First Sunday of Lent

Follow Me.  I Know the Way Out.

Hunger, Powerlessness, and Inadequacy:  These are the weak spots Jesus struggled with.  Very often, we consider the battle and Jesus’ victory and overlook how the desert affected Jesus.  For us, going into the desert for forty days would involve a backpack full of food; it would be suicide to make such a journey without sufficient food and water; however, we can survive without food for forty days if we are in good health and have adequate water.  Jesus was hungry.  Fasting allowed Jesus to experience the temptation to be independent of needing others to bake his bread as well as the understanding that life is more than the sum total of our physical desires and needs.  On a deeper level, Jesus experiences the profound understanding that, though the Son of God, he needs other people, and that centering one’s life around physical desires is an error (Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God). Ultimately, we cannot even rely completely on human communion, but upon God our creator.

            Jesus’ next vulnerability was his feeling of powerlessness.  Exploiting this, Satan offers Jesus complete domination over the world’s countries if he would worship Satan.  Look at what being submissive to God the Father had gotten him: hunger pangs and feelings of worthlessness.  There is that famous line from Paradise Lost where Satan says “Better to rule in hell than serve in Heaven”.  This was a test of Jesus’ resolve for the mission; success wasn't on Jesus’ terms, they were on God the Father’s.  He replies to Satan quoting again from Deuteronomy “You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall you serve.”   How often our fear of being powerless leads us to believe getting power is the answer, that realigning our priorities to become powerful is our ultimate goal rather than seeking the Kingdom and serving God.

            The final temptation came in the form quite unlike all the others.  It was the ultimate showdown.  In the desert of despair, with no visible sign of God’s presence, and Satan close at hand, the desire to experience God’s care and concern in some manifestation become Jesus’ greatest vulnerability.  Just give me a sign of your love!  Everyone feels this, especially when things are not going well.  Satan’s answer was to call God’s hand and turn Jesus’ test into God’s test.  Now it is Satan who is quoting Scripture:

“He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you,”
and:
“With their hands, they will support you,
lest you dash your foot against a stone.”

Satan quotes from Psalm 91 and Jesus responds with a third passage from Deuteronomy  “You shall not put your Lord God to the test”.  The very source of his reasoning---Holy Scripture—was turned against him.  How often do foes of God’s love and unconditional grace bend scripture to turn it from a source of healing love to a weapon?  This round of Bible Darts over, Satan departs “for a time” suggesting that the tenacity of Satan grows, not diminishes, with defeat.  Being holy and being hounded have a long tradition of being paired, but like Jesus, we may be for a time in the desert; but simply because the journey gets tough doesn't mean we walk it alone.  At every turn, the community animated by the Spirit joins us and reminds us that we follow Christ into the desert.  As the man standing at the bottom of a deep pit asks the other man who came to help him why he jumped in to be with him, that now they both were stuck.  The man who jumped in to rescue him said “Don’t worry.  I've been here before and I know the way out”.

Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany

The Authority to Heal

Jesus is distinguished from other teachers today by being characterized as one who “teaches with authority”; what does this imply?  For one thing, those who taught scripture in Jesus’ time would reference other sources as the basis of their teaching, not claim an independent power of interpretation. To some extent, scripture scholars do this today in what is called exegesis, or the attempt to understand through careful critical methods the intent of the original author by considering language and context of the scripture under study. When a person simply uses oneself as the basis for interpretation, it is called eisegesis.  Jesus’ method of teaching, “with authority”, and the action of commanding demons positioned Jesus as a great prophet in the line of Moses.

Jesus did not use any particular rite of exorcism, no formula, he simply commanded the demon to come out, and the demon revealed Jesus’ identity as “the Holy One of God”, the same language used to describe the priests in the line of Aaron. Jesus is being revealed in Mark as having the priestly and prophetic qualities of the Messiah. The demon is promptly silenced because to reveal him as Messiah would only fully be revealed after his resurrection and in light of his kingdom “not being of this world”; the time was not right.

Mark’s gospel portrays God’s presence in Jesus as one that is imbued with the power to act as God, to teach as God would teach, and heal as God would heal. Jesus does not initiate a “battle plan” to overthrow the Roman authorities, but ignites the world with God’s saving love.

We, like Jesus, are empowered to act. Through the Holy Spirit dwelling in all believers who follow Christ, our presence announcing God’s love is imbued with the healing authority of God. Our lives should rest on the confidence that although our world is “passing away” as St. Paul preached last Sunday, it is within this world that God continues to act with great compassion and healing.

Such radical Good News often divides, as it did in Jesus’ time, and even among his disciples. Our unity with one another doesn’t come so much in the authority of our “scribes”, though scripture and the teachings of our institutional elders is an important foundation for our faith, our unity comes through our sacramental union with the Body of Christ----one another as mediated by the Holy Spirit.

What is truly a life of radical service is more than political action, social justice and committees, although these must be an integral part of our being Good News; radical evangelical service seeks communion--being with-- with the sick, hard-hearted, and demon-possessed of the world. Rather than simply developing programs of change, we are the change, and the power of God when we become good news one person at a time. This is how the Kingdom is announced, and the reign of God proclaimed.