Lent 3: Sorting Out Our Temptations: From the Trivial to the Serious
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Third Sunday in Lent, C
March 3, 2013
“Sorting Out Our Temptations from the Trivial to the Serious”
The Rev. Dr. Frank G. Kirkpatrick
In this morning’s scripture readings we continue with the theme of temptation, or as Paul puts it in his epistle to the Corinthians referring to Jesus, the test. And of course we will once again in the Lord’s prayer ask God not to lead us into temptation or put us to the test.
Now what is this thing called temptation or the test to which the biblical passages are pointing? Clearly it implies a desire for something that we are forbidden to have or to ask for, or at least something that is not good for us, something that obstructs our journey toward the truth of God’s intentions for us. Lent is traditionally a time of restraint: avoiding the temptations for things we normally take pleasure in even when we know they are not good for us. Or the temptation is to challenge God to do something that in our fallible human wisdom we think is the right thing to do, as the man told the gardener in Jesus’ parable regarding the fig tree: ‘cut it down’, only to be cautioned that the time was not yet right for that to happen.
Now there are various kinds and degrees of temptation. Many of them, unfortunately, are of what I would call the trivial kind, the kind that can be turned into a laundry list of avoidances that are not all that hard. These are the temptations which we know we have the ability, if not always the will power, to avoid because they are not essential to our fundamental well-being. I don’t need that extra helping of salt, or ice-cream, or cookies, in order to have a satisfying meal. I don’t need another dinner out this month. I don’t need that extra item of clothing. We could list almost ad infinitum the items of temptation we could do without and still live a meaningful and satisfying life. In a highly consumerized culture the list of needless temptations is quite long. But so often we think we have fully captured the notion of temptation when we have completed this check list of things we could do without, even if only for the period of Lent. But it is putting Jesus to the test to ask him to help us avoid them.
These were not the kind of temptations that Jesus faced nor do they come close to the deeper kind of temptations we face in our lives today and whose true danger is often hidden from us by our rationalizations of them. In the midst of desperate hunger after 40 days with no food Jesus refused the test of the devil’s temptation to turn stones into bread. Jesus was also given the opportunity to rule over all the kingdoms of the world and then to hurl himself down onto the pinnacle of the Temple in Jerusalem in the sure knowledge that God’s angels will protect him. The only thing Jesus has to do to get these powers is to worship the Devil rather than God. But Jesus rebuffs the Devil and says simply, “do not put the Lord your God to the test”. Jesus’s demand reminds us of what we say on our own behalf in the Lord’s prayer: save us from the time of trial, do not put us to the test, or in the traditional version, lead us not into temptation. Realistically, of course, our temptations are not on the scale of Jesus’: we are not usually tempted to worship Satan in order to rule over all the kingdoms of the earth, or to throw ourselves off a cliff in the expectation that God’s angels will carry us safely to the ground. Our temptations are usually more mundane but they do reveal something of our most basic human weaknesses, weaknesses which if we succumb to them will truly lead us into dangerous temptations, especially when we use our weaknesses to put Jesus to the test.
One of the most basic temptations arising from our human frailty is the temptation to expect God to solve even the most trivial problems we think we have, to turn God into a problem solver who will magically resolve any mess we’ve gotten ourselves into. Now it is not wrong in itself to expect God’s saving power in all the moments of our life when our very well-being and core identity as children of God is threatened. But this does not mean expecting God to ensure us a seat on an airplane when we are flying stand-by; or to ensure a parking space close to the building we are visiting, or that the UConn basketball teams will secure a victory every time out on the court. Expecting God to grant us these things is the temptation that leads us to reducing God’s power to that of a magician who can re-arrange or alter the trivial and mundane affairs of our lives. And when we give in to that temptation we demean and dishonor the majesty of God. God is not a magic wand we can wave over our everyday trials and tribulations and have them disappear on command. God does not impose these trials on us nor does he spontaneously remove them from us simply by our invoking his name or entering into a bargaining relationship: Lord, if you do this for me, I’ll go to church more often. The Gospel does not suggest that God caused the Tower of Siloam to fall on those who were no more guilty of sin than those who escaped the tower’s fall. We can’t bargain with God to escape the consequences of our sin and it is a fatal temptation to test God by requesting that he exempt us from all dangers and bad things that befall all human beings.
The other serious temptations we often succumb to are those in which we think we can attain a power over others that will keep them away from us so that we don’t have to bear their burdens: this is the temptation to trust in the power of politics, for example, when we seek to pass laws that protect us from those ‘others’ who are different from us and for whom we don’t want to provide aid out of our tax dollars. A related temptation is that of attaining the power that comes with inordinate wealth, a wealth that promises to buy us out of having to care for those less well-off than we are; and there is also, I would suggest, the temptation to believe in the power of the gun which we are tempted to believe will keep potential intruders or those with evil intent from threatening us and our family. This is the temptation to believe that the more danger we can pose to others the less danger they pose to us, at least in theory. But if we keep going down the road of arming good guys with more guns than the bad guys, a road on which we threaten to take an eye for an eye, then eventually the whole world will be blind. Being tempted to possess wealth, political power, and the protection of the gun are all temptations that lead us to believe we can secure our own safety by building bullet proof barriers around ourselves and keeping others away from us: that we can determine what is good and right based on our fear of being encumbered by the needs of others, our fear that living in vulnerability to violence, deprivation, disaster, and accident is the greatest danger of all, a fear that must be overcome only by arming ourselves to the teeth with power, wealth, and an unlimited arsenal of weapons.
But this is to recapitulate the sin of the Garden of Eden: rather than trusting in God’s power, Adam and Eve trusted in their own ability to know good and evil but the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil was the one thing forbidden to them and yet from which they were tempted to eat: they were tempted to become their own gods and in their act of defiance they cut off their dependence on God and the human race has suffered ever since. This is the ultimate temptation: to rely on our prideful creations to save us and to bring us fulfillment as if God has ceased to exist. But what Jesus knew was that the temptations of Satan could not reach the spiritual heart of reality which is the trust that if we live by God’s power there is nothing to fear.
God may not be tempted into magically resolving our frustrations or sufferings: but the one thing on which we can absolutely rely is that God will always be present with us no matter how deep our suffering. God does not cause suffering but he is never absent from the one who is suffering, to be everywhere available to us as a compassionate parent to hold us up, to strengthen us in the midst of our turmoil and despair. Throwing ourselves into the arms of God’s love is not a temptation but a necessity without which we cannot live as God intends us to live. God will not protect us from all forms of being tested: they are common, as Paul says, to everyone. But the one thing God promises is that you will never be tested beyond your strength, and that with the testing God will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.
The trivial temptations mock God: the serious temptations mock the human nature God intended for us to live in. We were made for God and for each other: any temptation to believe that we made ourselves for ourselves and that we can live without God and each other is a final and destructive temptation. Let us pray that we never fall into it, and by God’s grace we never will.