Holy Ordeal

Preached on the First Sunday of Lent, Feb. 13, 2005

At Hanover Street Presbyterian Church

By the Rev. Thomas C. Davis, Ph.D.

Texts:

Job 2: 1-6

One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the Lord.  The Lord said to Satan, 'Where have you come from?  Satan answered the Lord, 'From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.'  The Lord said to Satan, 'Have you considered my servant Job?  There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil.  He still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason.'  Then Satan answered the Lord, 'Skin for skin!  All that people have they will give to save their lives.  But stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.'  The Lord said to Satan, 'Very well, he is in your power; only spare his life.'

Matthew 4: 1-11

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.  He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished.  The tempter came and said to him, 'If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.'  But [Jesus] answered, 'It is written, "One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God."'  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; for it is written, "He will command his angels concerning you", and "On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone."'  Jesus said to him, 'Again it is written, "Do not put the Lord your God to the test."'  Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, 'All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.'  Jesus said to him, 'Away with you, Satan!  For it is written, "Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him."?  Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

Psalm 139: 23-24

Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts.  See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

Sermon Text

On Wednesday the church began the season of Lent, which lasts for forty days.  Rabbi Beals pointed out to us two Sundays ago that there is a parallel between the forty years that the Hebrews spent wandering in the wilderness, and the forty days which Jesus spent praying and fasting, also in the wilderness.  The connection is that both periods were a time of testing, an ordeal.

Ordeals test our mettle.  They are rites of passage from one level of maturity to the next higher one.  An ordeal requires that you accomplish something very, very difficult, which you will surely flub if you haven't enough will power or courage.  In many tribes of the native peoples of this continent, a young man had to go through an ordeal to become a brave.  He had to go out alone into the woods or up into the mountains and fast for many days, seeking a vision that would give him a purpose for living, and very often, a new name.  Sometimes during a long, lonely night, a would-be brave would be pushed to his breaking point, threatened by terrifying spirits in the form of wolves, or bears, or mountain lions, or rattle snakes.  I find it intriguing that the gospel of Mark, when describing the temptation of Jesus, says that the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness, and there he was with the wild beasts.  One can understand the temptation of Jesus as an ordeal leading toward his mature self, the Spirit's trial to see whether he had the inner strength to overcome temptation and follow a very hard path through life. 

Temptation is anything that distracts us from being the people God wants us to be and has called us to be; it's anything that threatens to derail us from going where God wants us to go.  In our gospel reading several temptations threatened to distract Jesus: the lure of money and power--"Worship me," said Satan, "and all the kingdoms of the world will be yours!" also, the desire for absolute security--"Command your angels to save you, lest you dash your foot against a stone."  Jesus didn't get distracted, because he cared more about obeying God than anything else, more than wealth, fame, or safety.  He did not get derailed from his calling by fear or greed or pride.  He passed the ordeal of temptation, an ordeal that was meant not to destroy him, but to test him, to see whether he was ready for the very rough road ahead.

Who arranges ordeals of temptation?  Perhaps you will say:  Why, Satan does!  God's enemy, the Evil One does!  You could see it that way.  Satan, in the form of a serpent, does test Adam and Eve in the garden.  Satan does try Job's loyalty to God by killing all of Job's family and livestock and then making him so sick that he wishes he were dead.  Satan does tempt Jesus in the wilderness.  But in all of these Bible stories Satan is not God's equal.  God put the serpent in the garden so that he was situated to tempt Adam and Eve.  God allows Satan to test Job to prove that he is an upright man.  And notice from this morning's gospel reading that Satan doesn't drive Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted.  The Spirit does, God's spirit.

So, the Bible's take on temptation is that it is a holy ordeal, not a devilish one.  God is ultimately responsible for our testing, not Satan.  Satan only builds the stage sets.  God writes the scripts.  Wow, that's astounding!  God, who wants only good for us, and who wants us to live up to our divine purpose in life and not get derailed, nevertheless allows us to be tempted, and even sometimes drives us into situations where we are bound to be tested!  Yep, that's right.  In the monotheistic faith that we have inherited from the Jews, there is only one ultimate power:  God.  Satan is a stagehand.  Maybe that's why Jesus taught us to pray to God:  "Lead us not into temptation," because he knew that sometimes our ordeals can be so severe that we cry, as he would on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"  Perhaps Jesus realized that God's faith in us can sometimes be so strong that God allows us to be tested to the ragged edge of derailment (as in the case of Job).  So Jesus prayed, "Father, lead us not into temptation." 

I strain to understand that phrase in The Lord's Prayer, because it doesn't agree with the psalmist's prayer that we read this morning from Psalm 139:  Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts.  See if there is any wicked way in me."  That prayer certainly seems the very opposite of Jesus' prayer, "lead us not into temptation."  The psalmist is saying:  "Do tempt me, God.  Do try me!  See whether I have any wickedness in me.  See whether I give in to temptation or not.  I am ready!"  Jesus' prayer seems to imply that we are not ready for the ordeal of temptation, for the next phrase of his prayer, "deliver us from evil," would seem to indicate a fear that we might fail the test.  We might succumb to evil, unless God mercifully suspends the awful testing.

I don't know whether you find it consoling or not to take seriously the Biblical teaching that temptation is a holy ordeal, not a devilish one; that God's Spirit, not the devil, drives us into the wilderness to see how strong we are.  Maybe you don't like a God like that.  Maybe you prefer a God just equal with the devil, a God who can keep his hands clean of mischief, because anything bad that happens to us then gets blamed on the devil instead.  The advantage of that kind of God is that he is not greater than the devil.  The problem with that kind of God is that he is not greater than the devil.

I'll settle for the God who is almighty, but who loiters in strange places and does suspicious things sometimes, from our way of thinking.  That same psalm I quoted earlier, the 139th says:

"Where can I go from your spirit?  Or where can I flee from your presence?  If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in hell, you are there.  If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, --[remember, the psalmist thought the world was round, and that one would fall off the edge into the abyss at its farthest edge]-- even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.  If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night," even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you."

For me, to think that temptation is a holy ordeal is to affirm that there is nowhere that God isn't-- yes, even in my most fearful testing.  So, I can pray as the psalmist did: "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts.  See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."