Sermon: February 21, 2010

Today is the first Sunday in Lent. From now until Easter we intentionally follow the example of Jesus who was “ed by the Spirit into the wilderness where for forty days he was pursued by the tempter.

C.S. Lewis once said, “With the possible exception of the equator, everything begins somewhere.” This morning, we begin our Lenten journey, stepping into our own wilderness, taking time for self-reflection and self-examination. I want to share three stories to inform us as we begin this journey to grace… one from the Bible, one from Christian tradition, and one that continues to unfold in current events.

First, the familiar story from Luke’s Gospel. We remember that when Jesus began his journey with wilderness wanderings, he faced the challenges that were put forth by the tempter or the devil. According to the story Jesus was famished. The tempter came after him at a moment of vulnerability saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Like his ancestors who had survived on manna as they wandered in their own wilderness for forty years, Jesus could have eaten a month’s worth of manna and not had his fill. But standing on God’s Word… “one does not live on bread alone”… Jesus resisted temptation. A second time the tempter tried to cause Jesus to step off his journey’s path saying, “All the kingdoms of the world I will deliver up to you, if you worship me.” But again, Jesus stood firm on his faith in God and resisted temptation. The third and final temptation was the challenge to do something spectacular, confident in God’s protection, “Throw yourself off the pinnacle of the Temple. If you are the Son of God, the angels will be there.” But one more time, Jesus resisted, putting his faith in God and trusting the journey’s path and a disappointed devil finally left him alone. How we respond to temptation can be an act of faith.

The second story is from early Christian tradition. The story is told of a young monk, who in the fourth century, hungered for a deeper relationship with God. Fleeing the corrupting influence of society, John the Dwarf left temptation behind and set off on his own journey, making his home in a monastery in the desert of Egypt. There he prayed to God to remove all his passions… all of his yearnings. He believed that if he was free from the difficulties of life, he would be safe from the “devil” and “alive to God.” So, John the Dwarf asked God to take away all his feelings. He wanted to live without emotions.

According to the story, God answered John’s prayer and he stopped feeling. He stopped feeling everything. He became “passionless.” There among the other monks in that desert community, John boasted that he was without struggle… that he was “completely at peace.” He said, “God has removed from me all temptations. Nothing moves me.” Hearing this, some of his older and wiser companions on the journey told the young monk to go back to his cell and pray to God “to command some struggle be stirred up in you, for the soul is matured only in battle.” This was not at all what John the Dwarf expected to hear from his trusted companions but he respected their wisdom so he obeyed. He returned to his desert hut and asked God for something to struggle against, something to test him. Tradition tells us that God heard his prayer and put many temptations in front of John. But no matter how many or how hard the temptations, he never again asked for them to be removed. He simply prayed, “God, give me strength to get through.” How we respond to temptation can be an act of faith. (From a story told by William Mangrum in Seasons of the Spirit)

For the third story we listen in on the public statement that Tiger Wood made this past Friday concerning his inappropriate and hurtful behavior. – PLAY A PORTION OF THE VIDEO – How we respond to temptation can be an act of faith.

I would venture a guess that every one of us here can find ourselves in one of these stories. Oh, we don’t have to spend forty days in the wilderness being visited by the devil to come face-to-face with the temptation to put ourselves on equal footing with God. We don’t have to pray to God to remove all our passions… all our feelings… in order to be alive to God. We don’t have to commit adultery to stop living by the core values that we were taught to believe in. Being a child of God is no guarantee against temptation. We all struggle with who we are and how we behave. But, as people of faith, we believe that God does give us the strength to get us through.

The truth is this… we all stand in need of God’s grace. There are no guarantees against temptation and struggle in our lives. There are moments and there are experiences… there are situations and there are seasons… when every one of us here have convinced ourselves that normal rules don’t apply to us… when we have thought only of ourselves… when we have felt that we deserved to enjoy all the temptations around us… when we have failed to be the people that God created us to be. We all stand in need of God’s grace. Not one of us here can throw the first stone. Each one of us must pay attention to the log in our own eye instead of the speck in our neighbor’s. We all stand in need of God’s grace.

During Lent, we have the opportunity to examine our lives… our behaviors, our motives, our actions, our expectations. During Lent, we have the opportunity to reflect on all that tempts us to wander further into the wilderness. During Lent, we have the chance to start again on the path of forgiveness and grace.

When Tiger finished his public statement on Friday, his mother hugged him and whispered in his ear, “Never think you stand alone.” Then she told him that she loved him and that was more than enough. We are all children of God with one guarantee… we are not alone. Even when our failures seem immeasurable, God loves us beyond measure.

With the possible exception of the equator, everything does begin somewhere, so let us begin our Lenten journey right here and right now. Let us put our faith in God’s unconditional grace… that forgiving love that meets us where we are but does not leave us where it finds us. It is more than enough for the journey.