Years ago, in a series called “Touched
by an Angel”, there was an episode where Monica, the centre of the story, loses
her faith. She has seen the destruction of the Alfred P. Murrah building in
Oklahoma City - the number of deaths and
injured, especially the children. She falters in her beliefs, suddenly
questioning why a loving God in whom she has believed can have allowed such a
thing to happen. She runs away into the “wilderness”. And into the wilderness
comes that adversary, in the form of the fallen angel who in our twisting of
historical faith has become a ‘devil’ or Satan.
He arrives in the form of Mandy Patinkin, a smiling, urbane and
completely reasonable counter-voice who understands her pain – and he does,
because he’s experienced it himself – and he tries to convince her that she
doesn’t need God, that she can do all the things she needs to do on her own. Except
that he could help her of course.
Recently I’ve been having conversations
with a young person who is exploring faith. He is inquisitive, and wants to
grapple with a faith which makes sense in today’s time. One of the issues which
came up was a definition of the devil, and the existence of demons. As I lay thinking about his questions in the
early morning I also got to thinking about the Gospel text this morning, in
which we are told Jesus is ‘led by the Spirit into the wilderness’ and ‘tempted
by the devil’. And I thought about the comments and discussion with the lectionary
group on Wednesday. What does the text really tell us – not just the simplistic
interpretation of a real devil, but the old biblical understanding of ‘the
adversary’. Who is the adversary? When does the adversary appear?
We don’t get told much
about what happened with Jesus. We know that he was baptised, and the text
tells us the Spirit then led him into the wilderness, and that during these forty
days he fasted and prayed. Now, did he really fast for forty days? Doubtful.
Nor do I think it’s very important how long it was. Forty is a pretty common
figure in the Bible meaning “a long time”. Noah sat stuck on the ark for forty
days and forty nights; the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for forty
years. So sufficient to say Jesus fasted and meditated. And it’s an earmark of
deep meditation and fasting, that often the subject begins to hallucinate.
For me this is one of
the texts in which Jesus’ humanity is completely clear – both Matthew and Luke
record the story – and I think with the point that Jesus *was* human – and as a
human, subject to all the things which would tempt any human. He’s just been baptised
and in that moment had a deep spiritual experience, and he is literally alive
and on fire with the power he feels. The Spirit now leads him into a
wilderness, a dark place, where he has to face himself.
Now, Jesus has a strong
sense of social justice - and in his sense of power which he can still
touch even in this dark place, he hears a little voice saying “Turn these stones
into bread”. We know he would have been famished. But the ability to turn
stones into bread has economic and social implications as well - there were a
lot of hungry people around Palestine – if he could create food for himself,
then he could do it for everyone, someone who gave free food could become very
popular very quickly with a lot of people in need. He had to deal with
the temptation of being able to respond immediately to the needs of many
people. His response to this little voice in his ear is simple, "One does
not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God."(Deut.
8:3)
Now, the little voice
inside him promises to deliver all the nations of the world if he only bows
down in worship to this other part of himself. Any one of us, being offered all
the power of Caesar – would we take it? Broad
reforms, peace throughout the earth, a truly just society - the realm of God in the here and now, and
all done by him. But that’s not God's way – God’s way is for real change to begin at the
grassroots and work its way up, not to come from the top and trickle down.
Jesus catches himself again, and recalls the words "Worship God and serve
God only." Note, Jesus never denies that these things couldn’t come about,
nor that he has the power to do them – but he rejects the means by which he
could personally achieve these things.
The third time this
little voice comes to Jesus is when in a vision he is transported to the temple
at Jerusalem. He can look down - he can throw
himself down from the pinnacle and the words in his ears are a direct quote
from the psalms and assurances of God's protection. One last time, however, Jesus calls up
scripture and that little voice in his other ear says "Don’t test
God!"
And then the text says
that the adversary departed from Jesus “until an opportune time”. For me this
speaks even more to the humanity of Jesus – that there could be another time, a
moment of weakness.
Well, there are some threads
I want to try to pull together here. Working with the notion of walking in the
dark – being led into the wilderness, and having to work through some heavy
spiritual stuff. Did you know that the
real meaning of the word ‘jihad’ is the spiritual war with one’s self? The
story played out in “Touched by an Angel” depicts the same kind of entering
into a dark place – the dark places right within ourselves, where we can’t see
anything, and we have to walk in the figurative dark. We talk about the ‘dark night of the soul’. It’s
something real.
Many years ago Norio and
I had a friend who was a Representative to the State Legislature in Michigan,
the Rev.Lynn Jondahl, now the Honorable Lynn Jondahl. We always thought he
would be a wonderful governor, but one of the things he said was this “I’d have
to sell off too much of myself, in order to do that. Any political position
like that comes at a huge price. I’d rather stay here where I can do some good
and where I can live with what I’ve sold of myself already.”
Jesus was human. He got
called into a dark place and he could have given in to the temptations in the
wilderness. I think the point here was that he had to wrestle with
himself, that true ‘jihad’, the internal spiritual struggle, and who he would
become was based on the choices he made, which also means that he must have
been free to choose otherwise.
In the sermon “Entering
the Dark Cloud of God” Barbara Brown Taylor says talks about entering that “cloud
of unknowing” – which I see as a kind of dark place, where all senses are
changed:
when you enter the cloud of unknowing
you have to slow way, way down . All those things you prided yourself on
outside the cloud—your speed, your agility, your ability to suss things out at
a single glance—they won’t do you any good inside. You might as well
crawl like a baby; at least you can’t fall down when you’re already on the
ground. The good news is that slowness has a lot going for it. There’s
time to use senses you don’t use when your eyes are working fine. There’s time
to wonder where you think you’re going and why - none of your outside
navigational tools can help you now. Good luck with that compass, that
laminated map, that guidebook, that Bible. If it’s not inside
you, then it’s of limited use to you now. The good news is that
second-hand wisdom can only get you so far. Once you enter the dark, it’s
time to find out what your primary resources are—what gyroscope, what tuning
fork, what insistent, sacred whisper you can learn to trust when you’re walking
by faith and not by sight.”
In
the story of the angel Monica, she went into that dark cloud of unknowing,
losing touch, being alone in the dark, even in broad daylight. She had to learn
to find her way all over again. Jesus had to learn to trust that whisper which
said ‘No, don’t do it.’ He had to learn to trust himself. Now, the way the
story is related, it almost makes it sound banal – he just did it. But perhaps that’s
why the story tells us he was there forty days.
Essentially it’s telling us it was a long time, and it was a difficult
time. Jesus was walking in the dark.
-
And, Barbara Brown Taylor says, God
does some of God’s very best work in the dark.
Sources:
1.
“Entering the Dark Cloud of God” by
Barbara Brown Taylor. Preached at the Festival
of Homiletics, Denver, Colorado, May 2014.
2.
“Resisting Temptation” a sermon on Luke 4:1-13 by Rev. Richard
Gehring
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