It is common during the season of Lent to read and meditate on the passage before us this morning, of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. Clearly, the 40 days in the wilderness is meant to evoke the image of God’s ancient people, Israel, wandering for 40 years in the wilderness - you may remember that those four decades come, remarkably, on the heels of their dramatic exodus from the chains of slavery. Tragically, having been set free from slavery in Egypt, God’s people of old exhibited the oh-so-human tendency to forget about God’s goodness, faithfulness, and love, about his power to redeem and about his concern that we humans live our lives in a certain kind of way that brings God’s goodness, peace, and justice to bear in this fallen world in a pattern that makes for human flourishing, our own and others. But the wilderness generation was just like the rest of us when they were showing what it looks like to be a broken and sinful people. They were demonstrating that the human condition is universally a broken mess; this mess is sometimes given the label, original sin. However, when we hear language like, original sin, it can be tempting to think of it as some sort of abstract concept like, in the words of one theologian, “a great metaphysical curse hanging over humanity”. But it is probably more helpful to talk about it in this way: Rowan Williams goes on to say, “there is a tangle that goes back to the very roots of humanity.... In humanity's history, the ingrained habit of turning inwards, turning in upon ourselves, is passed on. We learn what we want.... by watching someone else wanting it and competing for it. Before we begin to make choices, our options have been silently reduced in this way.... Our learning how to exist is mixed in with learning what does not make for our life or our joy. And every failure and wrong turn in the history of a person as in the history of our species locks us more and more firmly into ourselves. No wonder we drift further from peace, become less and less free to give. Something needs to reverse the flow, to break the cycle..... Only a human word, a human act will heal the process of human history; it isn't ideas and ideals that will do this, but some moment in history when relations are changed for good and all, when new things concretely become possible.”
That human act is Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. His human success in loving God in the wilderness is the beginning of that reversing of the flow that Williams talks about above. Jesus’ mission can be summarized in many ways but one way of talking about it is to say that he came to pioneer a new humanity, to put human beings in proper relationship with God and with each other by being in proper relationship to God and to his fellow human beings. (Ultimately, this mission would entail his death on the cross, which would also accomplish the forgiveness of ou sins. ) But back to the passage at hand: as a human being, his “saying no” to the devil in the wilderness is the first time a human had said an unmitigated yes to God since Adam’s and Eve’s fall from grace.
As the new Adam, the first representative of the New Exodus, he enters into the darkness of temptation in the wilderness so that we might know that he is near to us in our darkest moments. In our dark moments, he is there to break our cycles of self-destruction, to help us love others as we are meant to, to enable us to forgive those who hurt us, to be peacemakers in our families and communities. How about you and me this morning? Are you in the midst of a cycle that needs to be broken? If so, and we often are, Jesus is near you in your temptation and he is there to break that cycle for you and with you. Is there something in your life that you need to name and of which you need to repent hat is taking away your freedom to love others as you are meant to love them and want to love them? If so, Jesus is near to you and wants to help; will you ask him? Is temptation to bitterness and envy threatening not only to steal every ounce of joy from your life but ruin your friendships and work relationships? Have pride and self-sufficiency kept you from turning to God to ask him to help you grow into the person he wishes you to be? In all of these dark patterns, Jesus is near to you in any and every moment of your struggle to say yes to God; he is there to help you.
When you come to this communion table this morning, remember, “God has heard the cry of his people”. He is drawing near you - not in harsh judgment but in sympathetic love and with the power to redeem.
There are many different ways to summarize the gospel but one way to talk about it is as the response of God to the cries of those who are trapped in slavery. Slavery can take many forms. We talked about spiritual slavery, so to speak, before communion but the spiritual is never sealed off from the physical in scripture and God cares about what we do (and what others do) to our physical bodies.
The form slavery took among God’s ancient people at the time of the great Exodus from Egypt is similar to a great deal of the slavery that still goes on today. As I am sure most of you know, heinously, many millions of people today experience slavery through human trafficking, and various forced labor scenarios. It happens in the United States more than anyone usually wants to talk about; the most terrible and terrifying examples have to do with the trafficking of minors in prostitution - the ads for sex trafficking make media companies wealthy (e.g. lots of classifieds owned by ‘reputable companies’). What an awful situation!
When Jesus announced that he is preaching good news to the poor and to those who are
enslaved he has in mind people suffering at the margins of society and those who cannot really do much if anything to help themselves. He has in mind the people among us in the world today who are radically poor, enslaved, or at the margins of our world. One of the things that I wanted us to think about - and feel - on the way to communion this morning was that the good news of God’s coming kingdom is MEANT to feel liberating and compassionate to you. But how does that work out for those who are modern day slaves, or trapped in deep, multi-generational poverty. With regard to these people, we who have power and wealth have a large measure of responsibility as to whether or not we have made the gospel to be good to news to the poor or the exploited. Those of us with status and power must realize that the reason we have the resources of the world is to share them with those who do not. It is tempting to try to prescribe how to play this out in details but really I think with most of us we need to acquire or reacquire the discipline to realize moment by moment that we are here on this earth to join with Jesus on mission, to help those who have less than we do and to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves.
1. As mentioned above, Jesus’ unmitigated yes was the first in human history since “the fall”. What has Jesus’ yes made possible for us who are united in his life, death and resurrection? Maybe framing your answer in response to this passage would be an interesting exercise. Romans 6:1-7.
2. If we are free to say yes to God in Christ, why don’t we always say yes? Perhaps you might frame your response to this in light of this passage: 1 John 1: 5-10
3. In light of what was drawn out in the two meditations above, why is it important to know that Jesus has given us the power to say yes to God?
4. Can you think of something new you can do that will make the gospel to be good news for the poor and exploited?
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