LENT I

February 21, 2010

St. Augustine Anglican Church

“If thou be the son of God…”

The Rev. Gerald Parks +

          The account of our Lord’s temptations in the wilderness (Matt. 4: 1-11) should remind us of our Christian duty to resist those often cleverly disguised inducements to sin, as well as their source – “the world, the flesh and the devil,” which we renounced (or were renounced for us) at our Baptism.  The truth is all of us struggle with sin; or, said another way; our human nature is prone to sin.  The devil, for his part, loves to display his power over us by making our sins to seem desirable and good, or at least profitable to us and not really evil at all.  In fact, that is the only power Satan has: to deceive and lie, and tempt us to sin.  And one of the most diabolical of his deceits, and his greatest triumph, is the removal from men’s conscience of the awareness of sin as evil, and the successful promotion of the idea that Satan after all is just a myth, and nothing more.

          The subject of Satan, and sin itself, is not one we are likely to hear brought up much; and, if it is, only with derision.  Even in most churches it is considered passé and a little vulgar to dwell on such things.  Man has convinced himself that we have advanced too far and become too sophisticated to be concerned with such old-fashioned ideas.  Yet, here in the Gospel of Matthew we come face to face with our Lord’s struggle with this self-same “myth,” a tempter who promises Him, “All these things will I give thee [all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them] if thou wilt fall down and worship me.” (Matt. 4: 9)

          Is Satan, then, a myth?  And, if he is a myth, who was it our Lord struggled with in the wilderness?  There are many who try to persuade us that the whole story is a myth; either that, or that the story is only the result of the hallucinations of the man Jesus, who after forty days of fasting in the desert, was suffering from exposure and starvation.  And, of course, there are those who proclaim with seeming authority that Christ Himself is the real myth, whom, if He ever lived at all, was only a delusional carpenter-preacher from Nazareth, who died, as all of us do (although in His case, somewhat more brutally) but with no Resurrection and no Ascension – nothing that would make His death exceptional, and certainly not godlike.  It is revealing that so many people through the centuries, and especially today, have found such reasoning to be so very – well – reasonable.  It seems that doubt once introduced into a human heart is very hard to dispel. 

          I have always found it interesting and somewhat illuminating that in the narrative of our Lord’s temptations in the wilderness the devil never once accuses Him of not being the Son of God.  And that is because he knew full well whom he was addressing.  But he also knew that Jesus was just then becoming fully aware of His true identity and of His relation to the Father.  So he did what he does best, with the only weapon that he has: he tries to introduce doubt.  “If thou be the Son of God,” he tells Jesus, “command that these stones be made bread.” (Matt. 4: 3)  When that doesn’t work, he tries a second time, saying, “If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down, (Matt. 4: 6) but again he fails.  Finally, in desperation, he offers our Lord power and wealth, and is rebuffed for the third and final time.

          “If thou be the Son of God…,” the deceiver said, “prove it by doing what I ask.”  Isn’t that the same sentiment so many of us have toward Christ?  And isn’t that the same thing the Jews wanted from Him – proof that He was indeed the Messiah?  Lacking that proof, they thought they could conspire and take His human life, which they did to their great satisfaction.  But they proved exactly nothing.  The existence of God is not dependent upon the recognition of man; nor do the doubts of men alter in any way man’s responsibility to worship and serve Him.

          There is a thin line between renouncing “the devil and all his works,” and actually being aware of his snares, and overcoming them.  Most of us are very good about avoiding the big sins: we don’t lie, cheat or steal, and, with some exceptions, we don’t chase after “wild women.”  But Satan knows all that, and concentrates his efforts mostly on the small things – those little nagging doubts and uncertainties that can lead us to ruin.  And the closer we come to Godliness, the greater his efforts seem to be.  Self-doubt, after all is what he tried to instill in Jesus in the wilderness, and our Lord’s reply should be our guide as we struggle with our own temptations: “Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.” (Matt. 4: 10)

          Satan’s attempt to make a deal with Jesus, tempting Him to prove He was the Son of God by doing things that no mere man could do, doesn’t differ significantly from our efforts when we try to bargain with the Almighty.  “If thou be the Son of God,” Satan said, do this and do that, that I may be satisfied.  And we do the same thing when we pray for our heart’s desire, never once acknowledging that it is God alone who sees our need and provides for it.  No matter who we are, we cannot substitute our wants for God’s generous mercy, even when we try as Satan did to coerce God into satisfying our selfishness by proving with His gifts that He is God.  It doesn’t work that way.

          The existence of God, at least at present, is not a scientifically provable fact.  Yet, the proof of His reality is all around us, if we care to look for it.  It is our duty, and it should be our pleasure, to worship God as He is, and not as we would have Him to be.  The third and final of our Lord’s temptations, and the most outrageous of them, was if our Lord would just fall down and worship the devil, and receive his worldly gifts, then Satan would, by implication, believe in Him.  How is that any different from our threat of disbelief, implied or real, if God doesn’t give us what we want?  In both cases we are asking God to worship us, rather than the other way around - making Him, in our hearts, the stuff of dreams and fantasy, and ultimately of myth.

          As we enter into this first week of Lent, let us be aware of the daily temptations we face.  They are very real, and their source is well known.  But by the strength of our sure and certain knowledge of God, and by His grace, we have the ability to overcome them: “for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.” (Matt. 4: 10)