Year A, 1st Lent: Prove Nothing

1st Sunday in Lent, Year A
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
Psalm 32
Romans 5:12-19
Matthew 4:1-11

Preaching with St. Mary's House Episcopal Center
Greensboro, NC


"Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down”

IN THE NAME OF GOD WHO CREATES, RESTORES, AND ACCOMPANIES US AT EACH DEPTH WE DARE TO PASS. AMEN.

“If you really are the Son of God, then prove it
Save yourself,”
the thief said, jeering,
suspended in the air from a few feet away
while the crowd below echoed similar taunts in a thousand voices,
“Save us too while you’re at it,” he spat.

And perhaps, at that point,
there, on the cross,
he would have.
Perhaps he would have been done with the whole scene,
the humiliation, the self-sacrifice, the unbearable pain,
perhaps he would have rendered himself completely
from the hard wood of the cross
and disappeared
as he used to be so good at doing in the early days.
Perhaps he WOULD have saved himself
if he had not instead felt the full force of God
his Father in Heaven
fall out from behind him
so completely
if he had not instead,
for at least one moment in his life
forgotten himself:
his identity as Beloved of God
replaced
by what seemed to be nearly all the world
glad for his great suffering.
“My God, my God”
he uttered at last with the psalm,
scripture always dancing from his mouth
for new turns even
in death:
“Why have you forsaken me?”
So much then, for being the Beloved of God.
Christ died alone, forsaken.

Jesus must have had some sense
of how tall an order it would be
to live so deeply into his identity
as Beloved
from the beginning.
First the Great Spirit came
to call his name with love
from the sky over Jordan
and then the Great Spirit
drove him into the wilderness just beside
to starve him of the title completely.

It would have been so much easier
to face the devil
just off the heels of Baptism,
just off the heels of Transfiguration even.
One can imagine Jesus,
radiant in the glory of the Jordan’s river and bright sky
or radiant in the glory of Moses and Elijah
suspended by light and cloud
shouting to the devil, cowering below,
“No! No! Devil, No!
I renounce you Devil!
With all the company of angels
I resist you!
With utmost authority,
I rebuke you!”
But as it was,
the Devil would not confront him
in the hours of his most unquestionable authority
as it was
the Great Spirit of God led him out
into utter silence first.

Our Church has set aside
this holy season of Lent
as a time when we intend to draw ourselves closer to God;
when we strip away those things we can deem
as unnecessary
to seek God in deeper, simpler conversation.
But for Jesus
these were forty days of separation.
To be sure
Jesus set a pattern in his life
of withdrawing from the world
to hear the voice of God,
But these forty days in the wilderness
were a different breed than that.
For these forty days
Jesus was led out
to be tempted by the Devil.
For these forty days
just as he and the world about him
had gained some sense
of his own Belovedness,
Jesus is left not with a constant reminder
of having been awoken to God’s love
but rather, with a vast and empty spaciousness.
A wilderness
in which the voice of God calling for him
is not an all-embracing
all-confounding
persistent presence
but an echo
slipping from each human grasp
into the sand and brush.

“If you really are the Son of God, then prove it,”
the Devil whispers from behind him,
as before him
the whole distance of the Temples height
whips, taunting him, with dry wind.
“Save yourself.”

And at this point,
we must believe,
IF this resistance to the Devil is to be
any resistance worth celebrating at all,
that Jesus felt some doubt by then.
Jesus must have spent enough time apart
from that Great Booming Voice in the Sky
enough time APART
from that great affirmation of Baptism
to wonder if it were true.
To wonder
if he might not NEED another miracle
to tide him over before entering this ministry
another miracle
to assure him of the status he had been gathered into
by God.

Israel had surely needed a miracle or two in the wilderness
to get over such doubts before.
When the second generation of Israelites
to come out of Egypt
had been in the wilderness for forty years
they came into Kadesh
and found no water there to drink.
“This is what you led us out of Egypt for?”
they cried to Moses and to God
“For a dry desolate place?
To die of thirst here in the wilderness!
We would have been better off in bondage
than to have traveled here.”
“What do you want me to do?”
Moses cried back
“Bring water from this bare rock?”
After which
he did,
and the people drank.
The stream of water was named Meribah,
which meant it was the place where God’s people
quarreled with God
and in response
where God showed them God’s holiness
as they had demanded.
This quarreling came to be regarded with shame
because God’s people had not trusted in God’s work
and for their mistrust, they would not see the land
where God was leading them.
This is the quarreling that the author of Deuteronomy
refers to, when it is written,
“You must not test the Lord your God.”
scripture
dancing
always from the mouth of Jesus
for new turns
even in great thirst and hunger,
“It is written:
“Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

Now, one of these things
is much more familiar to us than the other.
At least, one of these things is much more familiar
to me.
If you cannot say that you have spent much time
as of late
quarreling with God,
then I will tell you that I have.
When I look at the Millennium Development Goals
our Church has aligned us with
Its hard for me to get excited and say
“Surely this must be the work of God we are committed to,”
It is far more likely
for me to shake my head
and wonder, “What is the point?
What dent are we going to make?”
When I read the third goal,
‘To Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women’
I cannot help but wonder at how we will ever help empower the women of Iraq
whose status plunges deeper, and deeper into peril
as extremist groups unleashed by an unsettled
and riotous country
strangle any woman caught refusing to wear the veil in public.
When I read the seventh goal,
‘To Ensure Environmental Sustainability’
I cannot help but wonder at how we will ever clean up a world
where those with means purchase their way to a cleaner conscious
more willing to strip mine the forests of Brazil
under the guise of alternative fueling
than to find an alternative means to get wherever it is
we are in such a hurry to go.
When I read the second goal,
‘To Achieve Universal Primary Education for Children’
I cannot help but wonder how we will ever be the ones
to teach the world to teach
when our own schools are filled with rows upon rows of lifeless eyes
hazed over by demands and tests delivered from on high
chipping away piece by piece
systematically, any dignity our children might have had for saving.
If you cannot say that you have spent much time
as of late
quarreling with God,
then I will tell you that I have.
“I’m not sure how willing I am to work for this, God.”
I have said,
preferring, myself
to pour my own efforts into things that might
at least, have a chance at changing
I have quarreled deeply, stubbornly, and selfishly in my heart,
and I know that I am not alone.

Few of us need the devil
to bring us to the temples height
to shout at God to save us from the peril
we’ve jumped into for HIS SAKE
because most of us are more than willing
to go there on our own.
Few of us need the serpent to tell us
that God wants us to be like God’s self
because most of us
if shown the direction of ANYTHING
that would give us more authority
over our own lives and the lives of those around us
are more than willing to say
“Yea, I’ll take some of that.
I’m going to need it
if I’m ever going to get us out of this mess.”

If we are the children of God, then prove it, God!
Give us the power to turn the stones we have been left with into bread
when we have not found enough on our own abundant tables
to share with those who are starving.
If we are the children of God, then prove it, God!
Save us from the perilous heights of greed and reckless autonomy
we have climbed to, and for your sake no less!
To assure ourselves of some safety while engaged in this
impossible work of life.
If we are the children of God, then prove it, God!
Give us charge over the nations, that they might not wreck creation
for the sake of delivering one more amenity to our bedroom doors
while we pamper ourselves away from the exhaustion you caused us
in such tiring days of labor.

Give us just a little miracle to keep us going, God
To keep us believing that this work is worth fighting for.
A little miracle to tide us over and remind us we are loved
in the face of such persistent ugliness.
A child perhaps
who says, “Thank you for helping me learn how to read,”
Or a story in the news even
About the refugee who got away
And is so thankful for her new life
in America.
Anything to keep us believing that we are on God’s side.

And sometimes we’re lucky enough to get it
sometimes the rafters of the Earth
shift
in the birth pains of God’s new Kingdom
Sometimes God strikes the rock for water
and God’s work looks
for a moment at least
enough like something
other than failure
for us to want to keep on going.

But far more often than that
God’s work,
in the wilderness of Jordan,
in the wilderness at Kadesh
in the wilderness just outside of Eden
Gods work
in the wilderness of the lives we have made for ourselves
and in the wilderness of the cross
looks just like
the failure
we are all
so afraid of.
“If you really are the children of God, then prove it,
save yourselves,” the world taunts,
“Because it sure doesn’t look like you can right now.”

To which the whole history of Israel responds:
To which the life of Jesus says:
“I will prove nothing
apart from God.”

“If you really are the Son of God, then
Save yourself,”
the thief said, jeering,
suspended in the air from a few feet away
while the crowd below echoed similar taunts in a thousand voices,

But he could not,
And he would not
be saved
apart from God.
And God’s saving
looked more like failing
than anyone could have ever expected.
Even Jesus
for whom the wilderness should have prepared him
to feel so completely drawn apart
from God,
and yet, did not.

And yet for this
and yet FROM this
we are ourselves
are saved.

Jesus is fully human in Gospel, because he enters fully
into the Belovedness which God extends to him through the Holy Spirit
the Belovedness upon which we so often linger
waiting perhaps, for something more
the Belovedness which proves so hard to hear and feel
in the world where it is delivered.
And because God enters so fully
into that forsaken place of the cross
where we cannot hear God’s cry
for us to live as God’s own
any longer
because it is precisely there where God has tread
so completely
We shall never be alone
even there
again.

In the New Creation of the Cross
we the Body of Christ
face the Devil and the world in common
We travel the long road of Lent
in vast company
as the troubles of this world lead us farther and farther away
from that safe place where we first learned
of our belonging in this Holy Family.
We the Body of Christ
are asked in common if we can stand
to resist the Devil
to resist the calls of this world to ask for
proof of our belovedness
in the midst of our own failing
and we respond in common,
“We will, with God’s help.”
We respond in common
so that those among us
myself included
who doubt the possibility of God’s work
in our weakest moments
might be buoyed up again
by the strength of our communion
to wait not for miracles
but for the miraculous crumbling of the Earth as it has stood
beneath the birth pains of this great Kingdom
The Kingdom where All are Empowered
With safety and with freedom
With good books
With clean water and food
The Kingdom
for the Work of God
which fails and falls so far
to meet us
in the world
before rising up again.

We enter the wilderness of this great work
as one and as many
We have God with us,
We have Christ with us
and by the power of the Holy Spirit who binds us into one
we have each other
to celebrate our Belovedness in God
and travel to the crosses of this life
never to be forsaken there again.