Temptation
J. Kirk Richards
As I
always say on the first day of Lent,
When
we say the word temptation
we’re
usually thinking of two things:
either
lust or really fattening dessert.
Either
way, it’s one specific moment or action.
Something, one specific thing, that we want to
do but shouldn’t do
And
sure that’s part of temptation.
But
I think that aspect of temptation
is domesticated
and simplified.
But
Jesus is tempted here
by
more subtle and crafty things than lust and dessert.
Jesus
is tempted by food, yes, but just bread
after
not having eaten for 40 days
So
he’s tempted with not starving.
He’s
tempted by the protection of angels.
and
he’s tempted by having possession of
all
the kingdoms of the world.
Basically,
Jesus is tempted by, what the devil
temps
most people with, which is control and power.
When
you think about it, that is the biggest temptation:
control
and power. As people of faith, we are supposed to believe
and
we try to remind ourselves, that God is in control.
But
really, we want to be in control of our lives and destinies,
and
as humans, we want to be in control of other people too.
Even
if you look at the story in Genesis that is so familiar.
The
temptation isn’t really the mysterious fruit, it’s that it’s
the
fruit from the “tree of knowledge of good and evil”
which
some scholars say the phrase actually
means
“the knowledge of everything”, and some scholars say
that good and evil are better
translated as “superior” and “inferior”
which
leads them to believe that the phrase actually means the
“power
to administer reward and punishment”
which
means power over people.
Power
over everything is a temptation for us as humans.
And one of the easiest ways we get that power is by excluding people.
We discover
this power very early and it can be addictive.
Ladies and gentlemen: the story you are about to hear is true.
Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.
When
I was young, about 8 or 9, I secretly bought a gold fish
without
my parents knowing.
Remember,
it was the 70’s and we were all latch key kids,
so that’s how this whole story was possible.
So I bought the fish and I put it in a container in my closet to
hide it from
my parents. And then I told a select group of kids about it.
And
the ones I told wanted to go up to my closet and look at it.
And
soon, people were coming up to me asking
to
see this very normal but secret fish.
So
since I had this thing that people wanted,
I
immediately started to restrict who could and who couldn’t see it.
Who
was in the club and who wasn’t.
Amy
Pollard was very uncool
and
I didn’t want to be associated with her,
so
when she asked, I gave her some lame excuse
why
she couldn’t come up. She was disappointed.
And
for some reason, that made other people
want
to come up and see my goldfish more.
I
realized what I had here so then I became
like
a bouncer with a velvet rope at the hottest club.
Henry
was being annoying. So, sorry, no boys in the club.
But
Rod was pretty cool and popular, so I made an exception.
Elizabeth
was best friends with Amy Pollard,
so
no one whose name started with a vowel can come in. Sorry.
Those
were the rules. It was power, I was hooked.
Then,
after about a week, my mother found the fish
in
the closet and my whole kingdom collapsed.
No
more fish, no more power.
And
then Amy Pollard had a bowling thing that she
and
lots of other people went to that I was not invited to and
I
found out how this whole thing works.
The
true temptation. The power of superior and inferior.
The
knowledge over good and evil.
We
all have done it in subtle and not so subtle ways.
And
some people continue to do it into adulthood,
and
some people have turned it into a way of life.
And
for a long time, the Christian church has
used
exclusion as a method of control.
The
true, original temptation is for humans to think
that
we are equal in power to God.
And
one of the most insidious and temptations
that
humans have given into is to have the audacity
to
decide who God loves and who God doesn’t love.
The
church has bitten that forbidden fruit:
of
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
As
if we could know the mind of God.
As
if we could somehow have the power to decide
for
God, or to sway God’s love or determination.
But
people have been doing it for centuries.
As
long as there has been a concept or relationship with God,
and
we found that there was power in that relationship,
humans
have wanted to control it.
The
knowledge of good and evil.
Jesus
could have given into that temptation.
He
was equal to God, he had the power of God,
he
was God and could have used it how he wanted.
He
had followers. People who wanted to be around him
and
do what he wanted them to do.
They
wanted to get into Jesus’s club so to speak.
And
Jesus could have used that power like I did,
and
like so many other people have been tempted before,
to
use that power and center it in himself
and
make himself the one who decides
who
receives God’s love and who doesn’t.
But
Jesus never used his power to exclude,
never
used the power to tell someone
they
weren’t welcomed around him,
or that
they weren’t loved by God.
Actually,
he did the opposite:
he
used his power to show how no one was
excluded
by God’s love by spending his time
talking
and eating with people who were “unclean”.
In
Jesus time, the religious leaders identified
Superior
and inferior, good and evil,
by
the identifiers “clean” and “unclean”
Sometimes
unclean people could work
their
way up to being clean by prayers
sacrifices,
gifts, time, baths, etc.
But
sometimes people were just seen as too unclean,
by their profession, their nationality, their life situations, their religion, t
heir ailments, even their gender.
And people who were deemed clean were told to stay away
from them lest they become unclean too.
Jesus
ignored those rules, he even made a spectacle of being with
talking
with, touching, and even eating with these “unclean” people.
Why
does this man eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?
Why
is he talking with that Samaritan woman?
Why
is he touching lepers and healing them?
Why
is he letting that sinful woman anoint him with her hair?
Why is he letting other people’s children bother him?
It
wasn’t just because he wanted to make these people
“clean” so they could join the establishment and continue
to perpetuate this clean and
unclean, good and evil thing.
Which
is how people have historically interpreted this stuff.
Jesus
was trying to show the people of God a different way of being.
He
wanted to show them an example of one who
had
the ability and the power, but resisted the temptation of
control
that so many other religious institutions have fallen into.
That
is through exclusion. Jesus wanted to shatter the
myth
that the Kingdom of God was only open to the select,
and
that the rest are outside of the scope of God’s love.
The
inclusion of all people in our churches and lives
is
not just us kowtowing to popular culture,
it’s
not just bending to the times.
It’s actually the gospel. It is what Jesus came for.
To show everyone that God’s kingdom is here,
God’s
love is open to everyone.
Jesus
started it, and then we have the book of Acts showing the many
ways
that the community created by the disciples
continually
crossed the boundaries of clean and unclean
and
we have Paul telling us in more than one letter
there
is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, male or female
all
are one in Christ Jesus.
You
would think that the Christian church then,
would
have taken up Jesus’s example and included all.
But
apparently not. Pretty quickly, the church
started
to divide people into sacred and not sacred,
believer
and heretic. They started to expel people
from
the church and, so they said, God’s salvation.
And
in the earliest writings of the church,
the
Apostolic Traditions, written around 235,
which
has the basis of many of the practices
that
have followed the church for centuries,
it
gives an account of who should be rejected for baptism
The list is long: prostitutes, pimps who support prostitutes,
sculptor or painter who makes idols, an actor who does shows in the theater,
someone who teaches the children worldly knowledge,
a charioteer or one who takes part in the games,
or one who watches the games,
gladiators,
public officials concerned with the gladiator shows,
military
governor or the ruler of a city who wears the purple,
soldiers,
and on and on. It’s a really long list.
What happened to following the one who eats with
tax
collectors and prostitutes? What happened to
Jesus
example and command to love one another?
What
happened to the church that Peter and Paul created?
The
early church gave into the temptation.
They
wanted to be the bouncer with the velvet rope.
They
wanted to eat of the tree of knowledge of
good and evil.
They
wanted to be in control.
They
wanted to determine God’s mind.
And
it just progressively got worse and worse
in
the church. The inquisition, slavery, the holocaust:
every
generation took a bite of that fruit.
It’s
taken us thousands of years to shed the habit.
And
we’re still in the midst of shedding it.
Of
course churches now have different names for it all.
And
politicians and the media have their part in it too.
They
don’t use the terms clean and unclean or heretic
but
the temptation is still the same.
There
are code names for races,
people
are referred to as “those people” hoodlums, ruffians, thugs.
People
in churches have called other people illegal,
and
judged them because of their immigration status
or
because they can’t speak English.
And
lately, large, vocal portions of Christianity have decided
to use
their power to pick on gay, lesbian, and transgender people.
Calling
them abominations and fornicators
and
telling them that God does not and could not love them
the
way they are, some even threatening to shoot and
kill
them if they came into their churches.
The
words are different, but it’s still the same temptation:
To
exclude. To have power.
To
have control over what is good and bad.
To
give into the illusion that we can determine God’s mind.
And
the devil loves it when we do it.
But
Jesus has shown us a different way.
A
different way to be Christ’s church,
the
body of Christ on earth.
How
to resist the temptation to exclude,
and
how to love those that world has called “other”
To
include those who are told they are unloved
is
Jesus way. To invite people who have heard a word
of
condemnation is Jesus example for us.
Who
is this man that eats with tax collectors and sinners?
He
is the one who resisted the ultimate temptation
to
use God’s power for himself.
He
is the one who showed us that we are all siblings in Christ,
that
none of us is better than another in the eyes of God.
That
we are all God’s beloved.
He
is the one who will draw me and you
and
all people to himself.
He
is the one who has come to us
to
save the world.
