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The Gospel of Luke 41-13

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When I was ordained a deacon in 1991, I was just out of seminary, and I was excited about my new vocation. It felt very strange to wear a collar. I worked hard on my sermons and my other duties, but I wondered whether I knew what I was doing and whether I was doing it right.

So I was excited when, after a few months, a man in the parish called and said, "Let’s go to lunch. I’d like to talk to you about what your sermons have caused to bubble up in me." Ah! Wonderful! He was actually listening! And my sermons were actually causing something to bubble up in his spiritual life! I was thrilled. Then, as now, I didn’t care as much about whether he agreed with what I said about a particular point as that he listened and was moved to examination and reflection and discussion. And he wanted to have lunch to talk about it! I was excited.

We made an appointment, and went to a sandwich shop near the church. Over sandwiches, he got down to business. "I want to talk to you about your sermons," he said. "Yes," I said, with some anticipation. "Well," he said, a little uncomfortably, "You tell stories, and you talk about the Bible, usually in story form, and you give us big, sweeping things to think about. . . ." "Yeah," I said, cautiously. "But that’s not what I want. I want rules. It’s a hard world out there, and I want you to give me rules about how to live. I don’t want stories and talk about my character, I want specifics. When I am tempted, I just want a rule to follow. Why can’t you preach like that?"

So, that lunch turned out not to be one of my most pleasant memories. And, I suppose that ten years later, I’m still answering that question.

When the people of Israel were newly liberated and wandering in the desert, God gave them ten rules. We’ll start each service from now until Palm Sunday by reciting them. I commend them to you. Christians and Jews have recited the Ten Commandments for thousands of years. And, while we need to know them, simply reciting them, as history has sadly shown, doesn’t seem to mean much; it doesn’t seem to have changed people all that much.

I suppose I want to tell the guy in the sandwich shop that we’ve already got a very good list of rules, but what makes it meaningful in our lives, how we know how to apply it in the many unexpected and confusing circumstances we encounter, doesn’t depend on just knowing the rules. Bear with me for a legal analogy (I can’t help it). The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, written over two hundred years ago when people rode horses, prohibits unreasonable searches by the police. Now, that’s a rule. But it just isn’t enough for the Supreme Court to recite that rule when presented with a case in which the police planted a satellite tracking device on a suspect’s car. Is that an "unreasonable search?" It’s not enough to just recite the rule; how are we supposed to apply the rule in these particular, peculiar, unexpected circumstances?

We face the same problem with ethical decisions. The frustrating answer is that I can’t solve that problem for you or the guy in the sandwich shop. We have to figure out how to apply the rules in community. If you make an appointment with me for help with an ethical decision, we will work in community. If it’s an easy problem, sure, I’ll tell you what I think you should do. But if it’s hard, we’ll have to work together, in community. Even when we have to made ethical choices individually, we’re really doing it in community because our choices reflect the community that raised us and shaped us. And the most important gift a community of faith gives us is this: to remember who we are. When I’ve made decisions that I’ve later regretted, I can almost always look back and think to myself, "I was trying to be someone I’m not; I forgot who I am."

This morning we find Jesus going from his baptism into the "wilderness." By the way, this is not a wilderness like we often think of wildernesses, with trees and streams and a forest floor of pine needles. Jesus goes into an area roughly between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, a distance of about twelve miles as the crow flies. In that twelve miles, the elevation drops four thousand feet. The landscape looks like something NASA might send back from a distant and frightening planet: jagged rocks, huge cliffs, a very steep and dangerous decline; the area only gets six inches of rain a year, so the soil is as dry as talcum powder. The road between Jerusalem and Jericho bisects the area, and it contains a valley so deep that it is perpetually shaded. You would think that the locals would find the shade comforting, but in this harrowing landscape, it is known as the "valley of the shadow of death." Sound familiar?

It is into this landscape that Jesus goes. And it is there that he is tempted. The devil comes and offers him a chance to make bread, like Moses called down the manna from heaven. How tempting that must have been as Jesus thought not only of his own growling stomach, but of all the hungry people in Israel, in the world. "You can just solve their problems for them," the devil whispers, "keep them dependent so you can control them."

"Or you can be the greatest political leader ever. Just worship me, and think of the good you can do. You can surpass even David as a great leader."

"Or you can be spectacular, impressive. Bring people to you by showing them how amazing you are. Throw yourself off the top of the Temple and let the angels catch you. Who wouldn’t believe then?"

Each of these temptations, presented in the wilderness of Israel and the wilderness of his soul (where all of our hardest temptations are presented), had to be genuinely appealing to Jesus. "Take the easy route, the quick route, the safe route. Use the means the world has always understood: make them dependent, exercise dominion, impress them." Jesus must have wrestled not only with the devil, but with himself.

And that’s when he needed to remember who he was. I imagine that as Jesus was wrestling, he remembered something that he had heard from early childhood. It is one of the oldest creeds in the Bible. I imagine that as Jesus was sitting in the middle of this barren landscape, faced with these hard choices, he remembered the creed he had known since he could remember knowing anything. Every Jewish kid probably had to learn it by heart. We heard it this morning. "When you get to the promised land," God told the wandering children of Israel, "things will be different. You will encounter new and unexpected choices. You must remember who you are. You must take the first fruits of your labor and offer them to God. Not out of guilt, not because you are threatened, but to remind you who you are."

I imagine Jesus sitting in the dust, struggling, and saying to himself the ancient creed of his people. It is so poetic, so wonderful that I hope you’ll indulge me and let me read it (by the way, the "Wandering Aramean" is Abraham):

A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down to Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord have given me.

I don’t believe that when Jesus was tempted, he remembered rules and regulations. I believe he remembered who he was, who his people were, and what that meant. I believe he remembered that "A wandering Aramean," his father Abraham, was his ancestor. So he resisted the temptations of perpetual dependence, or domination, or impressiveness.

All of us have our times in the wilderness, when our souls seem dry and the world looks frightening, and temptation looks good, and expedient, and reasonable. Whether the temptation is to cling to our money or power or a loved one, or prestige, or alcohol, or drugs, or sex, or control through dependency, or domination, or impressiveness; whatever the temptation is, I think the first step is not to look for a rule or regulation (trust me, you’ll find them to support almost anything), or to blindly follow a preacher who instructs you what to do (you’ll find lots of choices there, too). I hope the first step for all of us is to remember who we are, and who our people are.

We offer our first fruits, and our lives, to God because our ancestor was a wandering Aramean, and our Savior resisted temptations of expediency, painlessness, and shallowness, and instead went to the cross. All our lives, every decision we make, is a response to that.