February 18, 2018
Mark 1:9-15 and Genesis 9:8-17
By Jennifer Garrison Brownell
Today is the first Sunday of Lent. These are the 40 days before Easter, a time of turning toward God. In the modern way of practicing lent, you are invited not to give something up just to give it up, but to make space for god. Or else, maybe take something on. But the reason for our Lenten practices, whatever they maybe, is to avoid the things that tempt you, avoid temptation.
By definition, something that is tempting, is something (act, object or person) that seems appealing. But, it’s more than that. I would say my dignified little hellebore plant, just starting to bloom with its dusky purple flowers, is appealing and so are the cheerful crocus and daffodil, but no-one would call their appeal a temptation. What makes the quality of a tempting thing different?
Beyond appealing, it is obsessively so. And, often times the thing that tempts, oddly may be appealing but is not even actually pleasurable or enjoyable. The first girl scout cookie is both tempting and appealing. The last one in the box? Tempting, maybe, but definitely no longer appealing. And if you do succumb to that temptation, you wont feel good about yourself (as you will if you check out my hellebore whose common name, as you probably know, Lenten roses).
So, a temptation has negative consequences, before, during and after giving in to it.
Before – you are thinking about how much you want it. There is yearning and obsession.
During doesn’t feel very good either – the shame of the 20th cookie, or the end of the bottle, or the one more run at the slot machine, or…
And after – you feel bad or actually physically sick or experience other consequences.
It’s hard to have any space for God in there with all that going on in your head.
Even Christ was tempted, although in the story we heard today, it went by so fast you might have missed it. Unlike in other gospel accounts where the story of the temptation of Christ is described in more detail, in Mark’s gospel is just barely a full sentence, so let’s hear it again:
So Jesus was driven into the wilderness, was tempted by Satan, was with the wild animals and the angels attended him.
A short sentence but a lot going on, first Jesus was driven into the wilderness by the Spirit.
One temptation we often face is to make God big and far away and inaccessible and mysterious and most of all separate from us. IN fact, this might be the biggest temptation of all. After all, if God is far from us, then our temptations can easily crowd around.
But God and Jesus are one! So, Jesus is driven to the desert not from without but from within, by his own self. So, Jesus was driven into the wilderness by the Spirit. Remember the wilderness means the literal desert, but also has another meaning in the Bible, and perhaps for us as well. Wilderness also means loneliness, chaos, trial and yes, temptation.
The temptation and the response to temptation are personified like this: The beasts were with him, and so were the angels. Perhaps Jesus is driven into the desert just so he can pay attention, so he can hear the voices of the angels and the animals.
His own worst self, the beasts — and also the voice of God that dwells within him and each of us, the angels. Along with the animals (and here we are not talking about our companion animals, our beloved cuddly friends we are talking a bout the beasts, the ones that gnaw and tear!), we have the angels, those divine messengers who comfort us, who remind us of god’s will for us.
Sometimes we think of the animals and the angels as two ends of a spectrum, but it might be more like they are two sides of the same coin. That old cartoon image of the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other is so common because it’s so true – we really do have seeming opposites within us, each trying to pull us in their direction.
This week we saw the work of the beasts, we heard the voices of angels. Another, dear Lord, school shooting. And then, the incredible witness of the young students of the school. Listen to the voice of Emma Gonzalez of Parkland Florida.
“We haven’t already had a moment of silence in the House of Representatives, so I would like to have another one. Thank you.
Every single person up here today, all these people should be home grieving. But instead we are up here standing together because if all our government and President can do is send thoughts and prayers, then it’s time for victims to be the change that we need to see.
I watched an interview this morning and noticed that one of the questions was, do you think your children will have to go through other school shooter drills? And our response is that our neighbors will not have to go through other school shooter drills. When we’ve had our say with the government — and maybe the adults have gotten used to saying ‘it is what it is,’ but if us students have learned anything, it’s that if you don’t study, you will fail. And in this case if you actively do nothing, people continually end up dead, so it’s time to start doing something.
We are going to be the kids you read about in textbooks. Not because we’re going to be another statistic about mass shooting in America, but because, just as David said, we are going to be the last mass shooting.”
Is violence the ultimate temptation? Maybe. Even God is tempted by violence, I think. I’m sorry for what I’ve made, God says in the story – so I’m going to wipe it out, all of us. The temptation of God is to think that if the world irritates, destruction is the path to transformation. So God nearly succumbs to this temptation, saying of the earth the was God’s own creation “I will kill it with destruction.” But, through Noah, God sees the only way to rid the earth of evil is by love/relationship. God says, I will not try to destroy evil with violence again, instead, I will renew the covenant, the relationship I have with you.
If there’s anything that can shatter the blinders anything that raise our heads to see our neighbors and family members not with resentment and despair, but with curiosity, it is love. By this early example, so early in our human story, God says that it is with love that I will respond, and love will take up so much room that there’s not room for anything else.
God’s voice speaks thru prophets down the ages, all the way to Martin Luther King Jr, who looked the most despicable of human actions in the face and proclaimed:
“Every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear. Somehow we must be able to stand up before our most bitter opponents and say: ‘We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. …throw us in jail and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and drag us out on some wayside road and leave us half-dead as you beat us, and we will still love you. But be assured that we’ll wear you down by our capacity to suffer… appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.”
40 days stretch before us. The animals, they are right here with us, as they were with Jesus in the desert all those years ago.
As we look around, as we hear their snarling and feel their sharp teeth, We may be tempted to cry out:
Oh God, why don’t you do something? I did do something – I made you! And if we open our heavy lidded eyes to see, then we will see, as Jesus did, see the angels dancing all around us.
Amen.