Fifth Sunday in Lent Yr A March 26 2023

Fifth Sunday in Lent Yr A March 26 2023

Ezekiel 37:1-14, Romans 8:6-11, John 11:1-45, Psalm 130

 

God gives God’s beloved’s a second chance, new life, and resurrection. It is only through love and connection, and the One who calls us into integration, wholeness, and healing, that we can be saved from ourselves and the beasts without and within. It is love that makes us human and it is love that connects us to God. Hope is where God reaches out to humanity to lift us out of our disintegration into wholeness with God and healing with one another. In Ezekiel’s vision that we read today, The Valley of Dry Bones, is demonstrated how God, THE powerful integrating force in the universe, will always bring the beloved back from oblivion, even if the beloved is the one responsible for running headlong into oblivion in the first place.

 

God raises new life out of what looks like death. Both in the Ezekiel story and the gospel story God brings new life out of death. And that new life comes from God in our midst, God who stoops into our reality. Jesus calls us to community, and connection. Jesus calls us to belonging and that belonging gives us our identity, as God’s beloveds. God can raise the dead, God can put us back together again so that we may be reconfigured as the body of Christ. In a political climate of division, and a cultural climate of hate, God calls us to be raised to new life. May it be so. 

 

The gospel story we have before us today pulls many threads together, of what we have been hearing all through Lent. This is a healing story, a miracle story, a story that shows us who Jesus is.

 

I think of Mary and Martha as good friends of mine. Mary and Martha are women who cook and clean and read, they are women who are committed to Jesus. I think the reason they seem like good friends of mine is that we do the same things, it seems like we share the same interests and concerns. Martha is concerned about the perfume that Mary used to anoint Jesus’ feet, she wonders if that wasn’t a bit extravagant. Martha also is concerned that Mary tends to act more like a disciple of Jesus, than the single girl that she is. Martha seems practical that way, Mary a bit more excessive, a bit overgenerous. Sometimes I wish I were a bit more like my friend Mary, and a bit less like my friend Martha.

 

So the sadness that Martha and Mary have experienced at the death of their brother Lazarus, seems passionate and powerful. Especially since they called on their friend Jesus to come and heal their brother, and Jesus didn’t come. He didn’t come when their brother lay dying, Jesus broke the rules about always coming to the funeral, he missed his friend Lazarus’ funeral. Finally, four days after Lazarus has been laid in the tomb, Jesus comes.

 

Martha runs out to him in the depths of her grief and anger, screaming and hollering, why weren’t you here earlier? You could have done something about this, now Lazarus lies rotting in that tomb. Why, did he have to die? Why didn’t you come? Why…

 

Questions we all ask at the death of a friend, at the death of a loved one. The sorrow and grief of our friends becomes our sorrow and grief too. This story of Mary and Martha proves that being a follower of Jesus is in no way a guarantee against pain and tragedy. There is no one on earth whose righteousness, wisdom, hard work, or good planning will preserve her from seeing the depths that Martha sees. Good people become widows and orphans. Good people die, and much too soon. It’s a fact, and no less of a fact for Jesus’ coming. 

 

But there is something else. We can cry to God from the depths. There is no depth, no loss, no tragedy, no disease or death, nothing on heaven or on earth or under the earth that can place the world or anyone in it beyond God’s redemption. Good people become widows and orphans, good people are killed in accidents, good people die from disease, good people die at a young age. But God defends the widow and the orphan, and will not leave those God loves bereft. And God loves everyone of us, God's love wins.

 

God will not leave us filled with a sense of loss, God will not leave us. You see, that’s what was, is, and will be accomplished in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. God loves us, God loves all creation. And God, master of the universe, creator of all that is seen and unseen, gave up all power and came into this world as one of us, just like you and me. Jesus. God in our midst. And Jesus stood with our friends Mary and Martha, and wept at the death of his friend, Lazarus. Jesus didn’t take the pain away from our friends, Jesus doesn’t take the pain away from us, but Jesus stands by our side, right in the very midst of us, and feels the pain and the sorrow along with us. This is a God in whom I can place my faith, my trust, just like my friends Martha and Mary. 

 

And this is the place we find ourselves today, the last Sunday before Jesus’ journey takes him to Jerusalem, the city in which he will be put to death for his radical ideas of love and inclusion. We find ourselves in this place of sadness, loss, pain and sorrow. A place of isolation, and of alienation. It is a place where we will spend much of our time until the day of resurrection.

 

When we are in a place of sadness, of loneliness, or a place of alienation it seems as it if will never come to a conclusion, the isolation, the sadness, the loneliness, will never end. But that is what our heart desires, conclusion and reconciliation. Being once again brought back into the web of relationship in which the yearning of our heart is fulfilled. A place of solace and of strength, a place of pardon and renewal.

 

You may be in that place of loneliness and alienation right now. Some of you may be isolated in your relationships; some of you may be experiencing broken relationships. Some of you may feel alienated from the people around you, people at school or at work. Good and true relationships are so very hard in this world where perceived perfection can be accomplished through surgery, implants and pills, and where contingency and transaction are prioritized above authenticity and integrity.

 

Our cries to God do not go unheard. It is into this muck and mess that Jesus has come. This is the very place where Jesus comes to prove that we were created in God’s image, we are marked and chosen, we are claimed as God's own, we are the delight of God’s life. It is into this place of loneliness and alienation that Jesus comes and says you are not alone, you are never alone, I am with you, you belong to me, and I am here in those who surround you to show you the way. 

 

But, this story doesn’t end there. This story goes on. Jesus calls Lazarus out of his tomb, against the better judgment of our friends Mary and Martha, who know full well that after four days in the tomb this will not be pleasant. But the gospel writer John always points to God, and this story is no different. It is for the glory of God that Jesus calls Lazarus, who is deader than dead, out of the tomb. It is to show Mary and Martha, you and I, all who were gathered there that day, and all who hear this story over the millennia, that it is through God that creation has new life, that creation is brought back into right relationship with its creator. It is through God that we no longer live in isolation, we no longer are alienated from God and from one another, death does not separate us from God or from one another. God’s love for you is abundant, just like the perfume Mary poured out on Jesus is abundant and extravagant. Just like the time to come when Jesus washes the disciples’ feet. 

 

After we have become convinced that all is lost, when we are ready to concede to death, Jesus demonstrates that there is no loss, no death, no tragedy, no depth, no power in heaven or on earth or under the earth that can place a person, a situation, or a world beyond God’s redemption, beyond the reach of infinite love and abundant life, and belonging. You are God’s beloved disciple, and God's love wins, all the time. Amen.

Fourth Sunday in Lent Yr A March 19 2023

Marketplace in Jerusalem

Fourth Sunday in Lent Yr A March 19 2023

1 Samuel 16:1-13, Ephesians 5:8-14, John 9:1-41, Psalm 23

 

Imagine yourself as one of the disciples, walking down the street and into the marketplace with Jesus. It’s a noisy, hot and busy place, everyone gathers, does business, sits in the shade drinking the original chai, that is tea, black and strong. Actually, that’s everyone with status and power. But the marketplace is also the place where the poor, the crippled, the blind, go to beg. 

 

Jesus sees a blind man, and stops. Rather than giving thanks for the wonder of the day, the first thing out of the mouth of the disciple who asked is, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? And Jesus’ answer is that this man’s blindness is not due to his parents’ sin or his own sin. In fact, to Jesus, this is not about sin at all. Many people of Jesus’ time thought that a physical ailment was because of your own sin or the sin of your parent’s. But for Jesus it’s not about sin at all; it’s about something else entirely. 

 

Jesus heals this blind man. So here is a man who has just had his sight restored, truly a miracle, and all the disciples can talk about is whether this man is the man who used to sit and beg. They really can’t quite place him, even after he says who he is, even after all the years they’ve probably walked by him in the marketplace. They want to take him to his parents’ house so that his parents can identify him, and then his parents don’t seem to be overjoyed at the miracle either, they don’t want much to do with their son, to do so risks being thrown out of their synagogue. 

 

Eventually the conversation turns to who the man is who healed the blind man, and the formerly blind man says, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes.” It is an astonishing thing that they don’t know who Jesus is; and, that Jesus healed this man who they all know was blind. They just don’t believe him. 

 

I think this is a story about who is really blind; it is a story about seeing and not seeing. Jesus saw a man blind from birth. The disciples looked right through the blind man, they had seen him sitting in the same place for years, but had never really seen him. When Jesus healed the blind man, the blind man saw Jesus for who he really is, the One who is from God. The Pharisees could neither see the blind man, nor could they see that the one who healed the blind man is the One who is from God. The blind man is the one who sees, the disciples and the Pharisees are the ones who are blind.

 

What is it that we are not seeing? What is it that makes us blind? All of us are born blind in one way or another. Some of us have blindness of body: a crippling disease, cancer, diabetes, or bad bones. Some of us have blindness of heart, and that is a terrible blindness. The blind of heart can’t love another beyond a superficial level and usually can’t even love themselves. The blind of heart often live lives corroded with addictions to material things, possessions, and work, to cover up the empty hole. And worst of all is blindness of the soul, which wraps all the rest of life in gloomy darkness.

 

We have our screens in front of our faces much of the time. Our phones, our tablets, our laptops. Are we blind to the people in our lives? Do we ever say to ourselves, “I just can’t see my way through this.”

 

Or maybe we are blind to our own self-indulgence. The messages we constantly get are messages of possession and consumption. Competition for our dollars spurs services to charge millions of dollars for seconds of advertising time, advertising that forms us into people who believe that the aim of our life is to acquire more, to have bigger, better, newer.

 

Or maybe we are blind to our own pessimism. This culture of fear we live in has a tendency to take our hope away. Sometimes it is difficult to see who we really are, people who are claimed and marked by God, delight of God’s life. Perhaps we are blind to the pain of a neighbor’s sorrow, or the loneliness of a child, or the needs of a spouse. Perhaps we are blind to the other who is different, whose life seems so foreign to our own, that we just don’t understand. Sometimes we are so wrapped up in making a living, pursuing the good life, or running from our fears that we just don’t see. 

 

Jesus notices our blindness. Jesus sees. Jesus invites us to see. Jesus invites us to see with our very blind eyes, with our wounds and brokenness. Jesus uses our weaknesses as grace. Today we have this gift of seeing each other in really new ways. Seeing both need and generosity.

 

I wonder if we are being called to be healed of our own blindness, As we prepare for celebrating the life, death and resurrection of Jesus in the bread broken for us, as we celebrate that through Jesus we come to see others, all creation, and ourselves as wonderful gifts and people who belong to God. This is the Good News that shines brightly through our blindness. The Good News that we are God’s beloved, our identity rests in Jesus. Jesus has offered us a new view of life, death and resurrection. We have been called and claimed, but not because of distinctions, achievements, family lineage, or personal attractiveness, not because God sees us as any more beautiful or deserving as anyone else. God’s love is blind to such plastic categories. 

 

We have been called and claimed despite our tendency to blindness. We have been called and claimed even though we trip over those we cannot see. We have been called and claimed despite looking directly at someone, and not seeing who they are, their pain and suffering, or their joy. 

 

But, in this new view of life, we recognize that life, death and resurrection mean that we must really look at people, and that we take a new look at ourselves. It takes time to see clearly, and we must be patient in our recovery. Our vision is changed in these days. 

 

When we see with the healed eyes that Jesus gives us, we will recognize that each and every one of us is a wonderful creation of God. When we look into the eyes of our neighbor, we may see a person who is hurting and lonely just like us; and we may see a person who is blessed and joyful, just like us. When we look into the eyes of the one who we think is wrong, we may recognize a person who has come to their convictions by way of hurt and sorrow, just like us. When we look into the eyes of the one we hate, we will recognize someone who God loves, just like us. 

 

And when someone looks into your eyes, do they recognize who you truly are, a new creation, a person healed and transformed through love by God? Someone who belongs to God, and whose identity is in Jesus? Can they see your life, can they see your struggle, can they see your sadness, can they see your joy, can they see your integrity, do they recognize you, washed in the waters of baptism, clean and pure, a reflection of the creator God.

 

Do they see one whose life, right now, attests to Jesus, the light of the world? Do they see that you love Jesus? Do they see that you follow Jesus? When someone looks into your eyes, do they recognize mercy, compassion, justice, forgiveness, healing?

 

In what ways, during the rest of this Lent, can you open your eyes to Jesus? In what ways, during the rest of this Lent, may you be healed of your blindness?

 

Lord God, heal our vision, so that we may see you more clearly, right here, right now. Amen.

 

Third Sunday in Lent Yr A March 12 2023

Third Sunday in Lent Yr A March 12 2023

Exodus 17:1-7, Romans 5:1-11, John 4:5-42, Psalm 95

 

This story from the gospel of John is amazing. I think it is one of the most important stories of the entire collection of stories we have about Jesus. Just imagine the setting. Noon. In the desert. Absolutely the hottest time of the day. The sun blazes, the ground is dry and baked solid, any bodies outside are parched. Nobody would go out at that time; everyone would stay in their cool stone homes and siesta until the day grew cooler. And yet, here we are, at the center of the village, a lone woman, and Jesus. Neither of them belonged there. Neither of them should have been speaking to the other.

 

Jesus, a good Jew sits at the well, he is terribly thirsty, his throat is dry and scratchy; he has just arrived at this well after walking miles in the desert, in a foreign land, to get there. He sits at the well, but does not have a bucket or dipper to get any water. 

 

She arrives, bucket on her head, dipper in her hand, a Samaritan woman. She may have spent her morning cooking over an outdoor fire and washing clothes in her bucket of water. This Jewish man asks this Samaritan woman for a drink of water. 

 

This is a scandalous encounter. Two circumstances make it scandalous. First, it is scandalous because they are a man and a woman, at a chance meeting at a well, and he speaks to her. She has a reputation, otherwise she would not be at the well in the heat of the day. The women would go to the well in the cool of the morning and evening. She was there in the heat of the middle of the day so she did not have to encounter the jeers and catcalls of the others in the village. The story says that she has had five husbands and she is living with a man who is not a husband. This status does not make her promiscuous, but what is true is that the only way for a woman to be protected in this society was to be attached to a man. To be unattached is certain abuse and maybe even death. And yet, a man could discard a woman by just saying so. We just don't know and should not make assumptions. But what we do know is that men and women just did not talk to one another in public. This is in violation of the Law they both lived by. 

 

Secondly, he is a Jew, and she, a Samaritan. The enmity between Jews and Samaritans is notorious. They traced their lineage similarly through Rachel and Jacob, Sarah and Abraham, and Miriam and Moses, but a split had caused them to worship in two different places, the Jews in Jerusalem, the Samaritans at Mt. Gerizim. Each tribe devoted to its own place of worship, and completely intolerant of the other. Intolerance is an understatement here. These tribes fought and killed each other over the proper place to worship. 

 

A Jewish man, a Samaritan woman, and he asks her for a drink of water. She states the obvious. "Sir, you have no bucket, how did you expect to get that living water?" He responds by describing the spring of water that gushes up to eternal life, and that will quench the thirst eternally. There is no turning back from this scandalous encounter. She places her tentative trust in him, "Sir," she says, "give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty again." She already has a glimpse of that eternal life which is now, that new life that gives us glimpses of the kingdom. And instead of judgment from Jesus, Jesus knows who she is and shows her she has value, and she remembers the truth of whom she is, God's beloved, marked and claimed by God. Her belonging and identity are in God. This living water and living word, transform her. Jesus gives her freedom and gives her community freedom to know who Jesus is, to remember who she is, and to remember whom they are. This is the longest conversation in the whole gospel, a conversation that is transforming, a conversation that calls her to be who she is called to be, a conversation about belonging. 

 

Because of her openness and wonder, she goes away with such excitement she forgets her water jug. She says to the people who have been deriding her “Come see a man who knew all about the things I did, who knows me inside and out. Do you think this could be the Messiah?” And they went out to see for themselves. 

 

Jesus says to her, “I see you.” The world had convinced her of the lie that she was worthless, that she was a throw away, that she was unlovable. She is out on the margins in her world. In the living water of this well, Jesus reminds her who she really is. Jesus has room for her, the circle is wide. She is God's beloved, marked and claimed as God's own forever. And that changes her life. This encounter, Jesus' words and the life-giving water have literally restored her to new life. She was dead, dead to her community, dead to her family, dead to herself. Until in the water, Jesus reminded her, and she remembered she was God's beloved, marked and claimed as God's own forever. 

 

It happens to us too, all the time. We begin to believe the lies of the world, the lies about who we are. You are worthless, you can't do anything right. Your happiness is dependent on how much money you make. You will be successful when you have a good job, you will be successful when you command a big staff. You will be happy when you feel good, so go ahead, take the purple pill, change the way you look, drink the whole bottle. 

 

We forget so quickly that we are God's beloved, marked and claimed as God's own forever. That we belong to God, and living in relationship with Jesus is our identity. The living water reminds us that we don't have to be perfect, because we are perfectly loved. And when we miss the mark, we fall on our knees, ask for forgiveness, are reminded that we are human, and do it differently the next time.

 

And that changes our lives, just as it changed the life of the woman at the well. We are freed from the constant need to be perfect, or to be something that we are not, we are freed to be loved completely and absolutely. We are put back together, made whole, healed. 

 

She leaves her bucket at the well, goes into the city and tells everyone about the man she met at the well, and that this man sees her. He is the I am, the One sent from God. 

 

Each time we come here, to this place, we encounter Jesus. Each time we confess all that we have done, and all that we have left undone, we encounter Jesus. Each time we come to this table to eat and to drink we encounter Jesus. Each time we put our hand in that water, and splash it on our face and hands, each time we baptize another child, we remember who we are, God's beloved, marked and claimed.

 

The woman at this well encountered Jesus, she received grace and love, and remembered that in her brokenness, she was perfectly loved. She received grace and love, and living water, and went to tell all that would listen that she met the One sent from God. May we be like the woman at the well and go out and tell everyone of the Good News of Jesus, the One who knows our truth and loves us nevertheless. 

Second Sunday of Lent Yr A March 5 2023

Second Sunday of Lent Yr A March 5 2023

Genesis 12:1-4a, Romans 4:1-5, 13-17, John 3:1-17, Psalm 121

 

The theme we are exploring this Lent is discipleship, what I call following Jesus. I wonder what following Jesus really looks like? Why do we bother, every Sunday, every Wednesday, coming here, to this place to worship a God we cannot see? It would be so much easier to be out with the others, drinking good coffee at our favorite coffee place, reading our newspaper, eating a wonderful confection for breakfast. Or sleeping in late on a Sunday morning, what’s that like? Or reading a good book or hanging out with kids and partner after a long and grueling week. And yet we are here. I don’t think it’s because I compel you to be here, I have thought about preaching hell and damnation if you don’t come, hoping to increase our numbers, but I don’t. I can’t honestly do that because I don’t think it’s right or true. Coming here on Sunday mornings, being together, participating in good music, prayers, bread and wine, body and blood, is not about hell and damnation, it’s not even about life after death, it’s all about new life in the here and now. 

 

According to John, it’s about being born anew. It’s about belonging and identity as God’s beloveds. Belonging is to have the sense of being born again, being born anew. That is what makes us followers of Jesus, that’s what makes us disciples. So what about the eternal life that Jesus talks about with Nicodemus in our story this morning. Eternal life is not about heaven. We live in chronological time, we are conceived, we are born into the world, we grow, we age, and we die. The story we hear from the gospel of John today seems to, and all the other stories as well seem to show a time that is not chronological, or chronos. The stories in the bible speak about God’s time, they show us kairos, not chronos. The word eternal in today’s gospel doesn’t mean forever. It isn’t a uniform measurement of time like days and years marching endlessly into some unknown or even known future. That’s a category or concept that we really don’t even find in the bible. Eternal, as in whoever believes in him may have eternal life, doesn’t mean the literal passing of time, it means transcending time, or wrinkling time, or layering time. It is kairos, belonging to another realm or reign altogether. It means belonging to God’s realm. That is where heaven comes in. When Jesus talked about heaven, he was talking about our present, eternal, intense, real experiences of joy, peace, and love in this life, this side of death and in whatever is to come. Heaven for Jesus wasn’t just someday; it was and is a present reality. Jesus blurs our lines, inviting Nicodemus, and us, into the merging of heaven and earth, the future and the present, here and now, out of the dark and into the light to be born again, born anew, into this new relationship.

 

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Why do we come here each Sunday morning to sing songs of praise, to worship, to encounter God’s word, to be with each other, to be fed by God’s body and blood? Because new life in Christ demands it. Because the response to God’s amazing creation, God’s amazing love and grace is to give thanks, because the response to God’s amazing gift of life and love is to rise up in prayer and song, and to fall on our knees in awe. And because it’s not about any one of us individually, it’s about us together.

 

Some Christians have co-opted this language of being born again and have made it into a one time and exclusive deal. If you say a particular set of words you have access to some sort of life after death that means you will spend eternity in heaven, as opposed to hell. However, that really doesn’t seem to be what Jesus talks about or is concerned about. Jesus seems to be much more interested in the here and now, and the new life that is available to everyone, but especially people who are suffering, in pain, and on the margins. Jesus gave his life for this new life; Jesus walked a road of pain and suffering, for what? So that some people could have comfort in an afterlife, and so that most people who don’t have access will spend life after death in a place called hell? I don’t think so.

 

God’s amazing and abundant love is available to all, that’s what Jesus’ life, suffering, death and resurrection makes real. There is no exclusivity to it; all of scripture shows us that. That’s why I come here, Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. Not because it’s an exclusive club, but because together we give thanks for this amazing gift, because together we recognize our need for forgiveness so that we can realize fully the love that God has for us, because together we are fed and nourished so that we may feed and nourish others. We belong here, to God.

 

We are born again. In the midst of the pain and tragedy of this life, Jesus walks with us. In the midst of the pain and suffering of our lives, Jesus walks with us. Jesus doesn’t take that pain and suffering away, often we wish he would, Jesus carries the burden with us. The work that Jesus does in life and death, and resurrection, is to absorb all that pain and suffering, violence and hatred, and defeat it with the power of God’s amazing and abundant love.

 

You and I have access to that new life, to that amazing love, right here and right now. We are born again and again and again. It’s not about a one-time deal; it’s not one moment in time. It’s a process of belonging and identity that manifests in our baptism, when we are claimed and marked as Christ’s own, and it keeps happening, with cycles of acceptance and resistance, epiphany and doubt. We keep coming to church and we keep being fed and nourished because this journey is messy and unclear. We glimpse the new life that is right in front of us at one moment, and then we miss it, again we miss the mark, we lose the trail, we wander in the wilderness, and we come back to be fed and nourished and find our way again.

 

And as we are fed and nourished, we go out and feed and nourish others, we witness to God’s love and provision. And in the end, and in the beginning, and in the middle, that is what following Jesus is about, that is what this journey is about. It is about responding to the amazing love that God has for each and every one of us and for all of us, it is about the new life, the eternal life, the life of here and now, that is available to all of us. In the messiness of our lives, in the good and bad choices we make, in the pain and tragedy of human action and inaction, and in the pain and tragedy of disease, God’s amazing and abundant love is available to Abraham who lived in a land that worshiped gods who were not the One God, it is available to Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews, it is available to the Samaritan woman at the well, it is available to the man born blind, it is available to Lazarus and Martha and Mary, all outsiders, all people on the margins, and all who never said the words, I accept Jesus as my personal lord and savior. And this same amazing and abundant love is available to you, and to me and to all of us.

 

Jesus walked this journey to show us the truth of God’s love for us. We walk this journey so that we may live this truth of God’s love for all. Thanks be to God.

 

First Sunday in Lent Year A Feb 26 2023

First Sunday in Lent Year A Feb 26 2023

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7, Romans 5:12-19, Matthew 4:1-11, Psalm 32

 

The truth of the gospel is that it tells us who we are and whose we are. We are God’s beloved, marked and claimed as God’s own. God’s deepest desire is to be in relationship with us. And yet, we don’t believe it. We let all sorts of voices convince us that we are not good enough, not smart enough, not pretty enough, not wealthy enough… so why would God, the creator of all that is seen and unseen, want to be in relationship with me. 

 

Our sacred story shows us over and over that God’s heart’s desire is to love us into wholeness, love us into compassion, love us into mercy and justice, every one of us. And God shows us that desire by being born into our world, living and loving and suffering and dying. Jesus lives this life, just like you and me. God’s heart’s desire is to be in relationship with us. We are included in God’s web of love, we belong in God’s web of love, our identity is God’s beloved.

 

That’s why this story from Matthew is so very important for us to hear. Jesus has just been baptized by John, the Spirt of God descends like a dove, and a voice from heaven says, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” This is Jesus’ identity, and this is our identity. We are God’s beloveds, with no caveats, no conditions, and no quid pro quos. 

 

This story that takes place in the wilderness, this story of Jesus and the devil, is the second great quid pro quo Satan offers, the first was in the garden of Eden. In the garden, the devil said to the people, God’s first creations, “if you eat from this tree, the one God told you not to eat from, then I (the devil) will make you like God.” The devil says, “if you do what I ask you to do, then you will have everything you think you want, power, beauty, knowledge, control, riches.” 

 

You know all of these things seem good, but really are illusory. A little like catching fireflies, they are brilliant to watch, but as soon as you try to keep them in a jar as your own, they die and all you have is dead bugs. 

 

Well, the devil was fairly successful in that garden of Eden story, and humans have been grappling with the seduction of the devil ever since. You and I know this voice of transaction very well. If you just have this one drink, I promise you will feel so much better. If you tell this one lie, you’ll get that job you want. If you cheat on this test, you’ll get that better grade and then everyone will get off your back. We are seduced by what we think we want, what we think will make us happy. And the rub is that whatever it is, in the moment seems so good, so right.

 

That is exactly what is happening with Jesus. THE quid pro quo, If you do this Jesus, then I will give you power and glory, and you will have command of all that bows down before you. 

 

I’m reminded of Edmund, in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, one of the books in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. Edmund is the third child in a family of four children. He is overshadowed by his older brother Peter, and Edmund suffers from a lack of confidence that contributes to a rather unfortunate series of decisions. When the children enter the land of Narnia through the wardrobe, they encounter eternal winter, brought on by the despicable Queen. The Queen approaches Edmund and tempts him with the sugary concoction, Turkish delight, and some warm and wonderful hot cocoa as well. Thus begins Edmund’s turn toward the despicable Queen, and away from the Lion Aslan, his brother and sisters, and all that represents. 

 

You see, just about without an exception, temptation looks and feels delicious. It is part of our very humanity to seek out that which we believe is positive, pleasurable, and good. We always embark on the road to perdition with the belief that it is in fact a good. That is the nature of seduction. It begins with a beautiful face, it begins with a ripe red apple, it begins with mouthwatering tastiness, it begins with the promise of relief, escape, pleasure, it begins in wonder and amazement, but many times it does not end well. And yet, often we are powerless to know it or to see it. 

 

The great seducer in our gospel today shows Jesus three wonderful and amazing things. First, stones that may become bread. It may be hard to imagine yourself as Jesus, or not, but try for a moment. You are concerned about poverty and starvation all over the known world. Your instructions to those who follow you are to feed the hungry; over and over you ask your friends and followers to feed the hungry. And here you are presented with a solution to world hunger. Command these stones to become bread. That’s it, that’s all it takes. There are enough stones in the world if they all became bread there would be no child going to bed hungry at night. Who wouldn’t say yes? Feeding people is good, isn’t it? The devil tries to seduce Jesus into thinking that God is not capable of providing. But Jesus knows differently, you and I know differently. We already read the story of the loaves and fishes. 

 

Second, ultimate safety. If you were unable to be hurt, you would be able to continue to relieve world hunger forever and for always? If you were unable to be hurt, you would be able to love everyone all the time? If you are unable to be hurt, you would not have to go to the cross to die? Sounds like a good, doesn’t it? 

 

Third, authority. Everyone and everything answering to you. With ultimate authority, everyone would follow your rules and your rules are good rules. Love your neighbor, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned. The world would be perfect if you were in charge. 

 

What’s so wrong with this scene? Nothing at all. Nothing at all. That is the nature of seduction. It looks so good. It tastes so good. It feels so good. It must be right. We are human after all. What makes this story so powerful is that we have been there. Each and every one of us has been there; we may even be there yet today. This is about Jesus, and it is about each of us. You see, decisions aren’t usually black and white, right or wrong, obvious or clear, and don’t let anyone seduce you into thinking that it is. This journey of life is full of choices, which is God’s gift to us, choice, and a pile of love to go with it, because we know that God's love wins. Even Jesus had the choice, the choice to follow the seducer, the choice to give in to the pain and suffering of his journey, the choice to walk away from the cross. 

 

This is a story about Jesus’ identity, about our identity. And like Jesus, we belong to the God who loves us. God gives us the choice, and with the choice is unconditional love. Not transactional love, not a quid pro quo, but a relationship of love, of mercy, of compassion, of hope. Because even when we are seduced by the power, the riches, the control, God loves us. And God says to us, lay it down, it’s killing you, you are forgiven, you are my beloved. 

 

Thanks be to God.