Sermon for Sunday, February 25
Hi all--thought I'd try something new this week. I'm posting a (rough) draft of my sermon for next Sunday, February 25. I'm hoping that you all can give me some constructive feedback on it before I preach it on Sunday. What do you like about it? What do you not like about it? More to the point, what's right about it and what's wrong with it? It's a thorny issue, to be sure.
Your comments are welcome (and encouraged!) whether you're a part of our church or whether you're someone reading from a distance. You are welcome to post anonymously, but comments posted with a name will be treated with greater regard than hit and runs.
If this seems to catch on, I'll try it again next week.
The text is Luke 4:1-13, the Temptation of Jesus, but especially focusing on v. 1: "Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness."
The story of Jesus’ temptation is one that we read almost every year during Lent. So if you’ve been here in previous years, you’ve probably heard me talk about it before; and you’re probably pretty sure that at this point, you could preach the sermon yourself.
Yes, yes; Jesus went out into the wilderness, and there he was tempted by the devil. After he had fasted for forty days, the devil shows up and says, “You’re really hungry, aren’t you? Why don’t you command these stones to become bread?” And Jesus says, “Ah, but don’t you know that we don’t live by bread alone?”
Yes, yes, you know the story. You know how after this, the devil took Jesus up to a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of this world, and said, “Jesus, you can have all of these kingdoms if you will worship me.” But Jesus says, “Haven’t you ever read in the Scriptures where it says, “Worship the Lord your God and serve only Him?”
Then, of course, the devil took him to Jerusalem, to the highest pinnacle of the Temple and said, “If you’re the Son of God, just throw yourself off of this roof.” By this time, of course, Satan has caught on that Jesus is just quoting Scripture to him, so Satan quotes Scripture too: “It is written,” he said, “‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you...so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” And Jesus says, “Ah, but it is also written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
As I say, you know the story backwards and forwards by this point no doubt. And it is sort of a disturbing story in many ways: Jesus meets with the devil face-to-face? And he is tempted first to throw away his integrity by turning stones to bread; and then he is tempted to throw away his status as the Son of God by worshiping Satan; and then he is tempted to throw away his very life by hurling himself off of the pinnacle of the temple. It’s disturbing to think of our Savior face-to-face with evil itself, staring it down but nonetheless looking human in the process.
But sometimes, when we read this familiar passage, we miss what is perhaps the most disturbing piece of all, and it is to be found in verse 1: “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness...” Luke wants to make clear to us something that we would really rather not consider: that it was the Holy Spirit of God who led Jesus into the wilderness.
Of course, as I say, we would really rather not think about this passage because the wilderness was a place no one wanted to be. In modern suburban culture, it’s hard for us to imagine the connotations of the wilderness. Around here, I’m not exactly sure where the line between Exton and Downingtown really is. And past that, I’m not sure where the line between Downingtown and Thorndale is. And past that, I’m not sure where the line between Thorndale and Coatesville is. Each town just kind of bleeds into the next town. And so you might live in Thorndale, go to school in Coatesville, go to church in Exton and do your shopping in Downingtown. In fact, only approximately 16% of our church’s regular attendees live in Exton. We are a commuter church in a commuter culture.
But in those days, cities were walled-in and very very self-sufficient. Cities and towns were walled-in to keep the wilderness at bay. Within the city walls, there was safety and the rule of law prevailed. But in the wilderness, anything could happen. You never ever wanted to be cast out of the city because it was not as simple as driving down the road a little bit into the next city. If you were outside of the city, you were in the wilderness and forced to survive alone. It was basically a death sentence to be pushed out into the wilderness.
Because the ancient Jews feared the wilderness so much, there arose a general understanding in the culture of the time that the wilderness was haunted by evil spirits and demons. In Isaiah 13, the prophet Isaiah is prophesying the destruction of Babylon and saying that that city will once again become wilderness and he says, “Wild animals will lie down there, and its houses will be full of howling creatures; there ostriches will live, and there goat-demons will dance.” Dangers both physical and spiritual were understood to exist in the wilderness.
In our culture, of course, we do not have to worry about being put out into the wilderness and so often, for us, the wilderness carries romantic connotations; we love the thought of striking out into the wilderness and conquering the Appalachian Trail; those of us who are a little more sedate like to glorify the wilderness by watching movies like Castaway or TV shows like Survivor, which pretends to be a wilderness of sorts. But there was no such glorification of the wilderness in that culture; there was only terror, because the wilderness meant certain death.
And so it is especially disturbing to read this passage where we read that Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit and led by that Holy Spirit into the wilderness. How could God’s Spirit do such a thing to him? How could God’s Spirit take Jesus away from everything he knew, everything that was safe, to go and meet the devil face-to-face? It seems so foreign to how we understand God; it seems so strange to think of God leading someone out into a place that just inspires sheer terror! We like to think about God’s Spirit as the Comforter, and indeed, God’s Spirit does bring us comfort. Or we like to think about God’s Spirit as our Advocate, the one who teaches, reveals and interprets Jesus to us and us to God. But we most certainly do not like to think of the Holy Spirit as one who would push someone out into the wilderness.
What is the wilderness in your life? While we do not fear the physical wilderness anymore, the wilderness metaphor is an important one for understanding the gospel, I think. We all have wildernesses in our lives. We all have safe places, places within our “city limits,” and we all have wildernesses, places outside those “city limits” where we fear going because we are sure we will not survive if we go there.
For some of us, the wilderness is sickness. We are so sure that we will be fine as long as we are physically well, but sure if we get sick, that something in us will crumble. We are certain that sickness will defeat us. We men are especially like this and so we don’t like to go see doctors. We are fine as long as we can trick ourselves into thinking that we are OK, that we’re not going to have to face the vulnerability and unpleasantness of sickness. As long as we do not have to go into that wilderness called sickness, we’ll be OK.
For some of us, the wilderness is grief. We can’t imagine life without a certain other person: a parent, perhaps, or a spouse. As long as that person is with us, we feel we are within the city limits, that everything is OK, that everything will work out. But if that person were to leave us, or were to pass away, that would put us out into the wilderness, and we are sure that if we ever were to be separate from that person, we might just not survive.
For some of us, the wilderness is having to depend on someone else. We treasure our autonomy, our independence, so much, that we just can’t imagine life without it. And so we are just certain that if we were to lose our independence, we would die. If we were to have to rely on another person to cook for us, clean for us, bathe us, or wheel us around, we think we no longer would be really alive. For some of us, that’s a real wilderness.
For some of us, the wilderness is letting go of a dream we had long held dear. Perhaps you had always had a certain dream for your life, a certain hope that one day you would be able to live in a certain part of the world, or have a certain type of job, or have a certain type of family. I think I’ve told you before that growing up with a name like Michael Jordan, I always wanted to be a professional basketball player. But there comes a time when a paunchy 29-year-old has to look at himself in the mirror and say, “You know–that’s just not happening.” Now, of course, that is a silly dream and one I can gratefully let go of. But there are simpler dreams that many of us have: to have a big, happy family; to have a job doing something you love and feel called to; to see the world, to travel; to live in a quiet home in a quiet place. And dreams like that are hard to let go of for many of us; in fact, letting go of that dream can be like plunging into the wilderness.
No matter what your wilderness is, we all have one. For some of us, it is a place we are currently avoiding like the plague; and some of us find ourselves in the midst of the wilderness right now.
And the terrifying implication of this passage is that sometimes the Holy Spirit pushes people into the wilderness. Now, please, don’t hear me wrong. I’m not saying that the Holy Spirit makes people sick, I’m not saying that God took your wife or husband away, I’m not saying that the Holy Spirit made you ill to the point you had to be dependent on someone else, I’m not saying the Holy Spirit shattered your dreams. But one of the foundational truths that we have to acknowledge as Christians is that God could eliminate all those troubles from our lives and yet God doesn’t. God is powerful enough to eliminate sickness, grief and pain and yet they remain in all of our lives; my pain is surely different from your pain, but it is pain nonetheless. It is a wilderness to us.
So what then are we to say? Are we in the hands of a powerful, cruel God who would drive us into the wilderness just for sport and watch while we writhe in pain? Can we talk sensibly about an all-loving, all-powerful God in a world with such pain?
The gospel is, of course, good news. And there is good news here, even though we often cannot see it with the blinders we wear. Yes, dreams die. Yes, there is pain of all kinds, brokenness of all sorts, and death around us: these things have been here since Adam and Eve first sinned in the Garden. The wilderness is part of what it means to be human.
The good news is that God takes our wildernesses, our wilderness experiences, and uses them to make us into new people. God uses the wilderness to do what cannot be done in any other way.
Do you know why? Because it is there in the wilderness that we have let all hope go; it is there in the wilderness that we have abandoned all of our dreams. It is only when we abandon our little dreams that God can give us his great dreams for our lives. It is there, in the wilderness, where God can look at us and say, “Your body may have disappointed you, your family may have disappointed you, your independence may have disappointed you, your dreams may have disappointed you, but I, the Lord, am holy and I do not disappoint. Now that you have stopped looking for satisfaction–and salvation–in yourself and in others, now you can finally seek it in me, and the one who seeks it will find it.”
Michael Card is one of my favorite musicians–he’s a Christian singer-songwriter, and has been at it for about 25 years. He writes thoughtful music, and recently he released an album that has songs of lament on it–songs of crying out to God when God seems hidden. It’s a powerful album. In an interview with Christianity Today, Card talked about a pastor friend of his who was on the way to visit someone in the hospital when he was struck by a drunk driver and paralyzed. And so he went into a long period of depression, as you or I or anyone would.
One day, he was lamenting in prayer; he was crying out to God, and he had a profound sense of God’s presence. Michael Card doesn’t exactly explain what that was, but I get the impression that he was just caught up in an ecstatic moment where he sensed the presence of God very close. If you’ve never been in one of those situations, I can’t really explain it, but it was this deep, profound sense that God is here. And as he was caught up in this sensation, he began to feel his sense of God’s presence departing. Not that God was leaving him, but just that that feeling of closeness was beginning to slip away. And so he found himself saying, “You don’t have to heal me. Just don’t leave me. You don’t have to heal me. Just don’t leave me.”
Children of God, that is the power of the wilderness. It is in the wilderness that we realize how valuable God’s presence is. It is in the wilderness that we realize that God’s presence is far more valuable than God’s healing. It is in the wilderness that we realize that our dreams can break, our bodies can fail, our families can falter, but God’s presence with us will never disappoint us. It is only when we are in the wilderness that we realize how precious God’s presence is, how his presence is far more important than all of the gifts he gives us. When everything else is taken away and we are reduced to sitting alone with God, we realize how good it is to sit alone with God. Michael Card sums it up by saying, “You experience God’s worth in the wilderness, not in the picnic grounds.” It is there we learn to love God, not only the things God does for us.
In the Christian year, Lent functions as a kind of invitation to the wilderness. It says, “Don’t wait for life to come and steal away your dreams. Lay them down yourself. Stop being concerned over all these dreams that will never bring you happiness anyway. Lay them down and come to the wilderness, where God will give you a taste of his presence that you will never forget. Lay them down so that I can give you new dreams, great dreams, dreams for your life so big and so powerful that you never could have dreamed for yourself. Lay down your dreams and come to the wilderness.”
I don’t profess to know what dreams you are holding on to today. You may have a dream of a nice life, a spouse, two kids and a white picket fence. Or you may have the American Dream of going from rags to riches, creating a new life for yourself. No matter what your dreams are, I want you to know that there is a wilderness awaiting, a wilderness day when those dreams may abandon you. But there is a good and a loving God whose Spirit goes with us into that wilderness, and takes that horrible, awful experience and makes it holy by shaping us into new and different people who can dream not just earthly dreams, but dreams of the Kingdom of God.
The Spirit is with us in all the different wilderness days of our lives, and until that day we cross into that great wilderness, beyond the Jordan River. None of us has been to that wilderness yet; but we can know that in that great wilderness, the same Spirit will strip off our surly attachment to this flawed life, and grant us a greater life in the very presence of God.
Your comments are welcome (and encouraged!) whether you're a part of our church or whether you're someone reading from a distance. You are welcome to post anonymously, but comments posted with a name will be treated with greater regard than hit and runs.
If this seems to catch on, I'll try it again next week.
The text is Luke 4:1-13, the Temptation of Jesus, but especially focusing on v. 1: "Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness."
The story of Jesus’ temptation is one that we read almost every year during Lent. So if you’ve been here in previous years, you’ve probably heard me talk about it before; and you’re probably pretty sure that at this point, you could preach the sermon yourself.
Yes, yes; Jesus went out into the wilderness, and there he was tempted by the devil. After he had fasted for forty days, the devil shows up and says, “You’re really hungry, aren’t you? Why don’t you command these stones to become bread?” And Jesus says, “Ah, but don’t you know that we don’t live by bread alone?”
Yes, yes, you know the story. You know how after this, the devil took Jesus up to a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of this world, and said, “Jesus, you can have all of these kingdoms if you will worship me.” But Jesus says, “Haven’t you ever read in the Scriptures where it says, “Worship the Lord your God and serve only Him?”
Then, of course, the devil took him to Jerusalem, to the highest pinnacle of the Temple and said, “If you’re the Son of God, just throw yourself off of this roof.” By this time, of course, Satan has caught on that Jesus is just quoting Scripture to him, so Satan quotes Scripture too: “It is written,” he said, “‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you...so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” And Jesus says, “Ah, but it is also written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
As I say, you know the story backwards and forwards by this point no doubt. And it is sort of a disturbing story in many ways: Jesus meets with the devil face-to-face? And he is tempted first to throw away his integrity by turning stones to bread; and then he is tempted to throw away his status as the Son of God by worshiping Satan; and then he is tempted to throw away his very life by hurling himself off of the pinnacle of the temple. It’s disturbing to think of our Savior face-to-face with evil itself, staring it down but nonetheless looking human in the process.
But sometimes, when we read this familiar passage, we miss what is perhaps the most disturbing piece of all, and it is to be found in verse 1: “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness...” Luke wants to make clear to us something that we would really rather not consider: that it was the Holy Spirit of God who led Jesus into the wilderness.
Of course, as I say, we would really rather not think about this passage because the wilderness was a place no one wanted to be. In modern suburban culture, it’s hard for us to imagine the connotations of the wilderness. Around here, I’m not exactly sure where the line between Exton and Downingtown really is. And past that, I’m not sure where the line between Downingtown and Thorndale is. And past that, I’m not sure where the line between Thorndale and Coatesville is. Each town just kind of bleeds into the next town. And so you might live in Thorndale, go to school in Coatesville, go to church in Exton and do your shopping in Downingtown. In fact, only approximately 16% of our church’s regular attendees live in Exton. We are a commuter church in a commuter culture.
But in those days, cities were walled-in and very very self-sufficient. Cities and towns were walled-in to keep the wilderness at bay. Within the city walls, there was safety and the rule of law prevailed. But in the wilderness, anything could happen. You never ever wanted to be cast out of the city because it was not as simple as driving down the road a little bit into the next city. If you were outside of the city, you were in the wilderness and forced to survive alone. It was basically a death sentence to be pushed out into the wilderness.
Because the ancient Jews feared the wilderness so much, there arose a general understanding in the culture of the time that the wilderness was haunted by evil spirits and demons. In Isaiah 13, the prophet Isaiah is prophesying the destruction of Babylon and saying that that city will once again become wilderness and he says, “Wild animals will lie down there, and its houses will be full of howling creatures; there ostriches will live, and there goat-demons will dance.” Dangers both physical and spiritual were understood to exist in the wilderness.
In our culture, of course, we do not have to worry about being put out into the wilderness and so often, for us, the wilderness carries romantic connotations; we love the thought of striking out into the wilderness and conquering the Appalachian Trail; those of us who are a little more sedate like to glorify the wilderness by watching movies like Castaway or TV shows like Survivor, which pretends to be a wilderness of sorts. But there was no such glorification of the wilderness in that culture; there was only terror, because the wilderness meant certain death.
And so it is especially disturbing to read this passage where we read that Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit and led by that Holy Spirit into the wilderness. How could God’s Spirit do such a thing to him? How could God’s Spirit take Jesus away from everything he knew, everything that was safe, to go and meet the devil face-to-face? It seems so foreign to how we understand God; it seems so strange to think of God leading someone out into a place that just inspires sheer terror! We like to think about God’s Spirit as the Comforter, and indeed, God’s Spirit does bring us comfort. Or we like to think about God’s Spirit as our Advocate, the one who teaches, reveals and interprets Jesus to us and us to God. But we most certainly do not like to think of the Holy Spirit as one who would push someone out into the wilderness.
What is the wilderness in your life? While we do not fear the physical wilderness anymore, the wilderness metaphor is an important one for understanding the gospel, I think. We all have wildernesses in our lives. We all have safe places, places within our “city limits,” and we all have wildernesses, places outside those “city limits” where we fear going because we are sure we will not survive if we go there.
For some of us, the wilderness is sickness. We are so sure that we will be fine as long as we are physically well, but sure if we get sick, that something in us will crumble. We are certain that sickness will defeat us. We men are especially like this and so we don’t like to go see doctors. We are fine as long as we can trick ourselves into thinking that we are OK, that we’re not going to have to face the vulnerability and unpleasantness of sickness. As long as we do not have to go into that wilderness called sickness, we’ll be OK.
For some of us, the wilderness is grief. We can’t imagine life without a certain other person: a parent, perhaps, or a spouse. As long as that person is with us, we feel we are within the city limits, that everything is OK, that everything will work out. But if that person were to leave us, or were to pass away, that would put us out into the wilderness, and we are sure that if we ever were to be separate from that person, we might just not survive.
For some of us, the wilderness is having to depend on someone else. We treasure our autonomy, our independence, so much, that we just can’t imagine life without it. And so we are just certain that if we were to lose our independence, we would die. If we were to have to rely on another person to cook for us, clean for us, bathe us, or wheel us around, we think we no longer would be really alive. For some of us, that’s a real wilderness.
For some of us, the wilderness is letting go of a dream we had long held dear. Perhaps you had always had a certain dream for your life, a certain hope that one day you would be able to live in a certain part of the world, or have a certain type of job, or have a certain type of family. I think I’ve told you before that growing up with a name like Michael Jordan, I always wanted to be a professional basketball player. But there comes a time when a paunchy 29-year-old has to look at himself in the mirror and say, “You know–that’s just not happening.” Now, of course, that is a silly dream and one I can gratefully let go of. But there are simpler dreams that many of us have: to have a big, happy family; to have a job doing something you love and feel called to; to see the world, to travel; to live in a quiet home in a quiet place. And dreams like that are hard to let go of for many of us; in fact, letting go of that dream can be like plunging into the wilderness.
No matter what your wilderness is, we all have one. For some of us, it is a place we are currently avoiding like the plague; and some of us find ourselves in the midst of the wilderness right now.
And the terrifying implication of this passage is that sometimes the Holy Spirit pushes people into the wilderness. Now, please, don’t hear me wrong. I’m not saying that the Holy Spirit makes people sick, I’m not saying that God took your wife or husband away, I’m not saying that the Holy Spirit made you ill to the point you had to be dependent on someone else, I’m not saying the Holy Spirit shattered your dreams. But one of the foundational truths that we have to acknowledge as Christians is that God could eliminate all those troubles from our lives and yet God doesn’t. God is powerful enough to eliminate sickness, grief and pain and yet they remain in all of our lives; my pain is surely different from your pain, but it is pain nonetheless. It is a wilderness to us.
So what then are we to say? Are we in the hands of a powerful, cruel God who would drive us into the wilderness just for sport and watch while we writhe in pain? Can we talk sensibly about an all-loving, all-powerful God in a world with such pain?
The gospel is, of course, good news. And there is good news here, even though we often cannot see it with the blinders we wear. Yes, dreams die. Yes, there is pain of all kinds, brokenness of all sorts, and death around us: these things have been here since Adam and Eve first sinned in the Garden. The wilderness is part of what it means to be human.
The good news is that God takes our wildernesses, our wilderness experiences, and uses them to make us into new people. God uses the wilderness to do what cannot be done in any other way.
Do you know why? Because it is there in the wilderness that we have let all hope go; it is there in the wilderness that we have abandoned all of our dreams. It is only when we abandon our little dreams that God can give us his great dreams for our lives. It is there, in the wilderness, where God can look at us and say, “Your body may have disappointed you, your family may have disappointed you, your independence may have disappointed you, your dreams may have disappointed you, but I, the Lord, am holy and I do not disappoint. Now that you have stopped looking for satisfaction–and salvation–in yourself and in others, now you can finally seek it in me, and the one who seeks it will find it.”
Michael Card is one of my favorite musicians–he’s a Christian singer-songwriter, and has been at it for about 25 years. He writes thoughtful music, and recently he released an album that has songs of lament on it–songs of crying out to God when God seems hidden. It’s a powerful album. In an interview with Christianity Today, Card talked about a pastor friend of his who was on the way to visit someone in the hospital when he was struck by a drunk driver and paralyzed. And so he went into a long period of depression, as you or I or anyone would.
One day, he was lamenting in prayer; he was crying out to God, and he had a profound sense of God’s presence. Michael Card doesn’t exactly explain what that was, but I get the impression that he was just caught up in an ecstatic moment where he sensed the presence of God very close. If you’ve never been in one of those situations, I can’t really explain it, but it was this deep, profound sense that God is here. And as he was caught up in this sensation, he began to feel his sense of God’s presence departing. Not that God was leaving him, but just that that feeling of closeness was beginning to slip away. And so he found himself saying, “You don’t have to heal me. Just don’t leave me. You don’t have to heal me. Just don’t leave me.”
Children of God, that is the power of the wilderness. It is in the wilderness that we realize how valuable God’s presence is. It is in the wilderness that we realize that God’s presence is far more valuable than God’s healing. It is in the wilderness that we realize that our dreams can break, our bodies can fail, our families can falter, but God’s presence with us will never disappoint us. It is only when we are in the wilderness that we realize how precious God’s presence is, how his presence is far more important than all of the gifts he gives us. When everything else is taken away and we are reduced to sitting alone with God, we realize how good it is to sit alone with God. Michael Card sums it up by saying, “You experience God’s worth in the wilderness, not in the picnic grounds.” It is there we learn to love God, not only the things God does for us.
In the Christian year, Lent functions as a kind of invitation to the wilderness. It says, “Don’t wait for life to come and steal away your dreams. Lay them down yourself. Stop being concerned over all these dreams that will never bring you happiness anyway. Lay them down and come to the wilderness, where God will give you a taste of his presence that you will never forget. Lay them down so that I can give you new dreams, great dreams, dreams for your life so big and so powerful that you never could have dreamed for yourself. Lay down your dreams and come to the wilderness.”
I don’t profess to know what dreams you are holding on to today. You may have a dream of a nice life, a spouse, two kids and a white picket fence. Or you may have the American Dream of going from rags to riches, creating a new life for yourself. No matter what your dreams are, I want you to know that there is a wilderness awaiting, a wilderness day when those dreams may abandon you. But there is a good and a loving God whose Spirit goes with us into that wilderness, and takes that horrible, awful experience and makes it holy by shaping us into new and different people who can dream not just earthly dreams, but dreams of the Kingdom of God.
The Spirit is with us in all the different wilderness days of our lives, and until that day we cross into that great wilderness, beyond the Jordan River. None of us has been to that wilderness yet; but we can know that in that great wilderness, the same Spirit will strip off our surly attachment to this flawed life, and grant us a greater life in the very presence of God.
posted by Rev. Michael Jordan at 2:33 PM
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