Don’t Settle for Too Little

First UMC Fort Dodge

February 10, 2008

Matthew 4:1‑11

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread." But he answered, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that goes from the mouth of God.'" Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you,' and 'On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'" Jesus said to him, "Again it is written, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, "All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me." Jesus said to him, "Away with you, Satan! for it is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'" Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

“What are the major temptations of our lives?”

Lent is a very un-American idea. Lent is about obedience, self-restraint, resisting temptation: Very un-American. Lent is about not grabbing the quick and easy. Lent is about holding out for something really worth while, not settling for short term gain: Very un-American. What self-respecting American ever restrained or denied himself anything or ever obeyed anyone or resisted any temptation? The American economy would crumble and the American psyche would implode if we ever took Lent seriously. Besides, opportunity may only knock once but temptation just leans on the bell. Who can hold out for long?

A parent was saying to me the other day that the toughest job of a parent was "the courage to look your children in the eye and say 'no.'" That is a particular challenge in a culture where most of what we hear tells us that our job as a parent is to work hard to give our children everything their hearts desire.

Secular American has pretty much taken over the Christmas holidays on Christmas and even Easter. But the secular culture leaves Lent alone. Hallmark has no Lenten greeting cards. Wal-Mart has no Lenten sales. There’s no Lenten parade. Mardi Gras is just a last gasp at self- indulgence before the austere 40 days of self denial we all dread.

Peggy Lee recorded a wonderful song in the sixties called, “I Must Resist.” It captured the horrible, tantalizing allure of that which is our greatest downfall: to settle for what feels good in the short run, forgetting that life is a marathon, not a sprint. As Peggy Lee sang the song, you knew that she neither really wanted to resist, nor would she long manage to resist, the wicked pleasures of love which tempted her

Jesus did better. It is important not to trivialize the temptations which Jesus faces, of course. We face constant temptations to eat and drink too much, to party too hard, to exercise too little. But this is not the kind of temptation that Jesus resists. His temptations were much stronger than the aisles of Wal-Mart, the smell of McDonald’s French fries or the swish of a skirt.

Lent, you see, is not about eating less candy and fewer cookies and showing up at the fitness center. It’s not about resisting the temptations of the flesh, by which I suppose we mean illicit sex, snickers bars and illegal drugs. Most of us, I’ll warrant, have relatively few and minor sins to report along these lines. I heard about a bumper sticker the other day that read, “If Jesus died for my sins, he over-reacted.” Jesus did not die because I can’t stick to my diet.

But there is a sense in which we all face the same grave temptations that Jesus faced in the wilderness and that Adam and Eve experienced in the Garden of Eden. This temptation is to be far less than the person God wants us to be.

In the very first Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, Calvin's dad is working on the car. It helps here to know that Hobbes is a tiger and Calvin his young human friend. Calvin walks up in a safari hat and says, "So long, Pop! I'm off to check my tiger trap! I rigged a tuna fish sandwich yesterday, so I'm sure to have a tiger by now!" His dad replies, "They like tuna fish, huh?" As Calvin walks off, he says, "Tigers will do anything for a tuna fish sandwich!" The final frame shows Hobbes (the tiger), hanging by his foot from a tree, munching on a tuna fish sandwich. He says to no one in particular, "We're kind of stupid that way." Each day we, too, are tempted to be less than God created us to be. We choose what is easiest without thinking about how much more is possible. We take tuna fish when we could do much better. We're kind of stupid that way.

Sin, you see, is yielding to the temptation to be less than we really are. Sin means adopting a life direction which conflicts with God’s call. The devil has gone right to the heart of the matter. Jesus had to decide who he is going to be. This is a choice all of us face. Will we be the person God wants us to be? Or will the devil lure us to be something less?

Choosing to be the person God wants us to be is not always easy. Sometimes the choices are very difficult. Think of the heroine of the book and movie Bridges of Madison County, Francesca, who falls in love with a traveling photographer. Life as the companion to someone so romantic and adventurous would have been really exciting for her - far more exciting than life on an Iowa pig farm. Unfortunately, it was not who she was. She had already made choices which had defined her. Her decision to stay with her family was an acceptance of her real identity. There is often a great sadness to such a choice, particularly, as is so often the case, in matters of the heart. Think how many tragedies and how much sadness could be avoided if we did not fall in love with people who tempt us to be someone other than who God wants us to be. The trouble is that in the heat of passion it’s sometimes hard to see clearly that life in its fullness and grace is always found by choosing to be the person God would have us be.

This choosing can be very hard. It’s hard because we have to do it ourselves - no one else can do it for us. We often feel that like Jesus we are all alone in the wilderness when we make these important choices about who God wants us to be. I belong to a group of middle aged people reassessing our careers. In fact, we call ourselves the ROC group, because we are people reassessing our careers. The discussion turned the other day to the challenge which many in the group have faced when they leave the corporate world to work on their own. In the Dilbert world of corporate America, there may be lots of craziness, but each day’s agenda is filled for you. How you allocate your resources, how you determine what you do and how you decide which projects to tackle and to what end, all these issues are decided for you. To succeed, you let someone else determine who you are, what you are to do, and when you are successful. Of course, this is a tyranny which many people need and which, I would argue, the public schools prepare us for or try to at any rate. And the business world could not function if it didn’t have huge armies of people willing to let their bosses determine who they are, what they should do, and when they have done it successfully. There is significant comfort and security in letting someone else decide all these important parts of our lives. And we miss this security when we branch out to work as an entrepreneur. Suddenly we have to make all these decisions about who we are, what we do, when, in what order, and to what effect. These choices overwhelm many who long for the security of having someone else write the script for them.

But the corporate model which requires that someone else direct and control your choices is not the model for spiritual wholeness. It may not even be the best model for corporate life, but there are others more qualified than me to explore this possibility. I can only say that the lesson of Jesus in the wilderness is to resist letting someone other than God tell you what you are to do and be.

It may be that women are at a particular crossroads in this regard. I tried to encourage married friends of mine to join my wife and me in dance lessons. The wife demurred. She liked the thought of dancing but she dreaded the notion of letting her husband lead.

Few women mistake their husbands for God, however, so resisting their lead may not always be such a bad thing. Adam and Eve, in contrast, illustrate the cost of letting someone other than God tell them who to be. Jesus is sometimes called the second Adam. Death came into the world because the first Adam disobeyed God’s commandments and listened to the devil. Seldom has so much been lost for so little gained. Eternal life came into the world because Jesus did not listen to the alluring voice of evil and choose to let God direct his choices.

Jesus recognized the voice of the devil in what were likely his own inner voices telling him to be the Messiah the world wanted. No doubt, this was very tempting. I don’t know how much agony it was for Jesus to discern the voice of God and follow it rather than the voice of the devil, but I know that it is often very hard for us to make this distinction. God’s voice is all too often drowned out by our desire to get what we want, or what the world tells us we should want. In other words, the devil tempts us to do and be what we at some very basic level really want to be and do. This is the essence of the flim-flam: to use our own inner desires to bring us down.

There is a wonderful story about Billy Bob Thornton, writer and director, who was being interviewed before the Academy awards show a few years ago. When asked what he would do if he won an award, Thornton replied that he would thank his parents. “Would you thank God?” asked the reporter. “No,” replied Thornton. “God has got better things to worry about than my Oscar. God isn’t here to help us get Oscars. God is here to be obeyed.” If Adam and Eve had been as smart as Billy Bob Thornton, we’d still be in the Garden of Eden.

Prayer of Thanksgiving

We thank you, O God, for the words of the Bible where Jesus found strength to resist the tempter. We thank you that Jesus knew the power of temptation so that when we look to him we know we are accepted and understood. We thank you for this season of Lent where we can be purposeful about our struggle with temptation. We ask you to help us to practice a courageous honesty in examining ourselves in the light of your love. And we ask you to help us to go beyond self-examination to focus on your grace that accepts us as we are and begins to transform us. In the strong confidence of your unconditional love teach us to resist all that would stand in the way of our knowing you. Help us to say "no" to evil and to say "yes" to you. In Jesus' name.

Offertory Prayer

Receive our offerings and our intentions, dear God, as signs of our lives committed to you. Help us this season to say "no" to what would be harmful to ourselves and others, and what would draw us away from you. Fill us with your love as we struggle with the powers of our selfish culture, our own willfulness, and our desire to rule over others. Create new hearts in us that are filled with your grace.

Amen.