A sermon by trainee Reader - Anne Cowan
"Trust and Obediance"
The theme of today’s sermon is trust and obedience, and my text, from Psalm 32: 10b, is ‘Steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord’.
Last Sunday, Peter talked to us about the transfiguration of Jesus, (Matt.17:1-9) and the command from God to ‘listen to Jesus’. This week we are back at the beginning of Jesus’s ministry and we need to set today’s Gospel reading in context to gain a deeper understanding of why Jesus was tempted.
He has just been baptized by John in the River Jordan, a highly significant event, recorded in all four Gospels. One commentary says, “The moment Jesus had been quietly waiting for, in his home in Nazareth, had arrived. The whole country was buzzing with expectancy.” They had been inspired by John the Baptist’s teaching and witness as the promised ‘voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord!’ rang out to call the Jewish people back to their Lord and God. “The unthinkable was taking place. Jews in their hundreds were taking the plunge literally and following John into the waters of the Jordan, confessing national and personal sins and calling on God to cleanse them and make them fit for his Kingdom… The time was ripe and Jesus had come forward to join others in the waters of baptism…” We see a deep and confident awareness of the will of God in Jesus when John feels Jesus should be baptizing him. Jesus’s reply, as translated in the New Jerusalem Bible is: ‘Leave it like this for the time being: it is fitting that we should, in this way, do all that uprightness demands.’(Matt. 3:15)
Just as was to happen later on at his transfiguration, so also in Jesus’ baptism, a voice from heaven confirms: ‘This is my Son, whom I love, with him I am well-pleased.’ At the same time, either Jesus or John, or both - it is not clear - saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. This is a pivotal moment, for it is now that Jesus receives his charge, to embrace total consecration of life and holiness of character. The power of the Spirit has been an essential force in John’s ministry to his fellow countrymen and of preparation for the coming of Jesus. That Spirit is to be the essence of Jesus’s life of obedience in and to and for his Father-God, with whom he is constantly present in prayer and in action.
The profound spiritual experience of his baptism requires time for reflection and with the voice of God filling every part of him Jesus is led out by the Spirit, into the desert, to be put to the test by the devil.
Why temptation? Why does God allow it? Well, God allowed it for Jesus, who, born fully into our human nature, is, in his life on earth, subject to similar feelings of emotional, nervous and physical stress. Human beings are not meant to live on spiritual highs for long periods, but ‘on the bread that comes from God alone’. My commentary suggests that God allows temptation because he desires us to be free to choose for ourselves. The arrival of temptation is therefore inevitable and does not mean that God’s blessing has left us. Rather, temptation allows us to sort out what really matters from what is just an “I want” moment. In an important way, temptation faced and overcome ‘builds up our spiritual muscle.’ In the Gospel reading, Matthew says that Jesus first fasted for 40 days and nights. That is a long time to be alone and we have to wonder at the spiritual strength which helped Jesus endure the battles of isolation and physical discomfort, emotional highs and lows. I have no doubt that he was in constant prayer with his Father God and that it was here, in this time set aside, that he came to terms with who he was, indeed had always been. What is remarkable is that Jesus stayed put in the wilderness. He must have faced loneliness, boredom, discomfort at times in those many days and nights. Rowan Williams in his book ‘Silence and Honey Cakes: The wisdom of the desert’, tells of a saying of one of the early mothers of the desert, Amma Sycletica. Speaking of monks and nuns in the desert communities, she insists that ‘not to stay in the community (or place) that you are in will do you great harm.’ Why is this? She says:
‘If a bird abandons the eggs she has been sitting on, she prevents them hatching; and in the same way, you will grow cold and your faith perish, if you move from place to place, always looking for’ greener grass, nicer people, a better place".
When Jesus was led into the desert he knew that he was God’s beloved Son. Faced with such knowledge comes authority – and in Jesus, the saving grace of humility. Any call to do something for God is profoundly affirming and yet still requires willing acceptance.
Jesus was hungry at the end of his fast. Don’t you love the calm understatement of Matthew? Hungry? I ask you! The poor man was starving, but not at any price, for in spite of his hunger, Jesus has used his time in the desert well and developed that ‘spiritual muscle’ mentioned earlier. He also has come into the desert armed with a deep knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures. In the battle with Satan, Jesus will quote from the Book of Deuteronomy three times, preceded by the phrase, ‘It is written……’ or ‘Scripture says….’
Satan attacks immediately. ‘If you are the Son of God…” – what a devious, underhand thing to say, but that’s the Tempter for you – catch you in a weak moment – undermine your belief in yourself and in who you are and you will almost certainly cave in.
‘If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to turn into lovely, mouth-watering sweetly smelling loaves straight from baking.’ Thankfully, Jesus’s studies and his forty days and night of prayer and fasting have confirmed that above all else he needs God and ‘every word that comes out of the mouth of God.’ So, the devil is foiled but not beaten. Now Jesus finds himself in the holy city on the parapet of the Temple. Every time I read this I feel dizzy, as if I too am teetering on the edge of a very long drop. Sure enough Jesus is again challenged to prove that he is the Son of God by throwing himself off the parapet, because he is bound to be saved by a host of angels. Again Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy:
‘Scripture also says, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’’
Again, Jesus has resisted temptation. So now the devil and Jesus are on a high mountain from which can be seen, spread out far below, all the kingdoms of the world, in their splendour. The devil plays his third card:
‘You can have all these kingdoms. I will give them to you if you fall at my feet and do me homage.’
Rowan Williams believes this to be the key to understanding the temptations Jesus faced. What Satan is trying to do is to get Jesus to join him in his make believe, fantasy world. Satan doesn’t own the Kingdoms he is offering to Jesus. (It’s rather like the fib behind every advertising gimmick of a ‘free offer’!) The Kingdoms of the world are not and never can be Satan’s to give in reality, and Jesus is called to work in the real world of God’s creation. He has the strength to send Satan packing:
’Away with you, Satan! For it is written, Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.”’ (Matt.4:11)
The relief to read, ‘Then the devil left him and suddenly angels came’ and, as the New Jerusalem Bible says, ‘looked after him’.
How do we resist temptation in our lives? Rowan Williams suggests that we are each required to promise our self to our self, just as if we are settling a proposal of marriage. We have to marry the ‘reality’ of who we are, rather than a fantasy person who lives in a make-believe world in which anything I want can happen even if it denies family, work, our physical surroundings, the people we must live with, the language we must speak and our own physical selves and bodies.
I want to digress briefly to share a personal experience with you which I hope will illustrate this point well and also picks up again the teaching of Amma Sycletica. Quite soon after my husband’s death, I remember deciding that I would do what we had always done and go shopping on a Saturday morning. For the next few Saturdays that is what I did. Then I began to realise that I was falling into the trap of shopping, not because I needed to but in order to avoid facing being at home alone. Shopping was not the answer. Staying put and coming to terms with the lack of company was required, had to be faced. A new way of living had to be found which would, in time, bring healing, and freedom from the temptation of so called ‘retail therapy’.
To survive temptation, God calls us to follow his command to like and love ourselves in the right way as God’s beloved children, for as the Psalmist says, ‘his steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord’. The work of learning to accept that God loves each one of us, you, me, everyone, and taking that certainty into the very centre of our being, is ongoing day by day. It requires trust in God and obedience to his will and that needs to be fed daily in prayer and the reading of God’s word. Paul says of Jesus (Romans 5:19b): ‘so by the one man’s obedience many will be made righteous.’
Jesus trusted God whilst he was in the wilderness, and throughout his life, even when he felt terribly alone, even on the Cross. Jesus refused Satan because he was determined to follow God’s call to stay in the wilderness with its hunger and boredom and to stay in the human world with its conflict and risk. Jesus refuses to compel and manipulate people into faith because faith can only be the act of a person and of persons who are beloved of God. These find God in his world in a life lived in loving obedience to God’s call to them. And God says in welcome: ‘You are my beloved son/daughter: in you I am well-pleased.’ God’s grace is given freely to all and those who will trust in him as Jesus did and walk in his way all the days of their life, will always be ‘surrounded by his steadfast love’. Amen
