Jesus Tempted in Us
Sermon
To The Cross and Beyond
Cycle A Gospel Sermons for Lent and Easter
Object:
It's good to be here with you. Ten days ago my wife and I were visiting our daughter and son-in-law in central Mexico. In Mexico City they took us to the National Palace in which hangs a painting of Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla. I'm intrigued by this painting. Hidalgo was leader in the Mexican war for independence from Spain; but, by the time people wanted a portrait of him, he was dead. Half a century later Joaquin Ramirez painted a picture of him but used his own brother's face.
The face of one's brother as the leader for independence is a good way to consider Jesus. Jesus has the face of our true brother (or "sister" if you want to think of him that way -- that wouldn't bother Jesus). Not that Jesus is "just like one of us." That's not how it works. Our Christian faith has a long history of making Jesus into the person we are, just like us -- Democrat if we're Democrats, Republican if we're Republicans, capitalist if we're capitalists, communist if we're communists. That's not the way Jesus has our true brother's face. We can try herding Jesus into the small corral of our little ideas; yet Jesus keeps showing up, instead, as our true brother, trying to free us to live for God. Jesus isn't always what we expect or what we want, but Jesus our true brother brings God to us and us to God. We see in this morning's text how Jesus is our true brother when he's tempted.
We usually think of temptations as Satan trying to get us to do what's wrong. I always remember the pastor and his wife in the 1930s. They lived on almost nothing. One day the pastor comes home and here's his wife in this gorgeous dress. "Where'd you get that dress?"
"Bought it today," she says sheepishly.
"How much did it cost?"
"Ten dollars."
"Ten dollars!" the pastor smacks his head with his hand. "We don't have that kind of money."
The wife looks down and says quietly, "I know, but the devil made me to do it."
"When that happens," the pastor shouts, "you're supposed to say, 'Get behind me, Satan.' "
"I did," she says. "And he said, 'Looks good from back here too.' "
That's not quite the same as Jesus' temptations. The devil isn't struggling every time to get Jesus to do what's completely wrong so much as to do some things for the wrong reason. It's a struggle! The word "temptation" in the New Testament also means a trial or a struggle. Matthew chapter 4 records a lot of spiritual struggle going on in this deserted spot of Palestine. Because Jesus is our brother, he's out in the wilderness struggling against Satan on our behalf. Jesus didn't just die for us. He was born for us, was baptized for us, and was tempted for us. Jesus is the person who lived for God and others. He's doing this for us.
These stories of Jesus'struggle with Satan aren't recorded so we'll admire Jesus, but so Jesus'Spirit may become active in our lives now and so the pattern of Jesus'life becomes the pattern in ours. "Because he himself was tested by what he suffered," the book of Hebrews says, "he is able to help those who are being tested" (Hebrews 2:18). Because the risen Jesus lives in us, every temptation we endure is a temptation of Jesus in us. Jesus' defeating the devil early in his public ministry becomes a present reality when scripture is read and preached, when we listen to his Spirit in our heart, and also when we listen to the testimony of Christian history.
Consider some Christians who've been tempted with Jesus. Jesus' first struggle was to meet his immediate needs instead of trusting God: "You hungry?" Satan said. "Just turn these stones into bread." Albert Schweitzer earned doctorates in theology, philosophy, and music. He was renowned in each discipline. He was on the road to further achievement and greater acclaim. But he read the gospels about our true brother Jesus. He returned to college for six years to become a medical doctor. Then Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor Schweitzer went to the unhealthiest climate in the world to care for the neediest of the earth's people.
Friends thought he was crazy. The established church wouldn't honor his ministry because of his unorthodox views. But the Paris Mission Society ceded a site for his hospital on the Ogowe1River in what was French Equatorial Africa (now Gabon). There in the African jungle he worked out his belief in "the reverence for life." He built, equipped, and maintained the hospital with royalties from his books and proceeds of organ recitals and lectures on visits to Europe. His life commitment was to sacrifice his own needs, even his higher needs for art, by obeying Jesus Christ. Albert Schweitzer received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1952, which he used to build a leprosarium.
Our Lord Jesus helped him to live not for his own needs but to live for God alone and learn reverence for life beyond himself. In Albert Schweitzer Jesus conquered Satan's first temptation again.
Jesus' second temptation was to perform a spectacular miracle to save himself and to tempt God to come to his beck and call. "Come on, Jesus, leap off this pinnacle. God'll catch you and you'll amaze the crowds." Jesus was challenged to tell God exactly what to do, and if God didn't come through, obviously God wasn't very powerful. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in Germany 31 years after Schweitzer. He decided early in life to be a theologian, and so he did, although he was by his own description overly critical, self-righteous, and unloving.
The rise of the Nazis matured him as a Christian. He saw clearly from the beginning that Nazism (any "-ism," "Americanism" included) is an idol. The day after Hitler finally stole what the German electorate would not give him, Bonhoeffer's sermon on the radio was cut off. He fled to the United States for a year, studying at Union Theological Seminary in New York. But he was compelled to return to Germany to oppose Hitler's attempt to rule even the church.
In 1933, again to escape the Nazis, Bonhoeffer went to London to minister to a German congregation. But once more he returned to Germany to help in the struggle against Hitler. He ran an illegal seminary for two years before it was closed by the Gestapo, and again he fled to the United States. But his conscience forced him to return to Germany to continue struggling for the faith of his countrymen. He weaseled his way into German counterintelligence. With a number of his family he joined the plot to assassinate Hitler. For two years he worked for the allies as a double agent until the bomb to kill Hitler didn't, and the list of conspirators was discovered. Bonhoeffer spent two years in Gestapo interrogation camps.
In the prison years Bonhoeffer finally accepted that he'd never be freed. No miracle would come. He, his brother, brother-in-law, and uncle were all executed. Bonhoeffer was hanged April 9, 1945, a few days before the allies liberated his prison camp. But in prison he was a free child of God, just as free as he was three times to go back to his own people to struggle against idolatry, free to be chaplain to his fellow prisoners and to the soldiers who guarded him, free to learn patience and compassion and the depths of God's mercy for all -- with or without a miraculous delivery, and free finally to walk to the hangman's rope trusting Jesus Christ.
Jesus was tempted to ask God for a flashy miracle. For Dietrich Bonhoeffer no miracle came, but Jesus again conquered the devil's second temptation.
Jesus' third temptation was to clutch at political power and to use Satan's means to God's ends. Power always tempts us to use it for less than divine goals, which means worshiping Satan instead of God. Dag Hammarskjold was born in Sweden a year earlier than Bonhoeffer. For the last eight and a half years of his life he was Secretary General of the United Nations.
Hammarskjold was raised in a Lutheran home but lost his childhood faith at the university. He studied law and economics and became a civil servant. He never married and lived with his parents as often as he could until he was forty. He wasn't a gregarious man but an extremely hard worker. He was lonely and felt alienated from God, from himself, and from others. He began reading Albert Schweitzer's The Quest of the Historical Jesus and meditating upon the gospels.
He had an experience that prepared him for the task soon to be his. He described it: "I don't know Who -- or What -- put the question, I don't know when it was put. I don't even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer YES to Someone -- or Something -- and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal."2 So, on New Year's Day 1953, he wrote: "For all that has been -- Thanks! For all that shall be -- Yes!"3
None of this was public. Hammarskjold seldom spoke of the quiet, inward revolution. But no one saw Jesus in the wilderness being tempted by Satan; all they saw was a man who came away to serve God and love others no matter what.
Dag Hammarskjold died in a plane crash September 17, 1961, in Africa, while trying to negotiate peace in the Belgian Congo. After his death beside his bed a journal was found that recorded his deepest thoughts for 36 years. It revealed to the world the struggle to come to mature faith, and it showed the burden upon one who has power to be concerned for others instead of for oneself.
He was posthumously awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace and his diary was printed with the title: Markings. He died carrying in his pocket a copy of Thomas á Kempis' ancient book, The Imitation of Christ, and as a bookmark, a postcard on which was typed his oath of office as Secretary General of the United Nations. He set out not to dominate the world but to serve it. In him our Lord Jesus Christ was beating Satan for the third time.
Three examples of Jesus still being tested in Christians -- and my students call these three examples "old white men." But Jesus is present within all who trust him, no matter if we are white as a sheet, brown as our son-in-law, or purple with pink stripes. Jesus our brother summons us into God's life and service no matter the continent we live upon or the private basketful of prejudices we use to judge the rest of humanity.
We are always tempted to use Jesus, make him into anything we want in order to justify our self-concern. So, notice this about Jesus: Before he went to the wilderness he knew the scriptures. Jesus knew what God was like. We need to know the scriptures to see what Jesus is like, spend time with him so we can differentiate his leading from the deceitful voice of evil. Our first task as Christians is to ponder Jesus so that he begins to turn us into his image instead of each of us trying to convert him into a little clone of me.
I think of Jesus' presence working itself into our lives when I remember all the jade we saw in Mexico's National Museum of Anthropology. We inspected gorgeous jade pieces. Because jade is so valuable, people over the centuries have sought to become experts in identifying the best pieces. The story is passed on about a man determined to learn to select jade. He found the greatest expert in the land and told him he wanted to learn to evaluate jade. The expert agreed, said it would take six days a week work for six months and they settled on the price.
First day the student comes to the expert's precious gems warehouse and the expert puts him in a room alone, sets him in a chair at a table, and plops down a piece of jade in front of him. He says, "This is a good piece." Nothing else all day. Next day the expert comes in and sets down another jade and says, "This is a poor piece." Nothing changes for six months, only the expert every morning putting a chunk of jade on the table and proclaiming it good or poor.
After six months the student files a civil suit, brings his teacher to court, and explains to the judge that his teacher hasn't taught him to select jade. The teacher is then led into court. He's carrying a piece of jade. As the teacher walks to the witness stand, he steps over to the student and puts a piece of jade in the student's hand.
The student stands up in a rage. "Your honor," he says, "right here in front of you is all the evidence you need. See. This man I hired to be my teacher did that every day, brought a piece and put it in my hand, and as you can see, this is a very poor piece."
Spend time with Jesus. Let him consciously and unconsciously sink into your life. He's a great deal like you, but he wants you to be more like him. Get to know him by meditating upon the gospels. Watch what he does. Listen to what he says. He's living again within Christians, we who are ordinary or those who are extraordinary. Schweitzer, Bonhoeffer, Hammarskjold, you: God still overcomes temptations for those who open themselves to the living Jesus within us. If you are in Jesus, Jesus is your true brother, struggling again to free you to live as he did -- for God and others.
Communion
Our Lord Jesus invites you to this table to share his life and strength. Here he makes us strong to live for him and wise to flee temptation. Amen.
__________
1. Also spelled: Ogooue.
2. Dag Hammarskjold, Markings (New York: Knopf, 1964), p. 205.
3. Hammarskjold, p. 89.
The face of one's brother as the leader for independence is a good way to consider Jesus. Jesus has the face of our true brother (or "sister" if you want to think of him that way -- that wouldn't bother Jesus). Not that Jesus is "just like one of us." That's not how it works. Our Christian faith has a long history of making Jesus into the person we are, just like us -- Democrat if we're Democrats, Republican if we're Republicans, capitalist if we're capitalists, communist if we're communists. That's not the way Jesus has our true brother's face. We can try herding Jesus into the small corral of our little ideas; yet Jesus keeps showing up, instead, as our true brother, trying to free us to live for God. Jesus isn't always what we expect or what we want, but Jesus our true brother brings God to us and us to God. We see in this morning's text how Jesus is our true brother when he's tempted.
We usually think of temptations as Satan trying to get us to do what's wrong. I always remember the pastor and his wife in the 1930s. They lived on almost nothing. One day the pastor comes home and here's his wife in this gorgeous dress. "Where'd you get that dress?"
"Bought it today," she says sheepishly.
"How much did it cost?"
"Ten dollars."
"Ten dollars!" the pastor smacks his head with his hand. "We don't have that kind of money."
The wife looks down and says quietly, "I know, but the devil made me to do it."
"When that happens," the pastor shouts, "you're supposed to say, 'Get behind me, Satan.' "
"I did," she says. "And he said, 'Looks good from back here too.' "
That's not quite the same as Jesus' temptations. The devil isn't struggling every time to get Jesus to do what's completely wrong so much as to do some things for the wrong reason. It's a struggle! The word "temptation" in the New Testament also means a trial or a struggle. Matthew chapter 4 records a lot of spiritual struggle going on in this deserted spot of Palestine. Because Jesus is our brother, he's out in the wilderness struggling against Satan on our behalf. Jesus didn't just die for us. He was born for us, was baptized for us, and was tempted for us. Jesus is the person who lived for God and others. He's doing this for us.
These stories of Jesus'struggle with Satan aren't recorded so we'll admire Jesus, but so Jesus'Spirit may become active in our lives now and so the pattern of Jesus'life becomes the pattern in ours. "Because he himself was tested by what he suffered," the book of Hebrews says, "he is able to help those who are being tested" (Hebrews 2:18). Because the risen Jesus lives in us, every temptation we endure is a temptation of Jesus in us. Jesus' defeating the devil early in his public ministry becomes a present reality when scripture is read and preached, when we listen to his Spirit in our heart, and also when we listen to the testimony of Christian history.
Consider some Christians who've been tempted with Jesus. Jesus' first struggle was to meet his immediate needs instead of trusting God: "You hungry?" Satan said. "Just turn these stones into bread." Albert Schweitzer earned doctorates in theology, philosophy, and music. He was renowned in each discipline. He was on the road to further achievement and greater acclaim. But he read the gospels about our true brother Jesus. He returned to college for six years to become a medical doctor. Then Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor Schweitzer went to the unhealthiest climate in the world to care for the neediest of the earth's people.
Friends thought he was crazy. The established church wouldn't honor his ministry because of his unorthodox views. But the Paris Mission Society ceded a site for his hospital on the Ogowe1River in what was French Equatorial Africa (now Gabon). There in the African jungle he worked out his belief in "the reverence for life." He built, equipped, and maintained the hospital with royalties from his books and proceeds of organ recitals and lectures on visits to Europe. His life commitment was to sacrifice his own needs, even his higher needs for art, by obeying Jesus Christ. Albert Schweitzer received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1952, which he used to build a leprosarium.
Our Lord Jesus helped him to live not for his own needs but to live for God alone and learn reverence for life beyond himself. In Albert Schweitzer Jesus conquered Satan's first temptation again.
Jesus' second temptation was to perform a spectacular miracle to save himself and to tempt God to come to his beck and call. "Come on, Jesus, leap off this pinnacle. God'll catch you and you'll amaze the crowds." Jesus was challenged to tell God exactly what to do, and if God didn't come through, obviously God wasn't very powerful. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in Germany 31 years after Schweitzer. He decided early in life to be a theologian, and so he did, although he was by his own description overly critical, self-righteous, and unloving.
The rise of the Nazis matured him as a Christian. He saw clearly from the beginning that Nazism (any "-ism," "Americanism" included) is an idol. The day after Hitler finally stole what the German electorate would not give him, Bonhoeffer's sermon on the radio was cut off. He fled to the United States for a year, studying at Union Theological Seminary in New York. But he was compelled to return to Germany to oppose Hitler's attempt to rule even the church.
In 1933, again to escape the Nazis, Bonhoeffer went to London to minister to a German congregation. But once more he returned to Germany to help in the struggle against Hitler. He ran an illegal seminary for two years before it was closed by the Gestapo, and again he fled to the United States. But his conscience forced him to return to Germany to continue struggling for the faith of his countrymen. He weaseled his way into German counterintelligence. With a number of his family he joined the plot to assassinate Hitler. For two years he worked for the allies as a double agent until the bomb to kill Hitler didn't, and the list of conspirators was discovered. Bonhoeffer spent two years in Gestapo interrogation camps.
In the prison years Bonhoeffer finally accepted that he'd never be freed. No miracle would come. He, his brother, brother-in-law, and uncle were all executed. Bonhoeffer was hanged April 9, 1945, a few days before the allies liberated his prison camp. But in prison he was a free child of God, just as free as he was three times to go back to his own people to struggle against idolatry, free to be chaplain to his fellow prisoners and to the soldiers who guarded him, free to learn patience and compassion and the depths of God's mercy for all -- with or without a miraculous delivery, and free finally to walk to the hangman's rope trusting Jesus Christ.
Jesus was tempted to ask God for a flashy miracle. For Dietrich Bonhoeffer no miracle came, but Jesus again conquered the devil's second temptation.
Jesus' third temptation was to clutch at political power and to use Satan's means to God's ends. Power always tempts us to use it for less than divine goals, which means worshiping Satan instead of God. Dag Hammarskjold was born in Sweden a year earlier than Bonhoeffer. For the last eight and a half years of his life he was Secretary General of the United Nations.
Hammarskjold was raised in a Lutheran home but lost his childhood faith at the university. He studied law and economics and became a civil servant. He never married and lived with his parents as often as he could until he was forty. He wasn't a gregarious man but an extremely hard worker. He was lonely and felt alienated from God, from himself, and from others. He began reading Albert Schweitzer's The Quest of the Historical Jesus and meditating upon the gospels.
He had an experience that prepared him for the task soon to be his. He described it: "I don't know Who -- or What -- put the question, I don't know when it was put. I don't even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer YES to Someone -- or Something -- and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal."2 So, on New Year's Day 1953, he wrote: "For all that has been -- Thanks! For all that shall be -- Yes!"3
None of this was public. Hammarskjold seldom spoke of the quiet, inward revolution. But no one saw Jesus in the wilderness being tempted by Satan; all they saw was a man who came away to serve God and love others no matter what.
Dag Hammarskjold died in a plane crash September 17, 1961, in Africa, while trying to negotiate peace in the Belgian Congo. After his death beside his bed a journal was found that recorded his deepest thoughts for 36 years. It revealed to the world the struggle to come to mature faith, and it showed the burden upon one who has power to be concerned for others instead of for oneself.
He was posthumously awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace and his diary was printed with the title: Markings. He died carrying in his pocket a copy of Thomas á Kempis' ancient book, The Imitation of Christ, and as a bookmark, a postcard on which was typed his oath of office as Secretary General of the United Nations. He set out not to dominate the world but to serve it. In him our Lord Jesus Christ was beating Satan for the third time.
Three examples of Jesus still being tested in Christians -- and my students call these three examples "old white men." But Jesus is present within all who trust him, no matter if we are white as a sheet, brown as our son-in-law, or purple with pink stripes. Jesus our brother summons us into God's life and service no matter the continent we live upon or the private basketful of prejudices we use to judge the rest of humanity.
We are always tempted to use Jesus, make him into anything we want in order to justify our self-concern. So, notice this about Jesus: Before he went to the wilderness he knew the scriptures. Jesus knew what God was like. We need to know the scriptures to see what Jesus is like, spend time with him so we can differentiate his leading from the deceitful voice of evil. Our first task as Christians is to ponder Jesus so that he begins to turn us into his image instead of each of us trying to convert him into a little clone of me.
I think of Jesus' presence working itself into our lives when I remember all the jade we saw in Mexico's National Museum of Anthropology. We inspected gorgeous jade pieces. Because jade is so valuable, people over the centuries have sought to become experts in identifying the best pieces. The story is passed on about a man determined to learn to select jade. He found the greatest expert in the land and told him he wanted to learn to evaluate jade. The expert agreed, said it would take six days a week work for six months and they settled on the price.
First day the student comes to the expert's precious gems warehouse and the expert puts him in a room alone, sets him in a chair at a table, and plops down a piece of jade in front of him. He says, "This is a good piece." Nothing else all day. Next day the expert comes in and sets down another jade and says, "This is a poor piece." Nothing changes for six months, only the expert every morning putting a chunk of jade on the table and proclaiming it good or poor.
After six months the student files a civil suit, brings his teacher to court, and explains to the judge that his teacher hasn't taught him to select jade. The teacher is then led into court. He's carrying a piece of jade. As the teacher walks to the witness stand, he steps over to the student and puts a piece of jade in the student's hand.
The student stands up in a rage. "Your honor," he says, "right here in front of you is all the evidence you need. See. This man I hired to be my teacher did that every day, brought a piece and put it in my hand, and as you can see, this is a very poor piece."
Spend time with Jesus. Let him consciously and unconsciously sink into your life. He's a great deal like you, but he wants you to be more like him. Get to know him by meditating upon the gospels. Watch what he does. Listen to what he says. He's living again within Christians, we who are ordinary or those who are extraordinary. Schweitzer, Bonhoeffer, Hammarskjold, you: God still overcomes temptations for those who open themselves to the living Jesus within us. If you are in Jesus, Jesus is your true brother, struggling again to free you to live as he did -- for God and others.
Communion
Our Lord Jesus invites you to this table to share his life and strength. Here he makes us strong to live for him and wise to flee temptation. Amen.
__________
1. Also spelled: Ogooue.
2. Dag Hammarskjold, Markings (New York: Knopf, 1964), p. 205.
3. Hammarskjold, p. 89.
