A Matter Of Means
Sermon
Living Vertically
Gospel Sermons For Lent/Easter Cycle C
Whenever the Olympics roll around even people like me think a little bit more about fitness and sports. The other day a comedian was talking about healthy living. He had heard a marathon runner describing the joys he derived from the grueling training his sport demanded. There were times, the runner said, when he really got into a zone and felt liberated from the bounds of his body. He felt like he was flying! It is a natural high. "Heck!" (or words to that effect) the comedian responded, "that's why I drink and smoke. I can get lightheaded just huffing and puffing up a flight of stairs."
Well, we smile at that because of two things: we recognize that he has totally misunderstood the "natural high," and more importantly he has missed the significance of the means. Suppose for a minute that smoking and drinking really could produce a temporary "natural high," in addition to the lung cancer, breakup of families, and other goodies they bring in their wake. They would still pale in comparison to all the good that a discipline like running accomplishes for the spirit as well as the body.
This silly little example highlights perfectly the underlying dynamic in the story of Jesus' temptation as recorded by Luke. In each case Jesus is tempted with a slight perversion of a legitimate end; but more importantly, in each temptation Satan would have our Lord use means that would betray his mission and purpose in life. This is why this lesson is so commonly read at the beginning of Lent -- on Ash Wednesday or today: because it focuses both on the goals of the Christian life, which we sometimes allow to become distorted by the world-view and pressures of the society in which we live; and because it encourages us to examine the means we use in striving toward life's goals, no matter how noble they might be.
The first temptation is in some ways the simplest, but also perhaps the most subtle. After forty days of fasting, Jesus is tempted to use his powers to turn a stone into bread. What harm could there be in that? This is, is it not, the same Lord who multiplied a few loaves and fish to feed over 5,000 men, not to mention women and children, and who turned the water into wine. What possible problem could there be in transforming a rock into a little lunch -- after forty days!
Obviously there would be no problem in having a little lunch -- Jesus did it all the time. Indeed, in the Gospel of John the resurrected Jesus grilled some fish for the disciples' breakfast at the lakeside -- no problem. In his response to the Devil, quoting Deuteronomy as he does in every case, Jesus does not say, "One does not need bread at all," or "Only the spiritual is important," he says, "One does not live by bread alone."
So whatever else it is, this passage is not an endorsement of the ancient heresy of Docetism, the teaching that asserted that Jesus may have appeared to be a human being but, as the fully divine Son of God, could not possibly have inhabited a real human body. He may have appeared (dokeo in Greek) to suffer and die on the cross, he may have appeared to be hungry and thirsty, but he did not really experience those "bodily" pangs. The problem with many of the Docetists was that they not only scoffed at the importance of the Incarnation of Jesus, but also tended to disregard the doctrine of Christian love. Why should we bother to love people's bodies or tend to their physical needs when it is only their spirit that is important?
I recently saw what I would describe as a Docetic commercial on a religious television program. (A program, by the way, which I frequently watch, often with benefit.) The spot began with pictures of emaciated masses of people in some part of the third world. Inspirational music was playing in the background. The words of Matthew 25 scrolled across the screen; "I was hungry and you fed me," and there were images of a huge crusade in a stadium; the evangelist was preaching. Next more words from Matthew 25: "I was thirsty and you gave me drink"; more images from the stadium, with various workers laying their hands on the heads of persons who may have been coming forward in response to an altar call. More words: "Satisfy the hunger and thirst of people -- send your donations to," and then the name of the sponsoring para-church organization. I believe with every fiber of my being that persons need to be fed with the word of God and have their thirst met with the living waters of Jesus Christ welling up in our souls. But I also know that in Matthew 25 Jesus is speaking about literal hunger and palpable thirst too. I call this a Docetic commercial because it seemed to imply that what these starving persons need is only the gospel message; I would say they need the gospel word and the gospel deed of a loaf of bread and cup of water. So if Jesus was concerned about the physical as well as the spiritual (I don't think that Jesus, like most Jews of his time, even conceived of this duality as we do), then what was the problem with turning a rock into bread?
The obvious problem was that of focus. Jesus had not spent forty days and nights fasting and praying in the wilderness in order to be distracted from his great mission at the last moment by focusing on what he was going to eat. And if this was a temptation for Jesus in the wilderness two millennia ago, how much more is it a problem for us with our dayplanners and electronic organizers, people so strapped for time and energy that even W. H. Auden's words about the world being too much with us sound quaintly out of date. Of course Jesus needed something to eat. But this was not the time for it, and certainly not at the expense of beginning his earthly ministry absolutely in tune with his Father.
I imagine we would all agree that living in a nice, attractive community is important. And I have to admit reluctantly that since the advent of big-time gambling in Evansville (with the arrival of a riverboat casino) downtown has perked up quite a bit: a couple of new hotels, some nicer restaurants, and so on. But this raises the issue of "what is a nice, attractive community?" Because I also know that the number of pawn shops and places where you can get cash advances on paychecks you haven't yet earned have multiplied at a much higher rate than nice restaurants. I know that we now have a chapter of Gamblers Anonymous and that all the mental health treatment centers in town find that compulsive gambling and its attendant problems form a substantial part of their caseloads.
I am reminded that when (in the summer of 1996) the local casino made a one-time donation to the local United Way, two agencies turned their share down on moral principles. The Warrick County chapter of the Mental Health Association unanimously voted to refuse the funds. The chapter president explained, "I don't see any sense in using the money that came from gambling to fight gambling," while a member of the board of directors of the United Methodist Youth Home said, "We're dealing with girls whose lives have been broken. My own reaction is that using gambling money to help repair their lives might lead to a misconception. They don't need any more brokenness." Apparently these agencies felt that a community that exploits some for the aggrandizement of others is not as "nice" a community as it may appear.
There is a lot right with having an attractive community, just as there is a lot right with having a good lunch. But both are problematic if the end is misunderstood and if the means undercut the higher purposes of life.
We, as Christians, affirm that Jesus Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords, so what is the problem with the second temptation, that Jesus be given glory and authority over the kingdoms of the world? Clearly, it was the wrong kind of authority and the wrong kind of glory for the one who said to Pilate, "My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here" (John 18:36). We are so used to dealing with this world in the ways of the world, this is such a hard contrast to make. If I want to live in a good world, why not legislate morality? If I believe that my way of praying is truly the best, why not work to see to it that everyone in the public school will be coerced to pray my way?
Why not? Because this is not what Jesus' kingdom is all about. It is easy to make this distinction when it appears in its extreme forms, particularly when it appears in other people. We read with regret of the resort to force of arms by great spiritual leaders like Augustine of Hippo and Calvin in Geneva. We should be uncomfortable when we hear words like these:
"Remember that the German people are the chosen of God," said Kaiser Wilhelm II. "On me, on me as German Emperor, the Spirit of God has descended. I am His weapon, His sword and His vizard! Woe to the disobedient! Death to cowards!"
Or these:
"I am not here to talk surrender terms, but to talk about how to fight and win the cultural war for the soul of our country ... Our culture is superior because our religion is Christianity ..." (Pat Buchanan to the Christian Coalition's 1993 "Road to Victory" conference. [quotes from The Bible Tells Me So, Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1996]
No more than Jesus himself, can we obtain control over the world by embracing means of the world that are in conflict with the ways of Christ. Jesus called persons to repentance; he healed the ill, he led the sinner, he excoriated the self-righteous; he did not coerce or use force of arms, and neither should we.
A decade ago my wife and I took a mission group to northeast Brazil to help expand a Methodist Mission in a slum outside the city of Fortaleza. Not long before our departure a number of parents became concerned because of the highly publicized and particularly brutal deaths of a group of American missionaries in the interior of Brazil. A little research was illuminating. The Americans had determined they were going to evangelize a tribe of head-hunters (yes, there really are still such groups) in a remote region of the Amazon. They had become aware of the group because of violent skirmishes between the natives and logging interests that were encroaching on their traditional hunting grounds. Local government and Christian groups warned them not to approach the already agitated tribe; the sponsoring ministry in the U.S. told them not to go; the U.S. State Department ordered them not to go. They went anyway and were horribly and brutally killed. Without wanting to seem in the least unkind, one wonders if their action was not tantamount to throwing oneself off the pinnacle of the temple saying, "On their hands they will bear me up." We don't need to look to the jungles of Brazil for examples of this.
A pastor friend's wife has suffered from bouts of depression all her life. A few years ago her physician recommended that she begin taking a minimal dose of an antidepressant. My friend mentioned this at a meeting with other clergy and was roundly denounced; his wife should pray, not be drugged up. This made an already difficult decision even tougher. Happily, she did take the medication and has continued to use it from time to time with very positive results. This is perhaps the most common way I encounter the third temptation of Christ: the temptation to put ourselves in harm's way as a sign of trust in God, either by action or inaction: by what we do (going into the jungle in spite of all kinds of warnings) or by what we fail to do (not taking prescribed medication).
And this takes us back full circle to a variation of Docetism: saying that only the spiritual is important, the physical is of no value: if you believe, you don't need to exercise normal caution, you don't need medical care. The story of Christ's temptations reminds us that we are not disembodied spirits who don't need to worry about our bodies any more than we are merely reductionistically physical machines who can be unconcerned about our spirits. We are complex beings, "fearfully and wonderfully made" by God. Our life of faith is never either/or, it is always both/and. We cannot concentrate so much on the "things" of life that we ignore human and spiritual needs; we cannot become so concerned with external ends that we substitute coercion for compassion. And we must not attempt to manipulate and control God by becoming more spiritual than our Creator intends.
Lent is a time for restoring our balance: internal and external; body and spirit; means and ends. And as believers, we certainly don't want to be like that comedian -- mistaking being out of shape for having a "natural high."
Well, we smile at that because of two things: we recognize that he has totally misunderstood the "natural high," and more importantly he has missed the significance of the means. Suppose for a minute that smoking and drinking really could produce a temporary "natural high," in addition to the lung cancer, breakup of families, and other goodies they bring in their wake. They would still pale in comparison to all the good that a discipline like running accomplishes for the spirit as well as the body.
This silly little example highlights perfectly the underlying dynamic in the story of Jesus' temptation as recorded by Luke. In each case Jesus is tempted with a slight perversion of a legitimate end; but more importantly, in each temptation Satan would have our Lord use means that would betray his mission and purpose in life. This is why this lesson is so commonly read at the beginning of Lent -- on Ash Wednesday or today: because it focuses both on the goals of the Christian life, which we sometimes allow to become distorted by the world-view and pressures of the society in which we live; and because it encourages us to examine the means we use in striving toward life's goals, no matter how noble they might be.
The first temptation is in some ways the simplest, but also perhaps the most subtle. After forty days of fasting, Jesus is tempted to use his powers to turn a stone into bread. What harm could there be in that? This is, is it not, the same Lord who multiplied a few loaves and fish to feed over 5,000 men, not to mention women and children, and who turned the water into wine. What possible problem could there be in transforming a rock into a little lunch -- after forty days!
Obviously there would be no problem in having a little lunch -- Jesus did it all the time. Indeed, in the Gospel of John the resurrected Jesus grilled some fish for the disciples' breakfast at the lakeside -- no problem. In his response to the Devil, quoting Deuteronomy as he does in every case, Jesus does not say, "One does not need bread at all," or "Only the spiritual is important," he says, "One does not live by bread alone."
So whatever else it is, this passage is not an endorsement of the ancient heresy of Docetism, the teaching that asserted that Jesus may have appeared to be a human being but, as the fully divine Son of God, could not possibly have inhabited a real human body. He may have appeared (dokeo in Greek) to suffer and die on the cross, he may have appeared to be hungry and thirsty, but he did not really experience those "bodily" pangs. The problem with many of the Docetists was that they not only scoffed at the importance of the Incarnation of Jesus, but also tended to disregard the doctrine of Christian love. Why should we bother to love people's bodies or tend to their physical needs when it is only their spirit that is important?
I recently saw what I would describe as a Docetic commercial on a religious television program. (A program, by the way, which I frequently watch, often with benefit.) The spot began with pictures of emaciated masses of people in some part of the third world. Inspirational music was playing in the background. The words of Matthew 25 scrolled across the screen; "I was hungry and you fed me," and there were images of a huge crusade in a stadium; the evangelist was preaching. Next more words from Matthew 25: "I was thirsty and you gave me drink"; more images from the stadium, with various workers laying their hands on the heads of persons who may have been coming forward in response to an altar call. More words: "Satisfy the hunger and thirst of people -- send your donations to," and then the name of the sponsoring para-church organization. I believe with every fiber of my being that persons need to be fed with the word of God and have their thirst met with the living waters of Jesus Christ welling up in our souls. But I also know that in Matthew 25 Jesus is speaking about literal hunger and palpable thirst too. I call this a Docetic commercial because it seemed to imply that what these starving persons need is only the gospel message; I would say they need the gospel word and the gospel deed of a loaf of bread and cup of water. So if Jesus was concerned about the physical as well as the spiritual (I don't think that Jesus, like most Jews of his time, even conceived of this duality as we do), then what was the problem with turning a rock into bread?
The obvious problem was that of focus. Jesus had not spent forty days and nights fasting and praying in the wilderness in order to be distracted from his great mission at the last moment by focusing on what he was going to eat. And if this was a temptation for Jesus in the wilderness two millennia ago, how much more is it a problem for us with our dayplanners and electronic organizers, people so strapped for time and energy that even W. H. Auden's words about the world being too much with us sound quaintly out of date. Of course Jesus needed something to eat. But this was not the time for it, and certainly not at the expense of beginning his earthly ministry absolutely in tune with his Father.
I imagine we would all agree that living in a nice, attractive community is important. And I have to admit reluctantly that since the advent of big-time gambling in Evansville (with the arrival of a riverboat casino) downtown has perked up quite a bit: a couple of new hotels, some nicer restaurants, and so on. But this raises the issue of "what is a nice, attractive community?" Because I also know that the number of pawn shops and places where you can get cash advances on paychecks you haven't yet earned have multiplied at a much higher rate than nice restaurants. I know that we now have a chapter of Gamblers Anonymous and that all the mental health treatment centers in town find that compulsive gambling and its attendant problems form a substantial part of their caseloads.
I am reminded that when (in the summer of 1996) the local casino made a one-time donation to the local United Way, two agencies turned their share down on moral principles. The Warrick County chapter of the Mental Health Association unanimously voted to refuse the funds. The chapter president explained, "I don't see any sense in using the money that came from gambling to fight gambling," while a member of the board of directors of the United Methodist Youth Home said, "We're dealing with girls whose lives have been broken. My own reaction is that using gambling money to help repair their lives might lead to a misconception. They don't need any more brokenness." Apparently these agencies felt that a community that exploits some for the aggrandizement of others is not as "nice" a community as it may appear.
There is a lot right with having an attractive community, just as there is a lot right with having a good lunch. But both are problematic if the end is misunderstood and if the means undercut the higher purposes of life.
We, as Christians, affirm that Jesus Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords, so what is the problem with the second temptation, that Jesus be given glory and authority over the kingdoms of the world? Clearly, it was the wrong kind of authority and the wrong kind of glory for the one who said to Pilate, "My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here" (John 18:36). We are so used to dealing with this world in the ways of the world, this is such a hard contrast to make. If I want to live in a good world, why not legislate morality? If I believe that my way of praying is truly the best, why not work to see to it that everyone in the public school will be coerced to pray my way?
Why not? Because this is not what Jesus' kingdom is all about. It is easy to make this distinction when it appears in its extreme forms, particularly when it appears in other people. We read with regret of the resort to force of arms by great spiritual leaders like Augustine of Hippo and Calvin in Geneva. We should be uncomfortable when we hear words like these:
"Remember that the German people are the chosen of God," said Kaiser Wilhelm II. "On me, on me as German Emperor, the Spirit of God has descended. I am His weapon, His sword and His vizard! Woe to the disobedient! Death to cowards!"
Or these:
"I am not here to talk surrender terms, but to talk about how to fight and win the cultural war for the soul of our country ... Our culture is superior because our religion is Christianity ..." (Pat Buchanan to the Christian Coalition's 1993 "Road to Victory" conference. [quotes from The Bible Tells Me So, Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1996]
No more than Jesus himself, can we obtain control over the world by embracing means of the world that are in conflict with the ways of Christ. Jesus called persons to repentance; he healed the ill, he led the sinner, he excoriated the self-righteous; he did not coerce or use force of arms, and neither should we.
A decade ago my wife and I took a mission group to northeast Brazil to help expand a Methodist Mission in a slum outside the city of Fortaleza. Not long before our departure a number of parents became concerned because of the highly publicized and particularly brutal deaths of a group of American missionaries in the interior of Brazil. A little research was illuminating. The Americans had determined they were going to evangelize a tribe of head-hunters (yes, there really are still such groups) in a remote region of the Amazon. They had become aware of the group because of violent skirmishes between the natives and logging interests that were encroaching on their traditional hunting grounds. Local government and Christian groups warned them not to approach the already agitated tribe; the sponsoring ministry in the U.S. told them not to go; the U.S. State Department ordered them not to go. They went anyway and were horribly and brutally killed. Without wanting to seem in the least unkind, one wonders if their action was not tantamount to throwing oneself off the pinnacle of the temple saying, "On their hands they will bear me up." We don't need to look to the jungles of Brazil for examples of this.
A pastor friend's wife has suffered from bouts of depression all her life. A few years ago her physician recommended that she begin taking a minimal dose of an antidepressant. My friend mentioned this at a meeting with other clergy and was roundly denounced; his wife should pray, not be drugged up. This made an already difficult decision even tougher. Happily, she did take the medication and has continued to use it from time to time with very positive results. This is perhaps the most common way I encounter the third temptation of Christ: the temptation to put ourselves in harm's way as a sign of trust in God, either by action or inaction: by what we do (going into the jungle in spite of all kinds of warnings) or by what we fail to do (not taking prescribed medication).
And this takes us back full circle to a variation of Docetism: saying that only the spiritual is important, the physical is of no value: if you believe, you don't need to exercise normal caution, you don't need medical care. The story of Christ's temptations reminds us that we are not disembodied spirits who don't need to worry about our bodies any more than we are merely reductionistically physical machines who can be unconcerned about our spirits. We are complex beings, "fearfully and wonderfully made" by God. Our life of faith is never either/or, it is always both/and. We cannot concentrate so much on the "things" of life that we ignore human and spiritual needs; we cannot become so concerned with external ends that we substitute coercion for compassion. And we must not attempt to manipulate and control God by becoming more spiritual than our Creator intends.
Lent is a time for restoring our balance: internal and external; body and spirit; means and ends. And as believers, we certainly don't want to be like that comedian -- mistaking being out of shape for having a "natural high."
