JESUS STANDS FIRM by Cheri Holdridge (with an assist by Kurt Young)

Do you ever feel like there are two forces competing for you? The force of good and the force of evil? You know, like in Star Wars. Will you turn to the dark side? Okay, maybe it’s not that dramatic. But like this picture, do you feel like you have both good and evil wrapped around your head and you could go either way? In this picture we have a gun and bullets on one side, and a dove of peace on the other side. The person in the middle looks frightened. I think it looks like a young woman. There is a battle going on for her heart and soul. She does not know which force is going to win and take over her head. 

Of course we want her to choose peace because we follow the Prince of Peace. We are peace loving people. But everyday people choose violence over peace, don’t they?  We see it in our streets, on the news, and on the internet. People give into temptation and choose evil over good every day. 

Today’s scripture (Luke 4:1-13 for those following along from afar) is about Jesus being tempted. He was probably in a weakened state. He is in the wilderness for 40 days, fasting and praying. He might have been weak from no food. But his soul was strong from spending this time with God. He was preparing for his ministry. This is right at the beginning of his mission, right after his baptism. We’re told that the devil comes in to tempt him. This force of evil in the world wants to get Jesus off on the wrong foot right from the beginning. The devil wants to draw Jesus away from God. He could have used all sorts of things to tempt Jesus with, but as David Lose puts it, he begins with “bread, power and safety” (http://www.davidlose.net/2016/02/lent-1-c-identity-theft/).

First the devil knows that Jesus is hungry and so he tempts him to turn the stones to bread, to show off his power for the evil one. He is tempting Jesus to prove he is the Son of God. But Jesus turns to scripture and he stands firm against the power of evil. He says: “One does not live by bread alone.”

Next the devil tempts Jesus with power. He says he can have all the kingdoms of the world. He can have world domination if he will just bow down and worship the devil. But again Jesus stands firm and quotes scripture: “Worship the Lord your God and serve only Him.”

Finally the devil tempts Jesus with safety. He says: “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, ¹⁰ for it is written,

‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’

¹¹ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
    so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”

Once again Jesus stands firm and quotes scripture. He says: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” And the devil departs until another opportunity comes along. 

You see the devil uses these three temptations: bread, power and safety, but as David Lose writes, he could have used any three temptations. It could have been “Youth, beauty, and wealth” (ibid). These temptations all “seek to shift our allegiance, trust, and confidence away from God and toward some substitute that promises a more secure identity.” The point is this: the devil was trying to pull Jesus away from God. He was trying to pull him away from his identity as the Son of God. 

The evil forces of the world will do this to us as well. They will draw us into violence, malice, and greed. They will draw us into a self-centeredness that makes us think we can make it on our own without God. This is what the temptation story is about: the idea that we don’t need God, the idea that Jesus no longer needed God and we no longer need God. 

But this could not be farther from the truth, and Jesus stood firm in his truth. He stood firm in scripture and he stood firm in the knowledge that he belonged to God and he was put on this earth for a purpose.

Jesus also had a secret weapon. He had the Holy Spirit. Luke’s gospel loves to remind us of the importance of the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ life. We begin with his birth. In Luke 1:35 we read that Jesus was born of the Spirit. Then we see him receive the Spirit in baptism (3:22). Now in 4:1 he was both full of the Holy Spirit and led by the Spirit. And following these temptations, in 4:18, he went into Galilee to minister in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit guides Jesus in everything he does.

But the Spirit is given not only to Jesus but to the whole church. Fred Craddock writes this: “Resisting evil and ministering to human need are not left to will power and psychic strategies; the effective presence of God is offered and available” (Preaching Through the Christian Year C, Fred Craddock, p. 140). We have the Holy Spirit. In our baptism we claim the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the power to resist evil and oppression in whatever form they present themselves (we all make a promise to do this in our liturgy when we accept new members or when we baptize someone at the Village). 

So how are the ways you feel tempted? Think of temptation in this way. Temptation is anything that pulls you away from God’s desire for you. We all know that God has certain hopes and dreams for us as followers of Jesus. God wants us to live in peace, and to have healthy lives filled with joy and goodness. But we are like the person in the photo. We are torn. We are torn between what God wants for us and what the evil forces of this human world are trying to drag us down into. 

What is your greatest temptation? What pulls you away from God? You might be tempted to talk bad about other people and to judge them. We all get caught up in gossip and petty conversations about our co-workers, our neighbors and even our friends. We pick one another apart like a biologist dissects a frog. She is too this, or he is too that. Like we are perfect. Right? Sometimes we talk behind the other person’s back, and sometime we say it right to their face. “You’re fat, you’re too skinny, you are so stupid, you’re a lousy so and so.” Do you think Jesus would say any of those things? Do you think Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, would say any of those things? Of course not. But we get pulled into the temptation of mean talk about others and we’re off and running.

What other temptations are hard for you? I think greed is a big one. We all want more money and more stuff than we have. We think that stuff will make us happier. We even waste money buying lottery tickets in the hopes that we will become millionaires. We take vacations and go shopping at outlet malls. What kind of vacation is that? 

We have bought into the consumer culture and the idea that we are what we own. The more we have, the more we are valued. But that is a big myth. Our desire for stuff is us trying to fill an emptiness that only God can fill. We are trying to feel of value, but if we would just stop and rest we would remember that we have already been claimed by God as someone of value. In our baptism we are claimed as God’s own beloved children. God does not care what we wear, or what kind of car we drive, or how big our house is. God loves us just as we are. Greed and the desire for more wealth will pull us away from God. They are temptations. What we need is to turn away from greed and turn toward our creator. 

What about one last temptation: the temptation for instant gratification. We live in a world where we want what we want and we want it now. We want high speed internet, fast food, and we want love without having to take the time to build a strong relationship. We are impatient. We are seduced by sales people who will promise us the fastest, most high tech gadget there is. We want a partner who will be available to us 24/7 but we don’t want to deal with the give and take that a committed relationship takes. We want instant gratification. We want it now. 

The way of the Jesus follower, on the other hand, is to slow down and savor life. Don’t be in such a rush that life speeds by you on a passing train. Take time to smell the flowers. Understand that relationships take time, open communication and commitment. Only when you slow down do you have time to encounter the Holy Spirit and pay attention to what the Spirit is saying to you in your life. 

The list of temptations goes on. We all have our own demons. Anything that pulls you away from God is your temptation. In this season of Lent, the time leading up to Easter, Jesus invites us pay attention to those temptations and to stand firm. The Holy Spirit lives in us and will give us strength to resist evil and temptations. So ask the Holy Spirit for strength and let us stand firm with Jesus. Amen.