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29 February - Lent 1

Very Rev Lawrie Hampton

The Readings

Deuteronomy 26: 1-11 On one level this passage outlines a ceremony of thanksgiving for the good fruits of the earth, setting the first fruits before the altar. The reference to a land flowing with milk and honey, and the instruction to rejoice in all the good which the Lord has given to you and to your house, you, and the Levite, and the sojourner who is among you - these have an obvious link with Harvest Thanksgiving as it is still celebrated today. But we can note that the focus of even this passage as not on the Creator and the good earth, but on God as the one who has delivered his people from bondage in Egypt, and has brought them out with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with signs and wonders.

Psalm 91: 1-2, 9-16  It is not clear why the lectionary compilers ask us to disembowel this Psalm. The grand poetry of verses 3-8 are part of the context in which God offers protection to those who live in the shelter of the Most High. “By virtue of the soaring energy of [this Psalm’s] trust in God it leaves behind every earthly fear, every human doubt, and all inhibiting considerations, and lifts man up above the depressing realities of life to the hopeful certitude of a faith which enables him to endure life and to master it.” (Artur Weiser)

Romans 10: 8-13 Chapters 9 to 11 of Romans are a complex and sometimes obscure treatment by Paul of Jewish unbelief and its consequences. These verses play their part in the advancing of Paul’s argument, but they appear in the lectionary rather because they re-state in fine phrases some of the writer’s central teachings: salvation by faith, belief in the resurrection of Christ as an act of God, and, in a quotation from Joel, an assurance of salvation for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord. (Joel 2:32)

Luke 4: 1-13 This is seen by some as a strictly factual account of a forty-day ordeal of our Lord at the outset of his ministry, and a verbal conversation with Satan, the personification of evil, which must have been told by Jesus to his disciples at some later date. Others say that it must be purely symbolic, a dramatic and colourful way of expressing the inner struggle of Jesus in determining and fulfilling his calling as Messiah – a struggle that must have taken place not just at one finite time in his ministry, but would have continued until his death. In this case the story might have had its origins not in the life of Jesus, but in the teaching of the church in its early days. Others, perhaps most, take up one of many positions between these extremes. The preacher may want to mention these various ways of understanding the text; but the important question is not “What happened?” but “What did all of this mean to those who wrote it down, and what does it mean to us?”

Preaching

The common approach to a sermon on the temptations of our Lord is to take each of Satan’s propositions in turn, and examine what it would have meant for Jesus’ ministry had he followed that particular path and why he rejected it. Then the sermon would look at how each particular temptation relates to the life of Christian people and/or the church in our own day. This provides a neat three-pronged sermon, which, however, might either be over-long, or allow only for a cursory examination of each of the temptations. Besides, it is a sermon that has been preached on the first Sunday in Lent innumerable times!

Another approach is to notice how, according to the Gospel chronology, the temptations follow hard on Jesus’ baptism, where the heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove, and a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son….” Luke 3: 21-22. Jesus returns from the Jordan full of the Holy Spirit. But the Spirit leads him not, as we might expect, to a period of powerful proclamation of the Gospel with signs and wonders, but to a wilderness of fasting and confrontation and questioning of his calling. If you are the Son of God – these are the words with which Satan begins two of his propositions to our Lord. If … if… Seeds of doubt are sown, not only about how Jesus will go about his ministry, but more radically, about whether he even has a ministry as Son of God/Messiah.

What a contrast!: that glorious moment at the Jordan, the vision of the Spirit, the divine voice sounding in his ears, You are my Son, with you I am well pleased; and the drear desert, the hunger, the wild beasts (Mark) and the beguiling voice of the tempter.

A sermon might go on to notice that following the terrible wilderness experience the devil departs but only until an opportune time, or in the REB translation, biding his time.

Now, Luke tells us, Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. So now he meets with success? For a time, but Luke’s narrative then leads straight on to his rejection in his own home town of Nazareth….
If you saw the film The Last Temptation of Christ, (or can hire the video) you might like to refer to it, and especially the scene where our Lord on the cross finds himself wishing that he had lived an ordinary life, a quiet, safe domestic life like other people … then the dream fades, and the horror of the cross returns.
Luke has his own way of linking Jesus’ temptations and the cross. One of the thieves crucified with him says, Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us. It’s the same question: If you are the Messiah…. In Matthew’s Gospel, the onlookers taunt the crucified Christ: If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.
It’s clear that for our Lord temptation, testing, was not confined to forty days in the wilderness. In Gethsemane (Let this cup pass from me) and on the cross (My God, why have you forsaken me?) Matthew 27: 40
If for our Lord his ministry was not a chronicle of uninterrupted “successes” we need not be surprised that for his people faith is constantly being tested and challenged.

Prayers

Intercession

Eternal God, you promise to those who are tried and tested in lifethe presence and the support of Jesus Christ,the one who knew trials and temptations as we do.We pray for those who find it hard to live up to the faith they holdand the principles that they profess.We pray for people who are under pressure to compromise,to give in to the urgings of friends and colleagues,to succumb to their own insistent desires.We pray for people who look for quick and shallow satisfactions,and find no deep enduring serenity of spirit.Lord God, make them – and us – strong to stand firmfor all that is true, noble, just, pure, lovable and gracious. excellent and admirable,strong in the strength that your Spirit gives.

 

We remember in your presence people around the world,
people in all their diversity, who together are your Church in the world.
Especially we pray for the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand,
and its partner churches,
and for this congregation.
Lord God, strengthen your people to be patient and steadfast
to resist every temptation to look for shallow answers to deep questions,
all temptation to put first among their goals
material success, popular acclaim, or power over others.
May we and all your people be ready to live with our Lord
as servants in the world, living out the love that he puts into us.
We pray for people whose faith and hope and love are strained
by the pain they endure, by the waning of their physical or mental powers,
by the hardness of heart of people around them,
or by whatever private grief or anxiety they are bearing …
   A silence

Strengthen our faith, God our Father, enrich our love, enliven our hope,
and empower us to serve you cheerfully
among those who live and work around us every day
as people of Jesus Christ our Lord.