was, of course, the dominant story of Roman rule. But there was also a minority story. And because the people who told the story were twice enslaved for long periods of time and persecuted for much of their history, special care was taken with the story's transmission. Some people wonder why Jesus' ministry didn't get underway until his thirties. My guess is that he was being shaped and formed by the stories of his religious community. It is true that at age twelve he impressed the rabbis with his knowledge of Torah in the Temple. But Jesus wasn't born in Bethlehem with the Ten Commandments on his lips. He wasn't that precocious. His ministry was formed by a story told long before he was born. He saw himself in the story, not outside of it.
So it behooves the church to recall that one of the parental promises at holy baptism is this: "As they grow in years, you should place in their hands the Holy Scriptures and provide for their instruction in the Christian faith." The stories of the Bible give us the gumption to resist a devil who usually dresses in drag. It will be difficult for us to resist such temptations on our own.
Martin Luther, in his classic hymn, "A Mighty Fortress," makes the same fantastic claim that this temptation story makes today: "One little word subdues him." Jesus would be lost without this Word, without these scriptures.
Will Willimon, chaplain at Duke University, was reflecting on a "Men's Soul-Making Weekend" offered near campus. The publicity poster described the event as "a time for men to recall their boyhoods, become animals and heroes, and honor their ancestors and elders." Willimon's reflections fit the spirit of today's temptations in the wilderness: "If I ever invite you to join me for a $200 weekend to beat drums ... and tell you how deeply significant it is for me to be a white male, act bored. Then remind me that all of that is ultimately uninteresting. Tell me again the story of the Jew from Nazareth who reached beyond race and gender to summon a new people by water and the word, and call me a Christian. My little life has significance only within his light."5 Our personal stories need a much broader scriptural story in order for us to find meaning, purpose, and the inner resources to resist evil. We need a story that was being told long before we were born and a story that will be told long after we return to ash and worm castings.
So, let me pose the question again. Do you renounce all the forces of evil, the devil, and all his empty promises?
Maybe it's a question you're still laughing at, intellectually, deep down. Maybe it's a question you didn't give a whole lot of thought to when you said, "I do," at the font back there.
But if you're beginning to suspect what is truly at stake here, then Jesus gives us some hints as to how to send evil packing. Two things, really. Spiritual disciplines and an immersion in holy scripture. That is what made Jesus strong enough to resist.
And that is what will make you strong enough in this wilderness we wander in today, where "hordes of devils fill the land, All threatening to devour us."6
____________
1. Malcolm Muggeridge, Jesus: The Man Who Lives (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), p. 51.
2. Fred Craddock, Luke (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990), p. 55.
3. Hidde Hoekstra, Rembrandt and the Bible (Weert, Netherlands: Magna Books, 1990), p. 298.
4. Mark Buchanan, "Go Fast and Live: Hunger as Spiritual Discipline" The Christian Century (February 28, 2001), p. 16.
5. William H. Willimon, "Not for Men Only" The Christian Ministry (March-April 1998), p. 39.
6. Martin Luther, "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" Lutheran Book of Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1978).
