March 9, 2014

John Bluck

First Sunday in Lent     Matthew 4:1-11

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Is the stove off? Is the cat out? Did I bring my cell phone charger? What about my walking shoes? And did you get their phone number?

Leaving on a journey, even a short journey, is a piece of work.

If you’ve done the job properly it’s a relief to get going.

If you haven’t, the journey will be anxious and doomed to incompletion.

Lent is a journey in itself, but a journey of preparation for Holy Week and Easter. Clay will guide you through that time of reliving those epic events of Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Eve and morning. In the Christian story, they frame our understanding of life and death and life beyond death, our life and death and resurrection.

Lent is the time we try to get our head ready to get around all that, so there are some preparations to do, some cats to be put out, some spiritual training needed.

We used to do that by giving up things. Like cigarettes when everybody smoked and Craven A was still good for your throat. Now you can not do chocolates, for 40 days, or Twitter, or watching the Paul Henry Show.

The point of giving up things you like for Lent, and some people really do like Paul Henry, is to remind ourselves that the Christian life is more about letting go of the things we need than holding on to them, it’s about reviewing priorities and constantly reordering them.

And that is very hard. We prefer to keep on keeping on with the things we enjoy and grow accustomed to. Religious habits most of all die hard, especially if words and music are involved. Replace Dmitry and his singers with a punk rock group next Sunday and watch the firestorm rage.

But a couple of times in the Christian year, we build in a journey of spiritual preparation and soulful refreshing. Advent to prepare for Christmas, and Lent to prepare for Easter. And we use stories, not punk rock groups, (though they could also do the job) to break the old mould of our religious habits; stories that we can enter into and put ourselves personally into the roles of the disciples who walk proudly alongside Jesus, then not so proudly, then very nervously, then fall asleep, then run away.

Or we simply join the crowds in the stories ahead, cheering this young rabbi, everybody’s friend, then calling for his execution and jeering him as he dies.

It’s always more comfortable to join the stories in this passion season with a little distance, a step or two removed from Jesus, such is the intensity of the drama and the terror of it all.

But not today, in this first story of the season. There are only two characters. Jesus and the devil. This is up close and personal stuff going down here. It’s called the temptation of Jesus but it’s also the temptation of each one of us, if we dare to make the story our own.

It’s actually more about testing than it is temptation. That’s a better translation of the Greek word. And just as God tested the people of Israel in their journey through the wilderness to the Promised Land, testing their faithfulness, their willingness to keep trusting and hoping and keeping the commandments, (that’s why Jesus keeps quoting Scripture to the devil, even though this devil has read it all before.) In the same way, says this story, God tests us, especially our willingness to stay open and focused and alert to what the Spirit might be saying to us, where the Jesus model might be pointing us.

And to stay open and focused, the first exercise in this spiritual training is to get rid of the rubbish that fills our heads and hearts from the media led, market driven consumer society around us, promising endless possessions, instant results, total control, even guaranteed peace of mind, if you buy the right insurance. Try telling that to anyone who lives in Christchurch this week.

All these promises form the great temptation, the great testing of our day. If your house is earthquake proofed, and lifted above the 100 year flood level, if the food on your table is Heart Foundation ticked, if your workplace and your back yard is OSCH certified, if your savings are inflation proofed and your pension fund properly hedged, if you drive to the conditions and don’t treat the speed limit as a target, if you keep spending up and borrowing more, up to the limit the banks set, and you’re fully insured, then peace of mind and the good life is guaranteed. You will be in control of your life.

Well, the journey through Lent to Easter is about learning all over again that ain’t true. The only way into that new life we’re offered on Easter morning is to let go all those dreams of safety and control and guaranteed outcomes.

In this testing encounter with this Scripture quoting toting devil, Jesus says thanks but no thanks to the offer of instant results, stones into bread, and the promise of complete protection, and the lure of endless possessions.

We know all about these temptations in our media and our own history. They’re offered every night in the ads for Powerball and Lotto and How to be a millionaire. I’ve got a stack of promises from Readers Digest and Magnamail about the winning the grand prize if I fill in the form and subscribe today. The false promise is everywhere about us, right now and way back.

The complete protection guarantee is wound into our missionary history with the Maori prophets like Te Ua assuring their followers they’d be bullet proof if they held up their hand and said the right prayer.

We love these promises of instant results when you press the right button on your remote control. But their lure runs much deeper than that.

This story is asking us to let go these dreams of being able to control our life on our terms, to the exclusion of others, and take the risk of walking into Lent with empty hands and eyes wide open.

WH Auden wrote a poem about this challenge.

The sense of danger must not disappear;

The way is certainly both short and steep,

However gradual it looks from here;

Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

This is not the leap off the temple tower that the devil asks of Jesus. This is the leap of faith that dares to give away “the dream of safety” and walk with Jesus into the wilderness, without any guarantee of where and how that will end.

The journey Jesus models is a journey of kenosis, the Greek word for self emptying, letting go everything that clings to security or self importance or self righteousness, or superiority of any kind.

In the story the devil keeps asking Jesus to be like God. And what Jesus shows us instead is how to be human, demonstrating the kind of humanity that will bring us into the life God intends for us, and invites us to reclaim on Easter morning, in all its fullness.

The humanity that will get us there is more about giving than receiving, letting go than holding and keeping, forgiving others rather than counting wrongs against us, and forgiving ourselves rather than clutching regret and guilt; including rather than excluding; trusting, hoping, ready to begin all over again.

That’s the kind of humanity this story asks us to dare to follow, and when we do we join a long tradition of brave and faithful people, who have walked this way before us, many of them from this place called St Matthews.

This is a good place to begin the Lenten journey. Join the walk. Let go, make the leap, and leave behind the dreams of safety that stop us taking the first step.