Genesis 2: 15-17, 3:1-7 Psalm 32
Romans 5: 12-19 Matthew 4: 1-11
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Flip Wilson appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in January of 1970 with his now famous comedy routine, thus making famous this phrase…does anyone know what it was? That’s right! The DEVIL made me do it! I remembered the phrase and that it was Flip Wilson, but I couldn’t remember anything else about the routine when I was thinking about this sermon, so I did what was completely unknown to us in 1970, but second nature now…I Googled it. And of course, You Tube had the entire skit.
So, in the skit Flip Wilson tells the story of his wife being tempted by the devil to buy a dress while she’s out shopping. He describes her as walking along feeling good about how she looks. When the devil entices her with the dress, the devil tells her that it won’t hurt to just try it on and then, of course, the deed is done.
On this first Sunday in Lent, the season of 40 days before Easter, we have two stories of temptation and some would say two stories that include the devil. But if we look more closely at the reading from Genesis, we don’t find any mention of the devil at all. A serpent approaches Eve, not the devil. In fact, the serpent is, we are told, an animal that the Lord God had made. A talking animal, at that, at least in this story, but we never seem to question that detail. We also fail to note, most times, that if you look at this story chronologically, the woman, who we call Eve, was not present when God told the man, whom we call Adam, not to eat from this particular tree. So, her knowledge of the tree is secondhand and she gets the details a bit fuzzy.
Jesus does encounter the devil according to the reading from Matthew’s Gospel. He encounters the devil, who is also called the tempter, following a 40 day fast in the wilderness. The devil tempts Jesus with all sorts of things that we might imagine would be appealing after spending all of that time wandering about in the wilderness…Jesus is tempted with food, and with power. With sustenance and with certainty, if you will. And all of this temptation is wrapped in Scripture.
And that’s just the thing about the serpent and the devil in today‘s readings: the serpent tells the truth and the devil quotes Scripture. The serpent tells the truth. The devil quotes Scripture.
First question the serpent asks Eve: “Did God say you shall not eat from any tree in the garden?” When Eve answers that they can eat from any tree except the one in the middle of the garden or they shall die the serpent notes that they won’t actually DIE, their eyes will simply be opened and they will be like God. They will be like God.
And in the case of Jesus and the devil…the devil comes to Jesus and tempts him with Scripture and with the taunt “IF you are the Son of God” and the offer of bread for a hungry body and power for a searching soul. The devil takes Scripture out of context, something that is done even today, even by those who claim to be followers of Christ.
Both of these stories are essentially stories of identity crises. A crisis of identity, not only for those in the story, but for those of us who hear the story.
In Genesis, there is a crisis of understanding of who God is and of who is God. This story is a story of the desire of humanity, not just these first humans but all humanity, to be in charge. We are very certain that we know what is best for us, each one of us. We are much like children who, when told by their parents that they know what is best for them, immediately push back. We declare our independence and we assert our autonomy. And this was exactly what the talking snake was promoting with Eve. You won’t DIE the serpent says, and indeed they did not. But from that point on, they lived with the consequences of their chosen freedom. The limits that God was placing upon those first human beings were not so God could feel powerful, an Almighty God does not need to do that. And they weren’t so God would have something to do, or so God could be the “boss of them”; those limits were put in place out of the love that God had for what God had created. God knew that such limits, such boundaries, would be necessary for the good of all of Creation.
And yet, it is these limits that we push back against day after day. In our struggle to define ourselves as the ones in charge, in our quest to be like God…we reach out for all the power and none of the grace. We turn away from the expansive power and freedom that we have in Christ and reach instead to those things that keep us at the center, with predictably bad results. It is our identity crisis.
For the writer of Matthew’s Gospel, establishing the identity of Jesus was critical. In the very first chapter of Matthew we are introduced to Jesus as “the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” In Chapter 3 God announces “This is my Son, the Beloved”, and in chapter 4 Jesus is “Son of God”. For Matthew, then, this story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness is not a story about us at all. We cannot place ourselves in the story and say that we understand it. We cannot say that, like Jesus, we understand what it is like to wrestle with what it means to be the Son of God. For Matthew it is simply a story about Jesus. It is a story about who Jesus is and what that means. In fact, if we are going to place ourselves anywhere in this story, we can certainly at least identify with the tempter, with the devil. After all, we want Jesus to be who we want him to be…we want him to turn our stones to bread or prove God to us or embrace worldly power and success. And yet, he remains the eating with sinners, fisher folk calling, peace loving, justice making Jesus that we know.
Now I realize that I’m on shaky pastoral ground here, suggesting that my beloved sisters and brothers at Luther Memorial are somehow like the tempter in this story. So, let me back up a bit. Let me tell you how I am like the tempter in this story. Perhaps you will be able to identify.
When I have been hungry…hungry for what the next person has…hungry for their gifts or their talent or their bigger house or their perfect life…I have said to Jesus “you know, if you are God….couldn’t you give a girl a break here?” And when I’ve been frustrated by those people who say to me: “Oh Jesus was just a teacher or just a prophet or just a healer” I have been known to say “Can’t you just do some fabulously showy act…silence storms, recede floods, cure cancer…and sign your name to it so people will know how powerful you are”. And every time, Jesus behaves just like Jesus…to heal my hurts he calls me to help others. To the disbelief of others he calls me to keep preaching the Gospel, using words if necessary. And this would be a lovely ending to this story if I would just remember that this is who Jesus is and this is how Jesus acts. But instead, over and over I find myself calling to him to prove himself. And over and over he invites me to remember who he is. To remember in water, wine, and bread. To remember in the Body of Christ gathered in. To remember when I look into the eyes of a baby or a person who is close to death…that Jesus died so that this one would not have to. That Jesus, rather than take on the powers of evil in some outlandish display of power and might, like Obi-wan Kenobi vs. Darth Vader, Jesus chose to walk the way to the cross, to die in order that we might all live.
The woman in Flip Wilson’s story was not tempted to do anything that she would not have done anyway. The same has been said of the devil. It is said that he or she will not tempt us with anything that we would not consider in the first place. Power? Knowledge? Of course those are things we desire. But we remember that we follow an upside down, inside out Savior, for whom power lies in humility and gentleness. Who breaks bread with outcasts. Who champions the lowly. And it is in that knowledge that we understand who we are and who Jesus is. And it is in that knowledge that we give thanks.
Amen.
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