A Taste of Salvation

 2 Corinthians 5:13-21

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I have been to several funerals at which the minister really upset me.  One in particular stands out.  It was for the husband of a woman who frequently attended my church in Caledon.  He was in a nursing home and had developed a relationship with this “minister” who came and did Bible studies.  During the service the minister highlighted that the man had faith in Christ, had lived a faithful life, and would now spend eternity in heaven.  He then went on to inquire of the audience as to whether the same would be true of them.  Would they spend eternity in Heaven or would they go to Hell.  For the grand finale he led them in the “Sinner’s Prayer” – all heads bowed, every eye closed, invite Jesus into your heart.  The prayer done, he told them that those who had prayed that prayer were going to Heaven.  They just had to believe it.  

In the aftermath of that funeral, several people in my church who were related to the deceased and also troubled by that minister asked my thoughts on the matter.  Well, I told them that I believed what the minister did constituted spiritual abuse.  He was trying to elicit a conversion decision out of people at a time when they were vulnerable.  That is coercion, not grace.  Oddly, ministers such as these do what they do believing that there is no greater act of love than getting a person saved for eternity.  This situation begs the question “What is it to be saved?”

I’ll start answering that question with another story.  There was an elderly Mennonite man standing in the subway in New York City waiting for the train.  As you can imagine, he was wearing plainclothes, a hat, and sporting the distinctive beard.  This was in the late 1960’s.  While he waited, a long-haired, hippy-looking man came up to him and explained he was with the Friends of Jesus (a charismatic movement back in the 60’s) and then asked, “Are you saved?”  The Mennonite man just stared at him as he pondered the question.  Finally, he answered, “Well, I suppose you should ask my neighbours.”

One of my theology professors in university would tell this story whenever the topic of salvation came up.  Incidentally, I went to a Mennonite university.  I think it pretty well manifests the tension we fall into when talking about salvation.  The Friends of Jesus fellow seems to define salvation as an individual thing pertaining to the afterlife.  Whereas, the elderly Mennonite fellow seems to have a difficult time separating the concept of salvation from his conduct in the here and now within the community in which he lived his faith. 

For me, I’m a little more on the side of the Mennonite gentleman. Salvation is a new reality created in the midst of human existence by God through Jesus Christ in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit.  It is something we experience a small taste of now that makes us long for it to come in its fullness at a future day when Jesus returns which will be the day of resurrection, the day of new creation.  This new way of being in the present is characterized by being reconciled to God and to one another in a fellowship created in the Holy Spirit who is with us now as a guarantee of what is to come.  There is a peace that is present with us – peace with God, peace with self, peace with one another – that exposes our lack of peace – with God, self, and others – and makes us hope for its completion so much that we radically change our direction in life so much as to deny self-gratification and the evil it fosters, indeed, to die to self, take up the Jesus way of the cross and begin to live in the resurrected life of Christ Jesus joining him in his ongoing work of creating communities of faith that share in his ministry of healing relationships, which is reconciliation.  We begin to live now for God’s peace because he is present with us.  It’s like turning a light on where before there was only fumbling about in the darkness.  We fail miserably at living out this new reality but it doesn’t change the fact God is in our midst compelling us on.

Let’s talk about what it is to be human for a moment.  We are made in such a way as to need to be able to trust in order to live together functionally.  We need to be able to trust our existence, (that the sky isn’t going to fall in on us) which requires a trust in God.  We need to be able to trust ourselves to do what’s best for ourselves and others.  We need to be able to trust one another.  Yet, because of our innate bent to self-gratify, which is what we call sin, we cannot trust anything in any kind of way that is functional.  We trust idols instead of God.  When we think we are doing what’s best for ourselves and others, we are almost always certainly only doing what feels like it will give us the most pleasure.  It’s hard to trust one another when in the end we are all just a bunch of self-gratifiers.  The result is that our existence is marked by fear, anxiety, and trying to build and protect our own assets as we go about trying to do things our own way.

Jesus’ death on the cross exposes this twisted nature of ours.  It exposes the extent of how threatened we are by God’s presence in our lives, exposes how afraid we are to simply trust God.  We killed him.  But God took the horrible death of Jesus and made it the means by which he created a new humanity built on the trust of the sure knowledge that God is with us, loves us, loves us enough to let himself be killed by us and experience death as we do because that was the only way to show us who he really is and how he really is and who and how we really are.  Trusting God, his presence with us, and his love for us as his beloved children is how we come to learn that the way to do what is best for ourselves and others is to do what God wants.  Trusting God, his presence with us, and his love for us is how we come to realize that it is safe to stop pursuing our own wishes and humble ourselves to serve one another in love…and that’s what it is to be saved or rather what it is to be being saved.

Salvation is a supernatural gift because God himself comes from beyond our existence to act upon us to reveal himself to us in such a way that it creates something utterly new in us.  As Paul says “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.”  It is a supernatural gift that comes upon us in a very natural way in that we experience the presence and love of God in the life of a community of faith.  Salvation looks like people striving to have peace in their midst.  This is Christ Jesus’ ministry of healing relationships, which is reconciliation.

It is sad that this powerful, peaceful, hopeful real message of newly created communion with God and one another has been reduced to methods of coercion such as “Turn or burn” or “save yourself with this prayer so you can go to heaven and be with your loved ones after you die”.  Indeed, salvation is powerfully present with us now, only as a taste but it is here now, and if our neighbours when considering how we treat them cannot answer in the affirmative for us as to whether or not we who profess Christ have in fact been saved, then I think we’ve missed the boat all together.

I’ll finish these thoughts with another story.  There was an elderly abbot; an abbot is the head monk in a monastery.  He had seen his monastery through much over the years, but these days he was troubled because the number of monks was dwindling.  Fewer and fewer people were feeling the call to their way of life.  The abbot was out walking one day when he met an elderly Rabbi doing the same.  They struck up a conversation and the Rabbi invited him in for lunch.  These lunches went on for several weeks and one day the topic turned to the abbot’s concern for his monastery.  The Rabbi shared the same concerns for his synagogue.  The Abbot asked the Rabbi, “What should we do?”  The Rabbi, responded, “I’ve no idea what to do, but this I will tell you; the Messiah is one of you.”  (Messiah means saviour.)  The Abbot was flattered by the Rabbi’s remark, and asked “are you serious.”  The Rabbi again said, “The Messiah is one of you.” 

The Abbot went back to the monastery and told the monk’s what the Rabbi had said.  The monks took it to heart and began to believe that one of them was the Messiah.  They all began to question in their hearts which one it might be.  They each ruled out themselves, but said just in case I am I will treat myself with the utmost respect.  Not being able to single out one of the brothers they all began to treat one another as if he were the Christ.  The bond of love began to grow deep in the monastery.  The brothers became legendary all over the countryside for their great love for each other and all people and slowly over the years the monastery began to grow as more and more people came seeking what the brothers had.  Amen.

Is God Really Like Jesus?

 Luke 13:1-9

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What we believe about God has a profound effect on how we live our lives.  When I say believe, I don’t mean our confession of faith – the doctrinal idea stuff we throw around about God.  Rather, I mean the deep down been programmed into me since I was a baby kind of feelings about God.  There’s the God we say we believe in and then there’s the God we really believe in.  Who is that God?  I’m fond of a book by Bradley Jersak entitled A More Christlike God: a More Beautiful Gospel in which he points out several different deep down beliefs that we project on to God that aren’t Christian.

First, he talks about God the doting grandfather. This is the God who spoils us with whatever we want while ignoring our misbehaviour. This is the God who gives you whatever you ask for, if you just believe he’s so good and wonderful.  Like the Easter bunny he always comes around with a basket of chocolate for his little snookum who can’t do anything wrong.  He’s the Santa Claus who doesn’t have a naughty list and blesses you with everything privilege can provide.  The doting grandfather God image works until tragedy hits and you find your prayers aren’t being answered the way you feel they’re supposed to be.  Then we must ask how God can allow suffering to happen.

The second projection that Jersak defines is God the deadbeat dad or God the absentee landlord. This is the God who abandoned me, the dad who walked out shirking his responsibilities. This is the God who created the universe and gave it laws to govern how it functions, but then left it to fend for itself. This God leaves us feeling like orphans.  He’s simply not there when we need him.

A third common image that we project upon God is that of the punishing judge, the God who gets us when we’re bad.  He is a “meticulous micromanager” of our behaviour and a harsh taskmaster.  God has given us the law and we must obey it or else. He seems to like us best when we are feeling guilt or regret about our behaviour; penitent.  We try to tell ourselves that he “hates the sin, but loves the sinner” yet there’s no escaping the pervasive feeling that if he hates the sin, he hates us too and will only accept us if we can find some way to make ourselves right with him, some way to appease him and avert his angry wrath.

Jersak’s last un-Christ-like image that we project onto God is that of the Santa Claus Blend.  This is the doting grandfather blended with that punitive judge.  Like the doting grandfather it’s, “Ask me for anything and I will give it to you…as long as your good.”  And, like the punitive judge he’s keeping a list of everything we do so don’t let your naughty list grow longer than your nice.  Blended Santa falls apart when the nice get only socks that they didn’t ask for and the naughty get the ponies.  There’s also nothing called grace here because it is all about how good or bad we have been and what we deserve, but nobody gets what they deserve. 

Although these examples my seem a bit trite in my portrayal of them, I think we can all raise our hands and say those sound a lot like the god that I grew up with.  We can confess God as Trinity, as the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who has made us participants in their loving communion.  But, what we really mean when we say God is: God is God the Father, the punitive Santa who when held accountable for the cold hard fact of suffering in the world turns out to be just a deadbeat dad who, although his only begotten Son died to appease his anger towards us, he is still ready to pour that wrath out on us because no matter how hard we try we only keep discovering we’re not good enough.  

I’ve also said nothing about the Holy Spirit in this description of the way God is not but we seem to believe he is because talk of the Holy Spirit or the personal presence of God with us is generally left by us to the fanatics and for us it’s just easier to say we’ve been touched by an angel when something maybe experiential involving God may have happened.  This is the God we functionally serve.  This is why guilt is the number one motivator for church participation.  If you want something done around the church, just find the person who will feel guilty if it doesn’t get done and that’s your bunny…your Easter bunny.

So, my point is that our deep-down beliefs about who God is ain’t necessarily the true God revealed to us in, through, and as Jesus as presented to us in the Bible and sensed by us through his presence with us.  And so, we come to Luke, and this morning’s passage which is admittedly a very difficult passage to swallow. It seems here that Jesus is making God out to be that punitive judge we met earlier. It seems he is saying get yourself right with God, repent, or God will to get you just like he did them.  

But, that’s not what’s going on here.  I think Jesus is actually exposing a false image of God that was common in his day.  I think this because twice he uses the phrase “do you think” which can also mean “do you suppose” or “do you believe”.   With this conjectural kind of questioning, it seems to me that he is pushing into their belief system to expose a false idea of God.  “Do you really believe that’s the way God is?” would be his question.

A predominant belief back in Jesus’ day was that God punishes sinners and the worse sinner that you are, God will get you all the more.  Birth defects, accidents, horrible deaths, diseases – they believed things like these were punishment from God for sins committed in secret or out in the open.  Therefore, those Galileans spoken of here had to have been really bad for Pilate to have massacred them and mixed their blood with sacrifices; so also, the Jerusalemites upon whom the Tower of Siloam fell.  God was getting them good.

If I were to paraphrase a bit and read a bit between the lines here, I think Jesus is saying “Do you believe these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans (and we all know that all Galileans are dreadfully sinful).  Is it because they were especially bad sinners that God punished them in such a way?  Is this the God you believe in?”  Jesus answers his own question with an emphatic “No!”  No, they were faithful people on pilgrimage to Jerusalem to worship God rightly and for some reason of Pilate’s whim they died a horrible death.  Sometimes bad things happen to even the most faithful of people.”  

Jesus continues.  “Those eighteen Jerusalemites who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when the Tower of Siloam fell, do you really believe they were worse sinners than anybody else in Jerusalem (and we all know Jerusalemites are so good and pure) so that God would punished them by wasting their lives with such a haphazard death?  Is this the God you believe in?  If so, you better get yourselves right with God because he’s going to get you too just like he got them.  Tell me, really; is that what you believe God is really like?”

Jesus then tells them a parable in which he contrasts their false image of God and with one that is more Christ-like.  Their false image of God is like the vineyard owner.  He is like a blend between God the punitive judge and God the deadbeat Dad.  He planted a fig tree in his vineyard and left it to grow on its own only to come back at harvest time when there was supposed to be something on it for him only to find that the tree bore no fruit.  Since he couldn’t have a tree wasting his good soil, he wanted it cut down.  But you know, the vineyard owner was at much at fault here as the tree itself for their being no fruit.  You just don’t plant a fruit tree and go off and leave it.  They require a lot of maintenance. Sp also4, why plant a fig tree in a vineyard?  The grapevines were probably too much competition for it with respect to the nutrients in the soil.  You can’t punish something for your own neglect.  That’s not the way God is…is he?  No!

God is like the Gardener in this parable.  The Gardener won’t cut the tree down.  He knows better.  He knows it needs tending.  He sees that the tree needs some fertilizer and gets his hands dirty with poo to make the tree able to bear fruit.  This is the God we see in Jesus.  Jesus, God the Son, got right into the poo of what it is to be human and suffered as we do in every way.  He shared our every weakness.  Though innocent of any crime, he was condemned to death for treason.  His closest friends abandoned him and denied knowing him.  He died a horribly painful death after being tortured by Roman soldiers who were probably histories best at that game.  Yet, God the Father did not pour wrath out on humanity for this ultimate crime against God…No!  He raised Jesus from the dead and then poured the Holy Spirit out upon us, that we may participate in his very life.  God is like this Gardener.  He makes us able to bear the fruit expected of us by pouring himself into us.  The Holy Spirit, God’s very self, is the fertilizer that seeps into us through our roots and restores vitality to us and makes us able to bear the fruits expected of those bearing the image of God in his good creation.

Well, I bring up all these images of God because as I said at the very beginning what we believe about God has a very profound effect on how we live our lives and express our faith.  Unless we repent of our misplaced faithfulness to these false images of God that we project onto God and serve instead of the True God, we will perish within the confines of a bankrupt religion.  

The Greek word for repentance is “metanoia”.  “Meta” means “with” and “noia” means “mind”.  It is to be “with-minded”, “with-minded” with Jesus.  It means to think, and pursue the things that he thinks and pursues which are adoration of and faithfulness to God his Father that expresses itself in the humility of suffering servants.  Paul tells as at 1 Corinthians 2:16 that we have the mind of Christ which means we have the Holy Spirit in us helping us and empowering us to choose and live by means of the way of the cross.  The Holy Spirit makes us able to live together as a community of disciples who love each other as the Trinity loves us and who relate to our surrounding community with compassion and the utmost hospitality.  If we persist in clinging to the false images of God that we project onto him we will quench the work of the Holy Spirit in us and we will not be Christ-like but something rather sinister that claims to be (something like a voting bloc).  So, what do you think?  Do you think God is really like Jesus?  Amen.

 

Considering Desire

 Luke 13:31-35

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So today we are going to talk about desire.  I don’t mind if you want to chuckle that a guy named Randy is going to talk about desire.  I think it’s likely that at the mention of the word “desire” most of us go there with the naughty thoughts.  Google does.  If you search for the word “desire” on Google you won’t be disappointed I promise.  Yes, there are pages and pages of the same dictionary definition from different dictionaries but there’s all these ads for clothing optional resorts.  Do an image search of the word “desire”, well if you’re a guy, you’ll probably waste a good afternoon on that.  For some reason, as a culture we seem to have bookended the word desire into that realm of the naughty by equating it to lust, and predominantly sexual lust.

Well, I don’t want to disappoint you, but a lusty sermon is not where we’re going today in considering our desires.  To desire something is simply to strongly want it.  If we inventoried the desires of our hearts, the things that we strongly want, I think our list will wind up being not so one-track minded and really quite innocent, things like meaningful companionship, fulfilling work, not having to live hand to mouth, and that our children and grandchildren can grow up safe and healthy and have opportunities.  Those aren’t bad desires.  There are even passages in the Old Testament that indicate our desires aren’t all that “tainted with sin”.  The Psalmist wrote, “Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Ps. 37:4).  I don’t think he was referring to a strong desire to take a Caribbean cruise on a clothing optional ship.  Rather, I think he was referring to the key-to-a-meaningful-life things I just mentioned.  Delight in the Lord and he will make life fulfilling.

Delight is a teaser of word.  So, what did the Psalmist mean by “Delight in the Lord”?  Well, it’s an interesting metaphor.  The Hebrew word we translate as “delight” means to pamper or refresh oneself.  Pamper oneself in the Lord.  Refresh oneself in the Lord.  Take a spa day in the Lord, a mental health day in the Lord.  This is an invitation to sit on the front porch with the Lord and watch the birds come to the feeder, to take some time just to have a little seventh day of creation time with God.  After six days of creating his creation and calling it very good, God then on the seventh day rested, which means he just kicked back and reposed like gods do and enjoyed the beauty of it all.  Another helpful Bible image is in the story of Adam and Eve and how every evening in the cool of the day God would come around and spend some time with his two favourite people and catch up on all they had discovered that day.  

So, the Psalmist invites us to find our delight in the Lord by spending this rest-filled time with the Lord and he will give us the desires of the heart, mainly the things we would otherwise worry about.  Pamper yourself, refresh yourself in the presence of the Lord.  This seems like such a simple gift, but why do we have such a hard time with it?  It’s such a simple gift to sit on the porch with the Lord. If it helps, do something simple like always keep one more rocking chair on the porch than you need so that God can sit with you.  Enjoy that time with the Lord and in time the Lord will look after those desires of your heart.  There’s no need to worry.  So simple, but so neglected.

Well, let’s step into Luke and talk about desire for a moment.  The Greek word for desire shows up three times.  In most English translations it’s hidden under words like “want”, “long”, and “willing”.  I’m going to start with how Jesus used it.  He speaks with reference to Jerusalem, the city that stands as the emblem of God’s beloved people but also the religious establishment and political power that corrupt God’s people.  Jerusalem is a beautiful city like God’s people but it’s got this nasty reputation for murdering those who speak for God.  Jesus says “Jerusalem, Jerusalem how I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.”  This is a very touching image of God having a motherly love for his people to protect and shelter them.  A mother hen has a very fierce instinct to protect her chicks.  If a fox gets into the chicken run, a mother hen will stand her ground to her own detriment.  She’ll stamp her feet and fluff her feathers to make herself look really big and then squawk loudly to call to her chicks to come gather under her for safety.  Unfortunately, the fox will kill her but hopefully let the chicks run away.  

Of course, there’s a bit of foreshadowing of Jesus’ death hidden in this metaphor, but let’s not miss that God’s love for us, his beloved children, is as fierce as a mother hen for her chicks.  God strongly desires that we find our security with him.  Thinking back to the Psalmist, God strongly desires that we delight in him rather than fear stuff and worry.  

But…notice what Jesus says about the chicks.  Jesus also says that the chicks are not willing to come. The chicks do not desire, do not strongly want to seek security, protection, comfort and warmth under their mother hen.  In this world of powerful foxes invading chicken runs for predatorial reasons, the people of God, the very vulnerable people of God, do not desire to draw close to the Lord for safety, for their protection.  The thing about hens and chicks when threatened is that the hen will instinctually stand her ground before the threat to protect the chicks who will instinctually run to gather under her for protection.  Hundreds of thousands to millions of years of evolution have made it nearly impossible for little chicks to do anything other than gather under their mother hen for warmth and protection and, if we want to humanize them, probably a whole lot of emotional security too.  It’s a law of nature.

This is the way the relationship between God and his beloved children is supposed to be.  God strongly desires that we gather to him not just in times when our lives are out of kilter and we need help or protection, but also when we just need to feel at home in this world.  But, we chicks oddly seem to lack the instinct to desire God, to “delight in” God.  In fact, our instinct is quite the opposite.  As St. Augustine said, we tend to love and trust the right things wrongly and the wrong things rightly.  We are chicks who seem to have the desire to flee to something other than God for delight.  We will even seek to delight in the fox who wants to kill us.

And about the fox here in this passage.  This is the same Herod who killed John the Baptist.  The Pharisees warn Jesus to get out of that area because Herod desires, he strongly wants, to kill Jesus just like he did to John the Baptist.  There are some who once they get a taste of wealth and power, they will desire to kill God and those who speak for him rather than have their way of life brought into question by the God who made and loves them.  It’s a twisted world we live in.

This odd twistedness about us is what the Bible would call sin.  God has a strong desire for us to come and find our delight in him so that he may give us the true desires of our hearts.  God’s not going to give us a cruise on a clothing optional ship.  That kind of desire isn’t what we’re talking about.  We’re not talking about the baser stuff here but rather the important desires like meaningful companionship, fulfilling work, not having to live hand to mouth, a future for our kids, and that when the bad stuff of chaos breaks forth on us God will work all things to the good for those who love him.  But, something’s wrong in that we, his beloved children, don’t desire to delight in God, to find our home in God and rather we pander to baser instincts and are bullied with fear by foxes.

And so, we return to the Psalmist and the invitation to delight in the Lord, to pamper ourselves in the Lord, to refresh ourselves in the Lord.  We are beloved by God.  Like a mother hen fiercely and unquestionably loves her chicks, so God loves us.  God desires we gather to him.  There’s more to this Christian faith thing than just the comfort of coming to church on Sunday to worship together and socialize with the people we’ve known and worshipped with for a long, long time.  There’s comfort in that, yes, and it’s a good thing, but is it really our desire for the Lord that brings us to congregate or simply for the comfort of the familiar that we have in our church buildings and the love we have for one another?   

There is a delight to be had in our relationship to God, a delight that can be found out on our front porches or out for a walk at anytime and not just on Sunday mornings.  It is the realization that God is with us, we are his beloved children whom God treasures spending time with and listening to.  A communicative, restful relationship with the God who made us and knows us, who bears our burdens with us, who comforts us is something God deeply desires for us.  We just need to take the time, make the space for it to happen.  Delight in the Lord and he truly will give you the desires of your heart.  Amen.

 

Who Are We?

 Luke 4:1-13

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So, it’s that season of Lent again.  It’s time to start giving stuff up, right?  What’s it going to be?  Chocolate? Alcohol?  Coffee?  Screen time?  Or, should we make that noble decision to do something like give up lunch and give the money we would have spent to a food bank?  Well, I used to approach Lent that way – the “do without something that might be considered a temptation or bad habit in order to realize my need for God” thing.  But then I kind of thought to myself that my reasons for giving up that stuff had more to do with weight management and health consciousness than with actually drawing close to Jesus.  It actually just made me more preoccupied with what I was giving up than I otherwise would have been if I didn’t give them up.  Then there’s that false sense of pride for enduring or the guilt and shame for slipping up.  Then I got to thinking, is cutting back on the chocolate, beer, and coffee the best I can come up with for drawing closer to him who was crucified on my behalf?  That makes me feel Nauseous.

After that realization I decided to go a different route.  Instead of giving up some sort of “bad habit” or “temptation” related something or other, I decided I would add something.  I would make room in my life of habits for a new habit of a daily spiritual practice.  Something like creating the habit of taking time daily to read Scripture and to pray.  On the simple side, most of us have smartish watches now that can be programmed to give a periodic vibration to remind us of something.  My watch vibrates every few hours to remind me to take a moment to start praying the Lord’s Prayer.  I can reasonably say that the spiritual habits I’ve developed over the last couple of decades or so started with Lent or times in my life that felt like Lent.  

By “felt like Lent” I mean things come about, things happen in life and we find ourselves realizing we’re not the persons we believe ourselves to be.  One of the wrong understandings of Lent is that this is the season when we are supposed to make ourselves painfully aware of our sinfulness and that we are unlovable to God and it’s all supposed to culminate with Good Friday and Jesus dying for our sins.  I don’t find that helpful or healthy.  Lent in my opinion is time for us to focus more on who we are as God’s beloved children.  The invitation of this time of year is for us to draw closer to God in an honest way, which is to bring our burdens, our brokenness, our shame, all that stuff that Medieval Bible-thumpers would have you believe makes you unlovable to God; actually bring all that to God who is present with us and who will bear these burdens with us until they are born away.  That’s what Good Friday is about.  We can’t let this season be about us trying to get rid of all our imperfections which we think make us unlovable to God and proving we’ve got strength to resist temptation and make ourselves lovable to God.  Rather, it is about discovering and deepening our awareness that we are beloved by God, each one of us, no matter what.

Traditionally, the theme for this Sunday is temptation and we read about Jesus being tempted by the devil.  But, temptation isn’t what is happening here.  Jesus is being tested by the devil.  The devil is testing to see if Jesus has a handle on his identity of being the Son of God, the Beloved.  Remember this happens in Luke’s Gospel immediately after Jesus’ Baptism when the Holy Spirit descended upon him and God the Father spoke from heaven saying, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”   And we also have to remember that Jesus is now full of the Spirit and was led by the Spirit out into the wilderness in order to be tested by the “diabolous”.  That’s the Greek word here that we translate in good Medieval fashion as “devil” but it actually means “the slanderer”, the one who falsely accuses the identity of another.  Since the Holy Spirit led Jesus to this moment, we must accept that this is something that had to happen for reasons we won’t know.  Things happen to us and we don’t know why but they bring us to the realization that in Christ we too are God’s beloved children with whom he is well pleased.

The first test seems to be about what it is to live and whether Jesus fears death and can be manipulated by the fear of death.  Jesus has been fasting in the wilderness for over forty days and the slanderer says, “If you are the Son of God command this stone to become a loaf of bread.”  Let’s note something here.  Jesus is probably not miserably hungry.  After several days of not eating you don’t feel hungry anymore.  Your body adjusts to using its own resources and apparently there’s some cleansing and healing and mental clarity stuff that happens and some euphoria.  So, let’s not think that Jesus is beside himself with hunger.  The point is that after forty days he is at the point where he needs to eat or death will set in.  So, will Jesus save his own life by using his power as the Son of God by whom, in whom, and through whom all things came into being to turn a stone into a loaf of bread and not die.  Well, Jesus the Son of God doesn’t need to fear death.  He lives whether he eats or not, whether he dies or not.  He does not need to save himself to live.  He lives!

The second test is odd.  The slanderer tells Jesus to worship him and he will give Jesus the authority to rule the nations, authority which belongs to Jesus anyway and “on that day” he will return and manifestly take it back.  There’s some weird logic here that needs to be figured out.  Apparently, this slanderer has a lot of false power in addition to a slanderous ability to make us confused about our identity as beloved children of God.  The slanderer says that all the splendour and authority of the kingdoms of the world have been handed over to him.  The sense of the word for “handed over” in Greek is “betrayed”.  Just as Jesus was handed over to Pilate, betrayed to Pilate by the Sanhedrin (the people in power over the people of God) so also have the splendour and authority inherent in human kingdoms, nations, and so forth somehow been betrayed over to this slanderer.  

A key component in the Biblical understanding of the way things are is that there is a slanderous power standing behind the way we humans govern ourselves.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a dictatorship, or a democracy, or a church, or just a group of kids trying to play together on the playground.  There’s something twisted about the way we go about governing in community.  We should be under the loving authority of the Son of God.  We should reflect the loving image of our Triune God in the way we relate to one another.  But somehow, we’ve been betrayed or it’s more likely that we betray ourselves over to the slanderer so that power is corrupted and abused amongst us by us.

So, the slanderer tells Jesus that he can have all that splendour and power if he just worships the liar and betrays himself.  Then the world ordering would be under the rightful authority and all the world’s problems solved, right?  I don’t think so.  Good, rightful even devote leaders with the best and purest intentions can’t do the good, rightful, and devote things needing to be done to fix the world that they are called and appointed by God to lead because it will always involve worshipping at the altar of the slanderer to whom we’ve betrayed the splendour and power of human community in the image of God.  So, it’s best not to buy into the power to rule and rather seek to serve.  Jesus the Son of God came to serve not to be served.  That’s the way around the slanderer’s test with respect to how the Beloved Son of God uses power.

The third test, the slanderer notices that Jesus quotes and heeds the Scriptures and that Jesus’ heart is set on serving God only and that Jesus doesn’t fear death, so he quotes Scripture back at Jesus, passages that test whether Jesus can really trust that God will be faithful to him.  “If you are the Son of God about whom the Scriptures say God has commanded his faithful angels to protect, do this reckless, suicidal thing to get God to prove his faithfulness.”  Jesus responds, “Do not put the Lord, your God, to the test”.  This test has an interesting twist.  Son of God is a title given to kings and emperors to make people assume that they have divine authority.  The slanderer seems to think he’s just dealing with one of those men who can be deluded by power.  Yet in Jesus’ case, Jesus really is God’s Son and therefore God.  The slanderer just put God himself to the test.  The slanderer tucks tail and departs.  

So, what can we say about all this?  Like Jesus, we each are beloved children of God.  God the Father loves us each as much as he loves Jesus, God the Son.  The evidence of this is the felt presence of the Holy Spirit and that Jesus went through betrayal by us and death for us and was raised.  For me, the felt reality of knowing I am God’s beloved child is the coat I put on every morning and the rack I hang it on at night.  When all is a mess, when the slanderer is trying to get me to know myself otherwise (and he does and it hurts), I can only fall back on the assuring, still small voice of “You are my beloved child” and wait for my God in his faithful love to work things for the good.  In the meantime, and that can be years, I must resist the urge to control and use my personal power to get my way.

We, as congregations, are gatherings of the community of those who know we are beloved children of God.  God loves our little communities of faith.  We must not be slandered into believing we are anything other than the place where wounded wounders can come and become healing healers who selflessly and unconditionally live hope before this slandered and lied to world.  The community of the beloved children of God where people can come to know themselves as beloved children of God is what we are and we need not be anything else. Amen.