The Temptation to Exclude and The Gospel of Inclusion.

 

Temptation
J. Kirk Richards

Matthew 4:1-11 Lent 1 February 26, 2023

 

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.