“Face to Face with Temptation”

Mark 1:9-15

March 5, 2006

Saint Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John Fleming

Richard Rohr, a Catholic priest who has spent the better part of his life working with such things as contemplation and social action, may be best known for his lectures. In one of them he tells about a pot luck meal that he was invited to. I can just imagine the scene. Maybe it happened just before a time when he was going to speak at a particular church. Or maybe it happened right after he talked. For the record, I would much rather preach on an empty stomach than a full one. There he was, most likely in the fellowship hall of a church. My guess is that the dishes lined the counter space of the kitchen. Maybe there were plates and knifes and forks at one end of the bar and things like tea and coffee at the other end of it. Between them were the dishes made by the great and the not so great cooks of that church.

Incidently, the first church that I served out of seminary, the Harmony Grove Church, loved pot lucks. I understand that the idea behind pot lucks, originally, was you took something out of a pot and tried your luck. There was no luck involved in the pots and the dishes of the cooks of the Harmony Grove Church. These cooks were personally offended if their preacher did not try something that they had cooked. I was skinny when I was appointed there; four years later, when I left to come to Little Rock, I wasn’t.

Back to Richard Rohr and his words. He tells that he was in line with everyone else, waiting his turn to fill his place and then to visit with people around a table. There was a man there who had good intentions. As they neared the front of the line, that man simply said, “Go ahead, Sir. The first shall be last and the last shall be first.” Richard Rohr heard what the man said and the thought immediately crossed his mind. He thought, “This man has no idea what that biblical saying means. It doesn’t have anything to do with who gets to go in front of who at church dinners. It has everything to do with people and their entrance into the kingdom of God.”

I began thinking about what Richard said and quickly came to the conclusion that the Bible is full of phrases and words that we think we understand, but down deep, really don’t. Let me try one on for size. Jesus said the following line seven times in three gospels. Do you know what it really means, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen.” I didn’t know that there were any other kinds of ears out there. Let’s try another one on. Jesus also said this, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” Does that mean that there is a hierarchy to stone throwing? Does it mean that if you have committed three or four, that you cannot pick up a stone until those who have sinned less than you have have done so. Is Jesus talking about a kind of sin dodge ball?

Then there are those words that we hear in our scripture lessons that when we hear them we think that we understand them. Maybe we do understand them, but then again, maybe we don’t fully grasp them.” I think that there are at least a couple of words in our scripture lesson for this morning that might fit into that category. We turn back in Mark’s gospel to the first chapter. During the months of January and February, we spent a lot of time in that first chapter. And in fact, if you recognize some of the words that we just read, it is because we read some of these words a few weeks ago.

The scene is the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Mark tells the story in a compact style. He wastes few words. In his story of Jesus, Mark tells us that Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee, and was baptized by his cousin, John, in the waters of the chilly Jordan. He was immersed. His head and his body were under those chilly waters. When he rose from the waters, the heavens were opened, the Spirit (that looked like a dove) came to be with Jesus, and then the voice of God (intended only for Jesus) boomed from the heavens, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” If anyone else heard that voice, Mark doesn’t tell us that.

Verse twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen are the ones that are new for us on this first Sunday in the season of Lent. Mark tells us that that same Spirit that had floated down and looked like a dove .immediately drove Jesus out into the wilderness. That fact is important. I get the idea that this Spirit did not just drive him out there and then say to Him, “Okay, I’ll be back in forty days. By the way, there are some wild beasts out here. And, oh, Satan is out here, too. I’ll have the angels check on you from time to time.” Reading the verses, I get the idea that the Spirit that drove him out there stayed with him the entire time.

Which leads me to the first of the two words of this lesson that I think that we really need to understand. That first word is wilderness. I guess all of us have our ideas of what a wilderness would look like. In Jesus’ day, the wilderness may have been full of deep blue skies and hot temperatures. At night it might have been chilly. Most likely there was a lot of sand and rocks and small mountains. It was a place where you would have known thirst. That is probably the wilderness that Jesus faced those forty days.

What about your wilderness? What would your wilderness look like? What would it feel like? It seems lately, that I have used a lot of illustrations from my brother-in-law’s life. Maybe that is because Sam is the adventuresome one in our family. When Same was in college at Montreat College, near the Black Mountains in North Carolina, he took a class that was a three week adventure. It blows my mind that you would pay good tuition money for such a class, but that is what he did. For three weeks, Sam spent time in the Black Mountains, back packing. When I asked my mother-in-law about the experience, she remembered that it was a survival course. It was an outward bound kind of an experience (if you know what that is). She told me that the group had certain boundaries and certain restrictions. There were places that they could and could not go. I guess that safety was a big issue for those three weeks. She also remembered that there was a twenty-four hour period when you went to be by yourself, in a solitary place. Susie and her mom were there when Sam came down from his wilderness experience, which was actually a mountain experience. But no one was there in that twenty-four hour period. He was there, all alone, by himself.

Multiply that by forty and you have the period of time that Jesus was in the wilderness. Mark doesn’t give us the details of the temptations of Jesus. Matthew and Mark do that. He doesn’t tell us that there were three of them. Mark simply tells us that he was in the wilderness for forty days and was tempted by Satan. Because he doesn’t give us the details of the temptations, that leads this preacher to think more about wilderness experiences.

Last week was mountain top experiences. This week it is a wilderness one. So think again about your wilderness experiences, if you have had one. It seems to me that the wilderness is not all that far off for us. We live in Little Rock, in a city. If we want a wilderness experience we have to search it out, and perhaps pay for it. Or do we? Here is what I believe. I believe that the wilderness is closer than we realize. I think that the wilderness is sometimes just a phone call away. Sometimes it is a doctor’s voice away. I believe that you can hear some kind of news over a telephone and it sends you to the wilderness, a place you probably wouldn’t choose to go. It is the place where all comfort is gone and the place where your eyes must be open. It is the place where you give up the illusion that you are in control of your life. The wilderness is a place of understanding and confusion. It is a place where there is commitment, a new sense of who you are, but it is also a place where promises are made.

Which leads us to the second of these two words that I want to make sure that we understand this morning. Our second word is temptation, as in, “He was in the wilderness for forty days tempted by Satan.” What does the word temptation mean to you? What images does it conjure up? I hope that it conjures up more than dessert trays and the question of whether or not you should give someone a piece of your mind. Temptation is more than that; it is much more than that!

Out there in the wilderness, the real temptation, the real test comes when you go solo. And quite honestly, solo is just about the way that we always have to have wilderness experiences. It is hard to have wilderness experiences with anyone else. The wilderness is closer than you think and when you are plopped down in it for any length of time, whether it be twenty-four hours of forty days, that period of time is when you find out who you really are. Out there in the wilderness is where you find out who you miss, what you miss, and what you really fear. In the wilderness, some people dream about their favorite foods. Other people dream of a hot shower, a good meal, a safe room where they can lock the door. Others just want a pillow.

In the wilderness we find out what our security blankets are, those habits, those things, those surroundings that we usually use to comfort ourselves. They are those things that we use to block out the pains and our fears. Without these things, we are suddenly exposed! It is hard. It is awful. It is necessary to encounter the world without these things. We need to find out what life is like when there is no comfort but the comfort we find in God. The emptiness, you see, isn’t a sign of something gone wrong. The emptiness inside is the holy of holy, the place where God dwells. Nothing on Earth can fill that void, but that doesn’t keep us from trying. We often try to find things to plug the holes. To enter the wilderness is to leave all these things behind, at least for a time, and to realize just how important God is supposed to be to us.

I know that you think that you cannot do it. Chances are that you’d choose the green grasses instead of the barren wilderness. You may think that if you give up that comfort, you’ll starve or you’ll go crazy. You may think that without these things, you won’t be you anymore, but that simply is not true. The tempter’s voice whispers those things to you. And if that doesn’t work, the tempter takes it a step further and says something like, “You know, you really need these things.” And if that doesn’t work, the tempter takes it to another level and says something like, “If God really loves you, you can do whatever you want.” Wrong. Dead wrong!

The Spirit. Wilderness. Forty Days. Temptation. Wild Beasts. Angels. You are not alone out there. My prayer is that you will tell the devil this Lenten season to get lost. And if the wilderness is where you find yourself, my hope is that you will know that you are not alone. Let us pray.