The Thing Before The Thing Itself

Scripture: Luke 4:1-13

Lent—which literally means “springtime”—became popular about four hundred years after the time of Christ. It is a tradition built on scriptural inspiration. We remember Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness. And we use the forty days before Easter to reflect more deeply, to give a few things up, and to take a few things on.

But traditions can become stale through habit and repetition. Year after year we may read the same devotionals, temporarily abandon the same sensual indulgences, briefly burden ourselves with the same minor inconveniences, and call it “Lent.” For many of us, this process ends up looking less like worshiping with emotion and more like going through the motions.

The risk that we will not sufficiently engage with this special and holy time is compounded by the natural human inclination to guarantee success by asking relatively little of ourselves. Years ago, a friend told me that in honor of Lent he planned to abstain from screaming profanities at people who cut him off in traffic. This struck me as—shall we say—aiming rather low.

So the beginning of the Lenten season is a good time to ask an important, indeed fundamental, question: What is it—exactly—that we’re supposed to be doing? With that in mind, let’s take a good hard look at the scripture that informs our practice. And let’s see if we can find some answers.

A traditional and common answer to this question suggests that Lent is a time of preparation in anticipation of the glorious rebirth that we celebrate on Easter morning. Lent is not the final destination; it is a journey—a journey toward redemption and hope. Lent is not the thing itself; it is the thing before the thing itself.

At first glance, however, we may have a little trouble connecting this theme of preparation with the text we actually find in Luke. Indeed, when we turn to the scripture we discover a conspicuous, and perhaps even unsettling, absence. After all, these verses nowhere expressly state that Jesus went into the wilderness in order to get ready to do something else.

Nevertheless, for centuries believers have associated this theme with this text. And I think they have done so for good reason. Granted, the scripture may not raise the theme of preparation explicitly and literally; but it does seem to do so implicitly and structurally.

In Luke, Jesus’ ministry begins in earnest immediately after his time in the wilderness. Just think of all that happens after the wilderness story and in the rest of Chapter 4. Jesus returns to Nazareth; reports about Him begin to spread; He starts teaching in the synagogues; He announces that the scriptures have been fulfilled; He is driven out of Nazareth and travels to Capernaum; He astonishes people with what He says; He casts the demons out of one who is cursed; He heals the sick and suffering; and He is called the Son of God.

Similarly, in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, Jesus’ time in the wilderness immediately precedes the initiation of his Galilean ministry. Still, Matthew and Mark offer us a slight variation on the sequence of events. In those Gospels, the first thing Jesus does after emerging from the wilderness is to begin to gather disciples around him. I’ll have more to say about that later.

For now, though, let’s take as one answer to our question that Lent is about preparing, and specifically about preparing for the saving grace that comes to us through Jesus Christ crucified and risen. This preparation requires us to confront our humanness; to acknowledge our weakness; and to own our sinfulness. As one commentary on Lent observes, this explains the conflicting feelings that Lent may inspire:

"Lent should never be morose—an annual ordeal during which we begrudgingly forgo a handful of pleasures. Instead, we ought to approach Lent as an opportunity, not a requirement. After all, it is meant to be the church’s springtime, a time when, out of the darkness of sin’s winter, a repentant, empowered people emerge. Put another way, Lent is the season in which we ought to be surprised by joy. Our self-sacrifices serve no purpose unless, by laying aside this or that desire, we are able to focus on our heart’s deepest longing: unity with Christ. In him—in his suffering and death, his resurrection and triumph—we find our truest joy. Such joy is costly, however. It arises from the horror of our sin, which crucified Christ. This is why Meister Eckhart points out that those who have the hardest time with Lent are ‘the good people.’" (Bread and Wine (2003))

That Lent is a time of preparation, then, is one answer to our question; but it is not necessarily the only answer.

A different kind of answer focuses on the reality that Lent is where we live. We live in a world that loves the darkness. We live in an age that persists in turning its back on peace, forgiveness, reconciliation, and love. We live with minds and bodies that are constantly assailed by temptations.

We are an Easter people. But we live in a Lenten time and a Lenten place. And we live with Lenten hearts.

That is why the temptations directed at Jesus intrigue us so. His temptations are our temptations. Peter Gomes describes them as the temptations that come from the need for survival and nourishment; the temptations that come from the urge for power; and the temptations that come from our need to “prove who we are.”

These temptations are constant. Before this day is over, at least one of them will probably visit itself upon each and every one of us. And that visitation may come quietly: temptations are rude; they do not knock before entering.

Of course, these temptations typically do not arrive looking much like the satanic depictions we see in paintings and movies. Still, to paraphrase a famous observation by C.S. Lewis, it is important not to be too particular about the hoofs and the horns. In these, our highly educated and abundantly skeptical times, it is fashionable to doubt the existence of Satan. To adopt the language of our times, however, I want to suggest to you that the reality of the devil is the ultimate inconvenient truth.

And the temptations the scriptures describe are not just constant; they are unceasing. The wilderness story therefore closes with a Satan who is not triumphantly defeated but just temporarily discouraged: “When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.” As Peter Gomes observes, “The devil awaits that opportune time with us, that time when he can appeal to our injured pride, our wounded ego, our fear of not being appreciated, [or] our anger at being ignored. These are the opportune times when the devil’s persistence reaps great benefits.”

It may be worth noting in passing that in the scriptures Satan never really finds an “opportune time” to tempt Jesus. He does, however, find an abundance of opportune times to tempt those around Him: to tempt them into jealousy, pettiness, anger, denial, even betrayal. As many of you know, I am an enthusiastic fan of the old film “The Greatest Story Ever Told.” In my view, the film does something quite brilliant here: the same actor who portrays Satan in the temptation scene—Donald Pleasance—also plays the first person in the crowd to call for Jesus’ crucifixion.

In any event, this second answer to our question suggests that Lent is not only about preparing. It is also about living. It is about trying to figure out how to keep our soul safe in a time and place that relentlessly invites us to put that troublesome chunk of divinity aside and to feast gluttonously on the selfish impulse of the day.

In her essay “Living Lent,” Episcopal priest and author Barbara Cawthorne Crafton observes that when we become slaves to those impulses it often it takes a crisis to bring us to our senses and to remind us how to be in this world:

"When did the collision between our appetites and the needs of our souls happen? Was there a heart attack? Did we get laid off from work, one of the thousands certified as extraneous? Did a beloved child become a bored stranger, a marriage fall silent and cold? Or, by some exquisite working of God’s grace, did we just find the courage to look the truth in the eye and, for once, not blink? How did we come to know that we were dying a slow and unacknowledged death? And that the only way back to life was to set all our packages down and begin again, carrying with us only what we really needed?"

In this sense, Lent is not the thing before the thing itself. It is the thing itself. This perspective argues that—at least on this side of the transition we call death—there is no destination. There is only the journey. And there is only the constant challenge of deciding how we will travel it and of choosing what—and who—we will bring along as we go.

Well, that leads me to a third possible answer to the question of what we’re supposed to do during this Lenten season. But before describing that answer, I want to return to our passage from Luke and to emphasize a few things that it tells and shows us. And I want to do this because I believe that our Lenten traditions and conventions, wonderful and inspiring as they are, might distract us from some critical realities about how faith works and what we can do to foster it.

So please notice this: Jesus does not just go to the wilderness; He goes to the wilderness “full of the Holy Spirit.” And, verse 14 says, he comes out of the wilderness “filled with the power of the Spirit.”

While Jesus is in the wilderness, Satan tempts him. And Jesus meets each temptation with a quotation from scripture. Three are quotations from Deuteronomy in which the Lord is speaking through Moses. And one is a quotation from the Psalms.

So, you see, we miss something essential if we imagine Jesus (as we often do) going into the wilderness alone. He didn’t. He went with the best company imaginable.

He went with the Holy Spirit. He went with Moses and the Psalmist. He went with all the figures of the bible he read in his youth—Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and Solomon and Ruth and Jeremiah and Daniel. And—as Mark tells us—he went with angels at his side.

Jesus also went there with the fresh memory of His baptism at the hands of John. Indeed, in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark Jesus’ foray into the wilderness is framed by the relationships essential to his ministry. Immediately before it we find his encounter with John at the Jordan; immediately after it we find his calling of the first disciples beside the Sea of Galilee.

This helps explain something truly astonishing about Jesus’ interactions with Satan in the wilderness, something I think often goes overlooked. Satan tries to tempt Jesus; Jesus responds; and the argument ends. Granted, Satan goes on to try other tacks; but they fail, too. So what is striking about these exchanges is that they do not devolve into prolonged debates. Satan invites Jesus to do something He knows is wrong. Jesus cites scripture to say no. And that is that.

Now, I don’t know about you, but this is not how it works in my case. My arguments with the devil tend to go on and on. Satan invites me to do something selfish; I say no; Satan points out that I’m a good guy and I deserve it; and I start to entertain the possibility that he has a point. We call him many things: Satan, the devil, Beelzebub, and so on. I sometimes wonder, though, whether we should also call him “But on the other hand.”

Often, though, we are able to cut the argument short by remembering the relationships that matter to us. Drawing on the memory and meaning of those relationships can provide critical help at critical times. It has been said that we can avoid mistakes by recalling a simple acronym, HALT, which stands for the proposition that we're most inclined to blunder when we're hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. The strength we draw from relationships, however, can quell our hunger, calm our anger, refresh us with new energy, and remind us that we are never really alone.

And this leads me to the third possible answer to our question of what we’re supposed to do during Lent. Maybe, at least in part, Lent is an opportunity to learn how to exercise and flex whatever spiritual muscle we developed before Lent began. If Lent is where we live, then perhaps we should approach it as a chance to figure out how to incorporate—fully and completely—our preexisting spiritual understanding into our everyday existence.

So it may be true that part of Lent is figuring out what to leave behind. But it is also true that part of Lent is remembering what to bring along—and who to bring along. And this last point is critical, because our journey through the wilderness goes best if we don’t try to go it alone.

So we bring with us the presence of the Holy Spirit. We bring with us that chorus of biblical voices that offer guidance, instruction, encouragement, support, and the reassurance that—whatever challenges we face—there is nothing new under the sun and nothing greater than God’s capacity to help us get through it. Maybe we bring some angels. But, certainly, we bring with us those precious relationships: the ones that have helped shape who we are; the ones that will help shape what we become; the ones that we help shape in return.

It is impossible to overstate the connection between those relationships and the underlying themes and purposes of Lent. But this passage from a work by theologian Harvey Cox may explain what I’m getting at:

"Christians believe that Jesus was the fully human expression of God’s love, so like any other human being, he felt the torments of uncertainty. He sweated drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane as he tried to decide whether to continue with his mission even when he had become aware that it would cost him his life. He was fully human, and human beings need other human beings, not just as disciples but also as friends, which is what Jesus told his own followers at the Last Supper that he wanted them to be. The point is clear: Living a moral life is not a solo flight." (When Jesus Came to Harvard (2004))

Living a moral life is not a solo flight, indeed. And neither is Lent.

So we go, now, into the wilderness. But we do not go alone. We go with the Holy Spirit. We go with Noah and David and Esther and Isaiah. We go with angels. We go with those who love the Lord. We go with those we love. We go with each other.

And, lo, when they came out of the wilderness, when they arrived at the other side, it was seen that they were filled with the power of the Spirit. And the devil at long last fell away. And the Lord welcomed them home. And the angels laughed, and danced.

Amen.

From Under the Rubble

Scripture: James 2:1-6

Many years ago, I participated in a Bible study group that met in a grand old Methodist Church. We gathered in a room filled to its walls with ancient, overstuffed chairs grown so soft with age that when you sat down in them you found yourself staring at your knees. It turned out that the chairs fostered the perfect environment for theological debate, because when disagreement arose no one had the abdominal strength necessary to sit forward in a confrontational pose, let alone leap to their feet and stalk out of the room in a huff.

I loved the people in that group, but none as much as a soft-spoken woman in her eighties who always sat at the back of the room, near a fireplace that looked as if it had not been lit since Eisenhower was President. If I remember correctly her name was Hazel, although I’ll confess to hedging my bets here because almost every woman of that age in that church was named Hazel. Anyway, I loved Hazel for many reasons, but for two in particular.

First, Hazel understood that with her grey hair, wise demeanor, and gentle speech she could get away with saying things others could not. So, often, in the middle of our discussions she would raise her hand slowly, tilt her head slightly, and in her own quiet way throw a conversational hand grenade into the middle of things. Disagreement would erupt. And Hazel would sit back and watch, sometime allowing a sly smile to creep across her face.

But the second reason I loved Hazel was that she had the insight and persistence to raise the same questions, over and over again, whenever we neared the end of our discussion. She would wait until we got to that comforting moment where we believed our collective effort at interpretation had led us to a point of clarity and understanding about a Bible story, chapter, or verse. And she heard her cue when someone offered up the group’s conclusion about what the passage meant. “Well,” she would say just as we were hoisting ourselves up out of our chairs, “the passage probably means that. But is that the only thing it means? Is it possible it could mean something more?”

Hazel’s smile would spread into a Cheshire cat grin and we would laugh and groan—although, on a few occasions, I thought I could hear some of the less inquisitive among us gnashing their teeth and rending their garments. It was great fun. But it was more than that.

Indeed, over the years I have come to believe that Hazel's questions reflect sound theology and provide an immensely useful principle of biblical interpretation. Look at it this way. We believe that God tells us many things through the Bible. So why wouldn’t we also believe that sometimes God tells us more than one thing at a time? Why wouldn’t we believe that the same passage can contain many different messages? And why wouldn’t we believe that sometimes it takes a fair amount of human effort to sort those messages out? It seems to me that this sort of richness is exactly what we should expect from the God who created such dazzlingly complex things as photosynthesis, the human eye, the structure of the universe, the crazy activity of subatomic particles, and love.

Well, that brings us to this passage from the Letter of James, which I believe has at least two messages—messages that, to make things even more interesting, appear to point in very different directions. Indeed, they may seem inconsistent and irreconcilable. I want here to draw those two messages out; highlight their apparent incompatibility; explore why they are in fact fully consistent; and invite you to consider the possibility that they offer a provocative insight into what it means to be the people of God.

The first message in this passage is one of equality and inclusion. This message is hard to miss. James condemns the practice of showing “favoritism” or making “distinctions” based on an individual’s economic standing. He calls us out for seeking to draw the wealthy close to us while keeping those in poverty at a convenient distance. “Have a seat here, please” we say to rich; “stand there” we say to poor. James brilliantly recognizes that respect is paid in the currency of proximity: those we honor we let near; those we do not honor we let alone.

Jesus understood this perfectly. He understood that to honor all of God’s children means to be close to all of God’s children. Think of all the times in the gospels when Jesus says “do not hinder; let him, let her, let them come to me.”

In her recent book Reading Jesus, novelist Mary Gordon contends that this is why giving money to good causes, while absolutely critical, is still not enough. “The essential genius of Christian charity,” she writes, is that it should be “personal” and “personalized.” Philanthropy is a wonderful thing but it “allows for acts of charity that keep the recipient at a distance.” “For Jesus,” Gordon suggests, “what is required is an encounter. What is insisted upon is the personal responsibility of love.”

Of course, sometimes a personal encounter is not possible or practical. Not all of us can head off to Haiti or Guatemala or Bangladesh with crates of food, clothing, and medical supplies. Also, sometimes it is easier for people to accept charitable gifts that come anonymously or from a distance. I know a family that once fell on hard times but that would never have accepted an outright gift of cash; but when a concerned neighbor left nine one-hundred dollar bills in an unmarked envelope in their mailbox it left them with no choice but to accept the gift with grateful hearts.

Or, at least they thought it was a neighbor. I am, I will confess, a firm believer in miracles. And, in my theology, God knows how to use an ATM machine.

Still, I think that Gordon is right in believing that there is something different and essential about personal encounters. After all, that is what James—and Jesus—believed as well. For the personal encounter allows us not only to care for people, but to include them, embrace them, respect them, and honor them. In contrast, when we remain aloof from the poor we fail to treat them as equals and we thereby, even if unintentionally, facilitate their marginalization and oppression. In this regard, it is worth remembering that the book of Proverbs tells us that when we oppress the poor we insult their Maker. (Proverbs 13:41)

But there is a second message in this passage from the Letter of James: “Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs to the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?” Now, in one sense this verse includes the same themes of inclusion and equality just discussed: all those who love God will inherit the kingdom. But, in another sense, this verse appears to say that in God’s kingdom some are more equal than others. After all, the verse doesn’t suggest that God loves even the poor; it suggests that God loves especially the poor. That explains why God chose them to be “rich in faith” and “heirs to the kingdom.”

We find the idea that God has a special concern for the poor in numerous biblical passages. Indeed, as you know, that idea is fundamental to the school of thinking called Liberation Theology. Some years ago, in a heated theological debate with a friend, I quoted one of the Liberation Theologians in support of an argument on this point; my friend responded by quoting Tevya, from Fiddler on the Roof, who observed that while it was certainly no disgrace to be poor it was probably no great honor either.

In any event, this second message appears to conflict with the first and gives rise to an obvious question. How is it possible to square the concept that it is wrong to make distinctions based on economic standing with the concept that God makes just such a distinction and has a special concern for the poor? The answer to this puzzle matters because otherwise we seem caught in conflicting instructions about how to live: treat everyone equally; but treat the poor even better.

In fact, however, this poses no contradiction at all. After all, it is not that God has a special concern for the poor because they are superior to others morally or religiously. Rather, God has a special concern for the poor simply because they are poor—because, in the words of a prominent theologian, they live “in an inhuman situation that is contrary to God’s will.” (Gustavo Gutierrez, On Job (1987)) In this spirit, one might venture that God has a special concern for all those who are suffering or downtrodden or oppressed or in pain, because their needs are, by definition, greater than the needs of others.

Where the need is great, the concern must be great. That just makes sense. And it makes sense whether we’re talking about how God loves or how we should live. And in this, our world, and in these, our times, the need is great, indeed.

Perhaps you remember the old Batman television series. In the show, when things got tough the police would project a special spotlight—the “Bat Signal”—into the sky. Batman would immediately collect his gear, call for Robin, hop into the Batmobile, and take off into the night, ready to attack the problem at hand.

When I was a child this was my favorite moment in the show: it brought the first spark of hope into a dark and dangerous situation. But as I have grown older I have come to appreciate that things are always tough for someone somewhere; that God calls us to an eternal vigilance over crises near and far; and that we must never weary of attacking the problems that are constantly at hand: poverty; disaster; homelessness; injustice; hatred; violence. To be the people of God is, at least in part, to understand that the Bat Signal never really goes out.

I was reminded of this when I read one of the many stories that emerged after the recent earthquake in Haiti. Shortly after the earthquake, a foreign news crew that had arrived on the scene set up to take pictures of the devastation. As they were getting their equipment in order, they heard a cry from under some nearby stones. They stopped what they were doing, rushed toward the sound, and began digging with their bare hands. There they found a living sixteen-month-old child. They pulled the child out from under the rubble. They brought the child into the light.

That is, of course, precisely what Jesus calls us to do. He calls us to pause from the business we call our life; he calls us to notice the rubble all around us; he calls us to listen for the lost voices; and he calls us to go in their direction and to bring them into the light. Jesus warned us that the poor we will always have with us, at least in this life and in this world—the poor and the sick and the sad and the terrible and the tragic and the ravages and the rubble. And so we will.

I would like to tell you that this call makes life easier. It doesn’t. I would like to tell you that this call makes life prettier. I can’t. I can only tell you, because the scriptures tell me, that it makes life better.

In the meantime, though, the messages of this scripture—indeed, the message of Jesus’ ministry on this earth—may prompt you to look closely at how you are spending your hours. I have no question that, when you do so, you will find meaning in your life, probably even a great deal of meaning, even as it is right now.

But the question, as my old friend Hazel used to say, is this:

Is that the only thing it could mean?

Is it possible—is it possible—that it could mean even something more?

Amen.