Sermon: Tempting Thoughts

From Wellington Cathedral of St Paul

Tempting Thoughts

21 February 2010

The Revd Jenny Wilkens

• Deuteronomy 26:1-10
• Psalm 91
• Romans 10:8-13
• Luke 4:1-13

http://cathedral.wellington.net.nz/index.php/Sermons

Camping is Nature’s way of promoting the motel business ...at least in a Wellington summer! I wonder what are your memories of camping - perhaps your first guide camp or a school camp where you had to grapple to pitch your tent and get it to stay up! My mother used to talk of her first guide camp where the only girl who knew how to put up a tent properly was a girl who lived on a lighthouse on a rock where there was no room to pitch anything, let alone a tent! Perhaps you've had the experience of a tent coming down on you in the middle of the night, or the driving wind or pouring rain making you give up and go home to the comfort of your own bed!

My own experience of camping for a week in the Sinai desert didn't involve tents at all - we just had a sleeping bag on a thin mat on the sand. Was that tingling feeling on my arm just the desert breeze or was it a scorpion creeping up my arm? Was that a desert fox I saw as I crept out to the loo in the middle of the night or are there still wolves round here? Where was our next meal going to come from, where was there water when all around was just barren rocks and sand?

After that experience, I felt at least a little more empathy for Jesus going out into the wilderness to take his survival badge, to go through a time of testing, the sort of 'drop you off and see how you cope' test that Outward Bound is so well known for. How will Jesus do?

For Jesus is at the very beginning of his ministry, he's just had the most wonderful affirmation from God at his baptism that he is God's beloved son, and now the test comes. God's Spirit leads him out into the wilderness and applies the heat literally. Just what sort of Son of God will Jesus prove to be? How will Jesus live up to his name Son of God, his family likeness to God?

It's a bit like for us as we grow up, will we take on the values of our parents, or will we ditch them? We have some choices to make about how we will live, as we seek to be true to ourselves, and to be the best person that we can be, to live up to our God-given potential.

The Guide motto has always been "Be Prepared" and we can see clearly from the way Jesus responded to the temptations that came into his head, that he had an answer because he had a foundation to his life to call on under pressure. He knew the Scriptures, the story of God's people through the ages right up to his time, and he'd learned the lessons of his people's story.

But we might want to say we live in a much more complicated world than Jesus did. I know the Guides World Thinking Day 2010 theme is girls worldwide say “together we can end extreme poverty and hunger”.

I've asked Gillian Nelson to speak to us, who has recently returned from three months teaching English in Tanzania in East Africa. We know Tanzania is a very poor country, with high levels of poverty, and hunger is a real issue as people grapple with famine and the impact of climate change and weather patterns on harvests. Gillian, were you prepared for what you found in Tanzania? How did you find life there?...

Jesus was challenged in the temptations to go for power, to use the world's ways to achieve power, status, to go out for what he could get for himself, and for his own comfort. He was even tempted to do good things but using the wrong means, to worship the things of this world rather than God who created them. He could have used his miraculous powers as Son of God to become some sort of benevolent Superman, a universal Mr Fix-it…

Gillian, you as a Westerner were seen in Tanzania as wealthy, educated, a source of money, aid. It must have been tempting to be the one who could 'rescue' people, fix things for them, to become popular, even a bit of a celebrity. How did you cope with that? How did you respond to all the calls made on you while you were in Tanzania?...

It's interesting that all Jesus' responses to the temptations are quotes from the Book of Deuteronomy in the Hebrew Scriptures and I want to turn now to that wonderful reading which we heard this morning, the story that is to be told at each harvest festival, when the people of Israel brought the first-fruits of their harvest to God. They were to remember that they hadn't just produced all this bounty themselves, but that God had been faithful to them throughout their journeyings, right from the days of their ancestors Abraham and Sarah, and Jacob, Leah and Rachel, right down through their time of slavery in Egypt, right through their own forty years of wandering in the wilderness, and then bringing them safely into the promised land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

They were not to take all this for granted, but were to remember their history, their story, and they were to celebrate it. It's interesting that the people of Israel are told "then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house." (Deut 26: 11). Because the Hebrew people had once been aliens themselves when they lived in slavery in Egypt, so they mustn't forget what it is like to be a foreigner in a strange land, to be an immigrant or refugee.

Perhaps that is a challenge to us, as we welcome immigrants and refugees into our land which we often affectionately call Godzone, this land flowing with milk and honey. Perhaps part of helping our country and doing our duty in our country is to welcome those who come to live among us, just as our families and ancestors have all come to these shores at one time or other over the years.

Gillian, I want to ask you one more tempting question! You're now back living in Wellington. Is it tempting just to slot back into Godzone, into this beautiful country, to just get back into your studies, and tramping in the bush, and the wonderful music we enjoy here? It would be very easy and comfortable just to join in with our culture's concern for things that bring pleasure and power and status, to slot back into the Western lifestyle we enjoy here. How are you grappling with that temptation? ….

Today we've thought a little bit about the temptations Jesus faced and we've also heard how Gillian has coped with some of the temptations she faced both while living in Tanzania and now back here in New Zealand.

For each one of us the challenges and temptations we face as we go through life will be different, as we seek to be true to ourselves and to the person God has made us to be.

It's like each one of us is a different musical instrument and as we grow and change, we learn better how to tune it and play it so that we can produce the best music we can, in harmony with the other instruments around us. And that takes lots of practice, and not a few bum notes on the way! I like to think of God as like the metronome who keeps me on the beat, in rhythm, and the Bible, the scriptures are to me like the music I play, the ground rules from which I build my own new melodies and improvisations.

Part of the opportunity of the season of Lent, which the church has just entered, the forty days leading up to Easter, is the chance to ask God what new music do you want to teach me? What new discovery do you have for me that will help me know that I am a loved daughter or son of God to the very depths of my being?

I want to end with the quote that is on today's newssheet:

The Spirit of truth drove Jesus into the wilderness to initiate him into the truth which sets free. This word 'drove' is very precious. Inertia, illusion and fear hold me back from answering God's invitation to enter into the truth and thus gain freedom. If I am going to go forward into that truth for which God knows I am ready, I am going to need the Spirit to drive me. (Martin Smith)

May we have the courage, the faith, the strong sense of God's love and protection for us, that we are willing to follow wherever God's Spirit leads us this Lent, knowing that this time of learning and listening will bring us into a place of greater truth, greater love and greater freedom in Christ. Amen.