Matthew 4:1-11
Jesus in the wilderness, tempted and we like to think this is like our wrestling with our own temptations. But what if it is more than that? What if we are meant to see more? The temptations have everything to do with using Jesus' Godly power to prove, how godly he is, but he doesn't. Instead he remembers who he is and what he was sent for.
Yesterday we drove through fields in Arkansas. Some were brown, some had brown grass, and then we would hit a green field. Now in Maine when the green is uncovered it is such a contrast from the whiteness we have been through, it's different. Here seeing the green fields today seemed like turning color on when all has been dull and dreary. It's like opening your eyes and seeing real color for the first time. It's surreal.
This is what this passage is to me. Power is not a bad thing, but it is something we all need to be aware of. Especially when people don't realize if they possess it and how they are abusing it. This week I have heard people use "God on their side" in politics so much it has made me upset. First of all God is not a weapon to make us right. In Ana Levy-Lyons book No Other Gods she explains this as using God's name in vain. Because we have manipulated peoples emotions and ties to God. Worship me and you can have it all. Isn't it just the same skewed take? We are using God to gain our own rightness and others are wrong, not only wrong, but spiritually wrong if they oppose us. What are we thinking?
Secondly when we use God to defend our position we are justifying ourselves, not anything God has ordained. EGO stands for Edging God Out as the author of St. Benedict's Toolbox puts it. Just yesterday I read the beautiful Isaiah 58 passage which speaks of how Israel can become God's light to the nations. It isn't in power or strength. "If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger" then the next if's deal with feeding the hungry, taking care of the afflicted, and then comes the lovely part, then your light shall rise and you will be a watered garden, repairers of the breach. It's a beautiful picture of what can be.
Pointing the finger and saying shame on you, God is on my side does not facilitate this dream of God's. We say we are powerful because of God at our own peril. God is powerful in the weakest, loveliest things I have seen and experienced and they don't yell out they are God's power, they are silent, soft, even tender. The green grass is just one of those silent and lovely signs.
One of the first things we learn in Clinical Pastoral Education is to recognize when someone is surrendering their power to you because it is dangerous if you don't. You can think you are their answer. In these past few days we have seen this to be true as allegations of sexual misconduct have rocked the spiritual community of L'Arche and this community as well. Someone used their power over someone else to do harm. In the case of Jean Varnier it was in using God and spiritual guidance to force women to do things they didn't want to do.
The whole message of the cross is in turning power upside down. It is because Jesus chooses not to use his power today to encourage his own ego and chosen status that we have any chance of understanding what harm we are inflicting when we say God is on our side, or God ordained us only to live this way and no other. Every story in the Old Testament is about the hard road people have when they really do what God imagines. Bearing children in old age, travels to unsafe places, trusting when it appears death is only in store, and then the prophets who remind us time and again how far we have come.
Maybe this Lent is a good time for us to look at our fascination with power and righteousness in using God's name to get what we want. We need to look at why we want this guarantee of what God imagines. Because the God I have come to know doesn't offer us easy answers. The God I know asks us to struggle with God's dream, because we don't dream that big or wide. The God I know asks us to look at weakness and see beauty. The God I know emptied himself and served others, even to a cross of death. And then when he rose on the third day didn't unleash his power to punish all the wrong people. No again he served those who were weak and afraid, so they could see the strength in losing everything to gain it all. Like a blade of beautiful green grass.
Jesus in the wilderness, tempted and we like to think this is like our wrestling with our own temptations. But what if it is more than that? What if we are meant to see more? The temptations have everything to do with using Jesus' Godly power to prove, how godly he is, but he doesn't. Instead he remembers who he is and what he was sent for.
Yesterday we drove through fields in Arkansas. Some were brown, some had brown grass, and then we would hit a green field. Now in Maine when the green is uncovered it is such a contrast from the whiteness we have been through, it's different. Here seeing the green fields today seemed like turning color on when all has been dull and dreary. It's like opening your eyes and seeing real color for the first time. It's surreal.
This is what this passage is to me. Power is not a bad thing, but it is something we all need to be aware of. Especially when people don't realize if they possess it and how they are abusing it. This week I have heard people use "God on their side" in politics so much it has made me upset. First of all God is not a weapon to make us right. In Ana Levy-Lyons book No Other Gods she explains this as using God's name in vain. Because we have manipulated peoples emotions and ties to God. Worship me and you can have it all. Isn't it just the same skewed take? We are using God to gain our own rightness and others are wrong, not only wrong, but spiritually wrong if they oppose us. What are we thinking?
Secondly when we use God to defend our position we are justifying ourselves, not anything God has ordained. EGO stands for Edging God Out as the author of St. Benedict's Toolbox puts it. Just yesterday I read the beautiful Isaiah 58 passage which speaks of how Israel can become God's light to the nations. It isn't in power or strength. "If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger" then the next if's deal with feeding the hungry, taking care of the afflicted, and then comes the lovely part, then your light shall rise and you will be a watered garden, repairers of the breach. It's a beautiful picture of what can be.
Pointing the finger and saying shame on you, God is on my side does not facilitate this dream of God's. We say we are powerful because of God at our own peril. God is powerful in the weakest, loveliest things I have seen and experienced and they don't yell out they are God's power, they are silent, soft, even tender. The green grass is just one of those silent and lovely signs.
One of the first things we learn in Clinical Pastoral Education is to recognize when someone is surrendering their power to you because it is dangerous if you don't. You can think you are their answer. In these past few days we have seen this to be true as allegations of sexual misconduct have rocked the spiritual community of L'Arche and this community as well. Someone used their power over someone else to do harm. In the case of Jean Varnier it was in using God and spiritual guidance to force women to do things they didn't want to do.
The whole message of the cross is in turning power upside down. It is because Jesus chooses not to use his power today to encourage his own ego and chosen status that we have any chance of understanding what harm we are inflicting when we say God is on our side, or God ordained us only to live this way and no other. Every story in the Old Testament is about the hard road people have when they really do what God imagines. Bearing children in old age, travels to unsafe places, trusting when it appears death is only in store, and then the prophets who remind us time and again how far we have come.
Maybe this Lent is a good time for us to look at our fascination with power and righteousness in using God's name to get what we want. We need to look at why we want this guarantee of what God imagines. Because the God I have come to know doesn't offer us easy answers. The God I know asks us to struggle with God's dream, because we don't dream that big or wide. The God I know asks us to look at weakness and see beauty. The God I know emptied himself and served others, even to a cross of death. And then when he rose on the third day didn't unleash his power to punish all the wrong people. No again he served those who were weak and afraid, so they could see the strength in losing everything to gain it all. Like a blade of beautiful green grass.
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