Joel D. Kline
Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren
February 13, 2005
The First Sunday in Lent
Victor Frankl, the psychotherapist noted for his writings about his experiences of imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp, once asserted:
We who lived in the concentration camps can remember those who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a person but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstances—to choose one’s own way.
So much happens in life over which we have little control. Unanticipated roadblocks, challenges, and even horrors come our way. A diagnosis of illness confronts us seemingly out of the blue. The death of a loved one knocks the wind out of our sails. Troubling events in the world around us leave us uncertain, confused, bewildered, perplexed, our lives impacted in ways we could not have foreseen. Still, we are not without choices. Indeed, there remains a fundamental choice in life to be made, a decision about how we shall respond to these unanticipated and often unwanted circumstances of life. You and I remain free to determine our perspective toward life, the attitude with which we face times of struggle and difficulty. We remain free to choose our own way.
Baptist pastor John Claypool asserts that “we humans do have a choice in the great drama of experience. We are not always free to determine what happens to us, but we are free to determine what response we will make to events.” We can determine how we will cope with the difficulties of life—with resentment or with gratitude, with fear or with openness, with despair or with hope, with anxiety or with determination, with caution or with courage.
The two Scripture lessons for today deal with the common theme of temptation. The playwright Oscar Wilde once confessed, “I can resist everything except temptation!” The ancient story of Adam and Eve in the garden suggests that they, too, could resist everything but temptation. And what is the temptation that confronted them, but a desire to be like God. Not like God in the sense of seeking to put on our Creator’s compassionate nature; not putting on God’s gracious love and caring presence, not embracing God’s reaching out to the lowliest of humanity. No, for Adam and Eve being like God means being the ones in control, occupying center stage, rather than affirming that there is a power and a presence in life greater than their own. Adam and Eve want life on their own terms—or the terms of the serpent, “Don’t worry. Be happy. Take control of your life.” The problem with temptation, of course, is that it clouds our judgment, and only too late do Adam and Eve realize that their self-seeking tarnishes their relationship with God.
Tom Ehrich, writing in “Meditations on God in Daily Life,” asserts that the Garden story in Genesis 2 and 3 speaks profound truth. Asserts Ehrich,
Grand theories about the Fall miss the deeper point of the Garden story: darkness and light are with us every moment; so are evil and good, taking the easy out and remaining steadfast for life, remembering God and forgetting, cheating and respecting, violating another’s integrity and honoring. Life is a constant paradox of choices—not the one epic choice made before time began, but today’s choice to take or to give, to abuse or to treasure, to hate or to love . . . . Life is about choices.
Contrast the choices made by Adam and Eve, if you will, with the actions and decisions of Jesus, whose vision is not clouded, who sees right to the heart of what he’s being offered and who chooses the way that leads to abundant and overflowing life. In the aftermath of his baptism, as Jesus is preparing to embark full time upon a ministry of proclaiming the kingdom of God, he is led by the Spirit into the wilderness for a time of testing. It is a time of pondering the direction his ministry shall take, a time for Jesus to question how it is that he shall live out this vocation as God’s servant.
Satan’s role in that time of temptation is to give voice to the what ifs in Jesus’ life. If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become bread. If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from the pinnacle of the Temple. If you are the Son of God, take the kingdoms this world can offer you. But the underlying issue isn’t whether or not Jesus is the Son of God; instead, the fundamental issue is what it means for Jesus to be in this unique role as God’s special messenger.
What Satan offers, at first glance, seems relatively innocent, for were Jesus to turn stones into bread, could he not feed the multitudes, thereby extending the realm of compassion? Were Jesus to do the spectacular, throwing himself down from the Temple’s pinnacle, would not the crowds sit up and listen to the message he came to proclaim, a message of an alternative way of seeing and experiencing reality? Were Jesus to embrace all of the world’s kingdoms, would it not be a sign of the power of God’s Spirit at work within him? And yet Jesus understands that beneath these temptations lies the temptation to turn his back on God, to occupy center stage, to live life on his terms rather than on God’s terms.
Satan offers the path of instant popularity, the way of spectacular acclaim, the promise of domination and control, of power over others. But over against these temptations stands the vision of God—God’s vision of a new way of living. It is a vision of life fueled not by coercion and force, not by acceptance of business as usual, but life empowered by the way of servanthood, peacemaking, integrity, compassion, and self-giving love. Jesus chooses the pathway that leads to life; Jesus determines that he will model the heart of a servant; Jesus chooses to do the things that make for peace; Jesus determines to heal the broken and proclaim the good news of God’s incredible love. Jesus chooses to worship God and God alone, to serve God with “absolute single-heartedness” (Matthew 4:10, The Message). And Jesus makes this decision, because he knows the very heart of God.
Henri Nouwen, writing in his book In the Name of Jesus, reminds us,
Knowing God’s heart means consistently, radically, and very concretely to announce and reveal that God is love and only love, and that every time fear, isolation, or despair begin to invade the human soul this is not something that comes from God.
Christian discipleship demands that we, too, know the heart of God and choose the pathway that leads to wholeness of life. Along the way, discipleship demands that we recognize the deep significance of the choices we make in life. Will our choices lead to the way of spiritual death, to the reign of selfishness and fear and brokenness and despair and pain? Or will our choices lead to life, to abundant, overflowing, everlasting life?
In his letter to the Romans the apostle Paul draws contrast between the life and choices of Adam and Eve, and the life and choices of Jesus. Listen to these words from Romans 5, paraphrased by Eugene Peterson in The Message:
Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person [Adam] did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, another person [Jesus] did it right and got us out of it. But more than just getting us out of trouble, he got us into life! One man [Adam] said no to God and put many people in the wrong; one man [Jesus] said yes to God and put many in the right (Romans 5:18-19).
This year’s Lenten theme is Choose this Day . . . It is a reminder that the life of faith involves continuing decision, that walking in paths of discipleship involves a daily denying of self, taking up the cross, and following Jesus. It’s a common theme, both in the Hebrew Scriptures and in the Gospel writings. Perhaps you remember a text near the end of the book of Deuteronomy, as Moses is bidding farewell to the Hebrew people who are eager to enter the Promised Land. Moses cries out, “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying God, and holding fast to God” (Deuteronomy 30:19-20). And near the end of the subsequent book of Joshua, as the people, now in the Promised Land, have been led to Shechem for a renewal of their covenant with God, Joshua cries out, “Choose this day whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15). Choose the pagan gods of the surrounding community, the gods who demanded cruel practices of child sacrifice and “sacred” prostitution, or choose the God of Israel, the God who heard the cries of the Hebrews enslaved in Egypt, the God who rescued the people and led them into new beginnings. “As for me and my household,” Joshua asserts, “we will serve the Lord.”
Similar alternatives confront each generation; indeed, the choices are ours each day we live. Will we go our own way, or will we embrace God’s way? Will we choose paths of violence, will we allow fear and suspicion to hold sway, will we exclude others from the promise of God’s love? Or will we opt for life in the kingdom of God, embracing the risky path of nonviolence, loving our enemies, going the extra mile in relationships, extending the possibility of forgiveness and new life, making space for all manner of people as we invite and welcome them into the realm of God’s gracious love?
Choose this day . . . . The Lenten season is a time for self-examination, a time for us to consider the decisions we have made, a time for us to reaffirm our intention to walk in paths of Christian discipleship, to live for the glory of God and our neighbors’ good. Nearly eighty years ago, in a 1928 Messenger article, Brethren writer Edward Frantz challenged us,
If the Lenten season passes without a new deepening of the Christ life within us, what excuse have we for going on with his business? . . . There is no way to get power except by the vitalizing which comes through a closer touch with Christ.
A closer touch with Christ. Sisters and brothers in faith, life is indeed about choices. We cannot determine all that comes our way in life, but we can determine how we will respond to life’s challenges and opportunities. We can determine our response to Christ’s ongoing challenge: Choose this day whom you shall serve. Choose this day life rather than death. Choose this day a closer touch with Christ, the way that leads to abundant, overflowing, everlasting life.
Amen.
Prayer is recognizing that we are held by the breath of God, the Spirit of God. I invite you, as we enter a time of prayer, to pay attention to your own breathing, and to trust that behind your own breath is the Breath of God.
As you breathe in, know that you are taking in God’s peace . . . . And as you breathe out, begin to let go of the stresses and hurts and confusions of the past week, trusting that God is with you and that God’s love will sustain you . . . .
Breathe in the grace of God . . . let go of anger and struggle.
Breathe in God’s forgiveness . . . breathe out resentment and fear . . . .
Breathe in the wholeness of God . . . let go of the brokenness in your life . . . .
Breathe in God’s goodness . . . let go of those things that keep you from walking fully in the way of Christ . . . .
Lord Jesus Christ, fill our hearts with your love: love for God, love for one another in the family of faith, love for all of God’s creation. Fill our hearts with gratitude this day, O God. Thanks be to you for the variety of gifts within our congregation—for the gifts of young and old, activist and mystic, reflective and vocal, long-time members and those new to our fellowship, male and female. Continue to fill us with your Spirit, O God.
Fill our minds with your peace. Guide us in paths of peacemaking. And hear us as we pray for those who live where there is little peace—those confronted with abusive situations, those who live in lands torn by warfare and oppression, those who are raised in fear and suspicion. O God, grant peace to our hearts and to our troubled world.
Fill our lives with your joy, gracious God. Bring to our consciousness the level of our blessings—gifts of family relationships, gifts that cone from our life together in the body of Christ, gifts in the created world—and most of all, the gift of Christ Jesus, who guides us into relationship with you, O God, and who enables us to see what it means to be fully human.
Hear us now, God of grace, as we hold before you those in special need of your healing mercies . . .
O God, hear our prayers, and fill each one of us with your love, your peace, and your joy. Amen.