Sermon for the 1st Sunday in Lent - February 10, 2008
“And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”
YOU have never played this before, but you think you understand the rules. Beautifully shaped game pieces, the dice, the colorful board, its squares mysteriously winding a path around and across from one corner to its opposite. You roll, you move, you read each landed square, pick up the indicated cards and do what each one says. You gain so many tokens, money, points, and position; it looks like you're ahead. With a final whoop of triumph, you cast the right number and land directly on the targeted finish line and declare yourself the winner.
“That's not how you play it at all,” says the experienced player at your side. “You broke about every rule, and that isn't how you win anyway.” You stare crestfallen, barely understanding what you are hearing, but your nemesis holds the directions for you to see and you sink back on your heels, reassessing, realizing, readjusting your focus, your aim. You blew it totally. You didn't understand a thing. You totally had the wrong idea, went at it completely backwards. You didn't win at all. You lost miserably.
Life can throw you some strange curves. Last Sunday's Super Bowl, for those of you who dutifully watched it, was a lesson in disappointed overconfidence. New England's perfect record and unbeatable offense hadn't reckoned with the force of the Giant's desire to prove them wrong. The odds makers had the Patriots by a dozen points or more. Nobody figured New York could even make a game of it. Surprise, surprise…
Start here. Learn a totally foreign language, to speak and understand it. Learn complete new ways of movement, of muscle control, wearing strange garments and sleeping in a darkened room alone. You find new foods interesting but alien to your taste, and the rules of your new life constrain your natural impulses. Everyone around you seems to know what they are doing and why. But you don't have a clue. After years and years, one day they drop you off at a strange building, lead you through a door into a room filled with chairs and tables and people roughly your shape and size, in your same dilemma: fearful. You can't pronounce the word they use for this experience, but a large person greets you smiling and tells you where to sit. Others are crying, and you feel like doing the same, but you might get in trouble so you contain your emotions as the first day of school begins.
You've turned five and kindergarten has now claimed five mornings a week of your life. How many years of school do you endure? School seems like the goal, the meaning of life itself, until you grow toward the end of it, see adults living their lives, pursuing their careers, having families, buying homes and cars and going on vacations like your dad and mom and siblings. You begin to dream what you will be when you no longer have to attend school. You begin to prepare for real life.
Real life : at the end of another tunnel called college a light beckons. Suddenly at 22 or so you are release from your lifelong hallways and class schedules and have to find the treasure called “a job.” Jobs in succession, either quitting or fired, disappointing and boring, tiring and confusing, inadequate to pay your way, you get something finally worth your while. It wasn't at all what you were after, but it's a start.
Let's play it one way. You really succeed in this, find some secret way to make great amounts of money, you are sought after, offered more. People throw themselves in your way, happy to be used by you, and you never make a meaningful attachment, unless it's your car or entertainment center. Jets, boats, vacations in Spain, portfolios, gated communities, Moroccan leather, Swiss movements, Italian suits, Irish crystal, German engineering, living the wildest dreams of a Mongol warlord. You live it and you die, the envy of everyone—the unhappiest rich man anyone ever knew.
Or. You fall in love, marry, have children, stack up your bills in a corner, pay them off in time, get older, lose hair, struggle with your weight, struggle with temptations to flee this humdrum, these responsibilities. Is this what life was supposed to be? Television doesn't say so. Sickness weakens, teeth give out, loved ones die, leave you in a rest home, the nurses barely try, seldom answer your questions, no one visits, you breath your last.
The rich man, the poor man, waken in bright light and a powerful Presence. Both frightened, both naked, embarrassed by their own unpreparedness for this moment—a voice speaks to the man who has everything. “ You had so much given to you. What did you give in return?” “I gave charitably, my tax returns each year…” “I gave my Life for you, called to you, set aside every sin of yours and made it so clear why you were on earth alive, and yet you never turned around from your course, never even acknowledged me. You failed every test. You died the poorest man alive, but I had such riches for you. Don't you know what life is? Don't you understand that all you were doing was worth nothing?” The rich man staggers at the thought of so many lost opportunities while he chased his useless dream.
To the poor man, the realization has different features but comes to a similar place. He did do for others, worked hard and was scarcely rewarded for it, but his sacrifice never found its true object and bitterness at life's unfairness swallowed up what might have been his reward in all that he suffered. He too was playing at the wrong game. His death, alone and in poverty, in the end had no meaning either.
Isaiah wrote: “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labor for that which satisfieth not?” Isaiah 55:1-2 What do we think we're all about? The world sets the tune, we look at what everyone else is doing—they seem to know the rules. Do we ever look up and see that this way never gets anywhere?
Moses summed up the path before his countrymen about to launch their great campaign into the Promised Land. “Remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness… So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna… that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord … For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land… a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; …in which you will lack nothing… When you have eaten and are full, then you shall bless the Lord your God… lest—w hen you have eaten and are full… when your heart is lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God …who fed you in the wilderness with manna—then you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth.' … I testify against you this day that you shall surely perish.” Deut 8:1-10
Before any great accomplishment, any great task is attempted; the soul must first prepare itself and seek guidance on what the goal is, what path to take, where one's strength lies. Jesus received His Guide at the River Jordan, and immediately had to go off alone, seeking the face of God in the wilderness, eating nothing and testing His relationship, the way He must go, the right reason, and who His enemy was. The enemy comes to challenge Him. “If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.” Satan sets the rules of engagement, despises God's Son, demands obedience and offers the flesh what it wants. It's so like him. He will get people to do the most horrendous things, and using their outrages as evidence, challenge the faithful to answer what kind of a God they have that will allow such evil to exist in this world. Turn these stones to bread . Jesus remembers the manna of God's patience with Israel on the desert. “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”
Satan's second gambit is for Jesus to achieve His mission by an act of courage, letting God rescue Him from a fall before the wondering gaze and amazement of the hundreds milling about the Temple. The enemy knows scripture, too. “If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.” Jesus says, “It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” Finally, his last throw, a desperate one: the enemy shows Jesus the great and glorious human kingdoms of the world, of all time, saying: “All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.”
So many have fallen for that. Just worship me, and it's yours . Just seek money and think that's what you're here for. Just seek comfort. Just seek food. Just seek your own justification. Just get through it. Just don't look up, don't find out that all your efforts, all your achievements, all your life's work, your blood, sweat and tears were for the wrong goal, playing the wrong game, following the wrong rules. You lost, you fool. How can God allow such injustice, so much evil, such suffering, such people like you into a world He says He created? The devil gloats over you.
Wake up now. Smell the coffee. “The bread that we break—is it not the fellowship of the body of the Christ? because one bread, one body, are we the many—for we all of the one bread do partake.” 1 Cor 10:16-17 “And while they were eating, Jesus having taken the bread, and having blessed, did brake, and was giving to the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat, this is my body.' Matt 26:26
“Receive not the grace of God in vain …in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities… by the word of truth, by the power of God: …as dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.” 2 Cor. 6
It isn't a game. It's life. The rules are not what people say they are. We do not live by bread alone. We live only because God said so, and we are dependent on His word to know why, and how, and to what end we are to spend these lives. Any lesser goal— hard work, high achievement, fame, fortune, or even love —are the tokens losers stare at when they find they have been seeking all the wrong things, playing with the wrong set of rules. The man who dies with the most toys loses . The soul who dies bitter and resentful loses . The man or woman who lives for God's true Son doesn't die at all. He said it. The word has been spoken. That's the rule: every word that comes from the mouth of God.
PFH+