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“Standing on Our Stories”

February 10, 2008

Luke 4:1-13

Delivered by Rev. Shelaine Bird

Storytelling

Three Sundays ago, after church and our congregational meeting, Kyle and Sedona and I loaded the mini van and headed south on our 15 hour drive to north GA. The roads, after about a half hour were clear and the drive was relaxing, at least for me who didn’t actually do any of the driving. And between looking at the map and popping in DVD’s for Sedona, we spent a long time telling stories. We recounted stories from our childhood, stories from our early marriage, stories from our years in AZ. We remembered the Sun, early last Summer, when the Nichols and Amstutz families, snow birding in Tucson, came to worship with me in Florence to hear me preach and then the lunch we had at a local Greek restaurant, which was like something straight out of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. We remembered the Sunday, a few weeks later, when Ginny and John Daugherty stood up in my old church and introduced themselves as Presbyterians from the most beautiful place in the world—and I thought I was going to fall over—when they exclaimed proudly that their church was St. Andrews in Beulah, MI—what were the chances? I told them and we laughed and I realized that those wonderful stories aren’t just the latest in my ongoing saga of ministry. They’re more than the beginning of our Michigan chapter, so to speak. They are a part of my story, a little piece of how I think and feel and understand how God moves in my life.

Stories In the Wilderness

Indeed, there’s something about stories that deeper than you and me, or even St. Andrews. There’s something about Stories that people have always needed to remind them WHO THEY REALLY ARE.

Certainly this to be true in our gospel lesson. The text for today, the 1^st Sunday of Lent, comes from the 4^th chapter of Luke. And from the get-go we know that this passage is about Jesus. Jesus, who is (we surmise) ,oh, about 30 years old. Luke says he has just returned from the Jordan River, where he had been baptized. No good old Presbyterian sprinkling for Jesus--no sir—he had been dunked head to toe in the Jordan waves, and thus entered his ministry. And out of all the pleasant things that we might have wished for young Jesus, still wet behind the ears, to experience, what actually happened was anything but pleasant. Luke tells us “Jesus, full of the holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and without so much as a day off—was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, or desert, to be tried and tempted by none other than the Temper himself, or if you will, the Devil.

The wilderness was far from everyone and everything he knew. It was far from the comforts of life: home, water, food, shelter. And he was there for a long time. Luke says 40 days and 40 nights—which whether we take metaphorically or literally—is a long time. I imagine Jesus sitting there, surrounded by scorching sand and hot wind in his eyes, the sun high in the cloudless sky. Now I’ve not braved 40 days camping in the desert, so I don’t know what would go through my mind—not to mention the mind of a 1^st century Palestinian man—but I suspect he thought quite a bit about home. I imagine he missed the taste of familiar food, the touch of familiar hands. Most of all, I think that between any great spiritual revelations he might have had out there, Jesus questioned what in the name of God he was doing.

Why was he stuck out in the desert, so far from the people he was supposed to save? Certainly there were times at night Jesus woke up--sunburned and hungry—wondering whether he’d take if all back if he could: the baptism, the holy ordination in the river, the voices, the visions, even his mother’s pained look when he left.

Did Jesus struggle, did he question himself? Maybe that experience at the Jordan was all a sham. When the heavens broke open and the voice of God rang clear as a bell…was it only his imagination? Maybe the path that seemed to lie ahead was only mirage.

When I read this story at the beginning of Lent each year, I picture Jesus there in the desert, between those precious moments of clarity, muttering under his breath and wondering: Who Am I? Probably he had heard the names being whispered: Son of God? Messiah? But those 40 days in the wilderness were a time, if not the time, when Jesus had to discover for himself who he was, and whose he was.

Remembering Our Old Stories

But as we know, or are still learning, these questions of Identity are never answered easily. It doesn’t just come to Jesus one day painlessly, as he snoozes under a broom tree. Nope. Jesus doesn’t discover Who he Is, by making up his mind once and for all, or by mentally assenting to some grand idea. He has to figure it out, day by day and hour by hour, by making decisions, hard ones which don’t seem to have one right answer, but which would determine the kind of person---the kind of Messiah-Jesus would be.

Luke writes that Jesus went 40 days without food and when they were over, he was famished. I’ve always thought that was one of Luke’s great understatements. But lonely and empty, Jesus suddenly finds himself not alone, but in the company of the Devil, and I don’t mean the red pitch-fork variety. The Devil says to Jesus,

“If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.”

Don’t you know that at the sound of bread, his dry mouth watered, his stomach growled. Would we blame him, those of us with stomachs full this morning, if Jesus had fallen on his sand-scratched knees and accepted bread from any old passerby…even the Devil himself? If you are the Son of God…if you are, that’ what he hears from this desert stranger. You are my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased, that’s what he had heard at the Jordan. Who am I? And though he yearned for the bread dangled in front of his eyes, something wasn’t right. Something gave him pause. But what gave him pause wasn’t just some conventional mortality, or even a case of good old Common Sense, he was too hungry for that. I think, at least, that what stopped Jesus from grabbing that bread, was a Story. The memory of a Story at least, old stories he had heard as a child, in the Temple and marketplace, ancient tales from the scroll of Deuteronomy.

Jesus remembered the story of his own people sent into the wilderness for 40 years, tested by God, fed with manna from the sky. He remembered how the story went---One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” Jesus remembered, and suddenly in remembering, he was able to stand, aching belly and all, and speak strong into the desert air:

It is written, “One does not live by bread alone.”

Then the Devil took Jesus high up, showing him instantly all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him,

“To you I will give their glory and all this authority….

if you, then, will worship me… it will all be yours.”

What might it have felt like, to stand there? Stomach still raw, suddenly seeing kingdoms? A mirage-perhaps- but a vision of all that was, and could be. Power that might be all…his? Hungry and homeless to rich ruler, in one split second. Power, not of God, but that that could be used for good, for healing, for goodness sake, for one young messiah’s ministry. All the kingdoms of the world, at his arms’ reach. God knows, he could have snatched it up.

But something gave him pause. Hungry and tired, he reached out, but something stayed his hand. And that something wasn’t just conventional morality or common sense—he was too worn out for that. What stopped him, I think, was a Story. Remembering at least an old story, again from Deuteronomy, and the ancient words of the Shema, proclaimed by proud priests in the temple and sung quietly by mothers, like his own Mary, as they rocked their babies by the fire. Shhh. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” How many times had Jesus heard those words as a child? It reminds me of my old childhood prayer: Now I lay me down to sleep—I pray the Lord my soul to keep. The words we learn as a child live deep within us. And suddenly, even standing face to face with the Devil, Jesus knew his choice and the words ran off his tongue like honey.

“It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.’”

Then the Devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written,

‘He will command his angels to protect you.’

This is my favorite chapter of the story because this is where the Devil starts to wise up, and begins to quote scripture back to Jesus. If you are the Son of God…If you are…if you are…throw yourself down.

So here we go again, for the third time. Jesus has been temped with Food, with Power, and now with something as human as the desire to prove yourself. And, who knows, maybe the Devil was right! Jesus might have plunged off that cliff right into the wings of angels. We’ll never know, ‘cause he didn’t jump. But I do doubt it’s from not wanting to. How tempting, how satisfying would it have been to show that tricky Tempter who Jesus was once and for all! How perfectly human to want to show-up the Devil!

But Luke writes that Jesus heard a different voice, not the defensive voice of pride inside, but the voice of a story. And once, twice, three times again, it was an Old story, the kind he used to hear in Nursery and Sunday School. It’s what Moses used to say to the people, a saying that exasperated Mothers told their little kids acting up. And Jesus, looking down into that abyss, heard himself singing those old familiar words, like they were music:

“Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

And just like that, it was over, and Jesus was alone again, under the hot sun.

But Three times Jesus had been temped. One, two, three times the Devil offered the very things for which any human would have longed. But beneath those three things, way down below hunger for bread, the thirst for power, and the desire to be right…do you think that just maybe there was another temptation? For how tempting would it have been for Jesus to someone else answer his own deepest question? The question that had followed him from the shores of the Jordan, the same question that follows us: Who am I? This Devil in Luke was trying to answer our question all along, and he had all sorts of answers up his sleeve, when that hungry young Jesus had none. Jesus greatest temptation, as I see it, was to let that slippery Stranger tell him who and whose he really was.

Isn’t that why we call this text The Temptation? Reading it today, it’s hard to miss the temptations. Before hearing it read, some of you could have listed from memory the 3 tricky trials Jesus endured. But what’s easy to forget is HOW he endured them.

Jesus didn’t survive in the desert by some great superhuman physical strength. Jesus required food and water to survive. And he didn’t survive by superhuman emotional strength. He experienced sorrow, loneliness, and pain just like you, just like me. And neither did Jesus survive by spouting off with some catchy comeback. Jesus wasn’t particularly profound. He didn’t even make up his own answers!

The way Jesus survived those 40 desert days was by Remembering. Remembering the stories from….childhood ….from temple…stories he heard from the priests…from his father Joseph….from his mother Mary.

Family, food shelter. When everything else was taken away. When his very identity was questioned, it was Old Stories that Jesus collapsed back into.

Entering Lent

And perhaps there is no better time to talk of Wilderness and Old Stories than today, this 1^st Sunday of Lent. We are now in our 5^th day of Lent, having begun officially on Ash Wednesday, when we gathered here for Soup and Scripture and to have the sign of our mortality, rubbed into our skin with ash.

With those ashes we began a journey into the wilderness, a journey of reflection and self-examination, a journey when each of us, like Jesus, must ask that hard question again: Who am I? And there are many answers to that question, other people who will argue they know, and many Powers vying for the chance to answer it for you.

For the bank, well, we might be a mortgage.

For the CPA, we’re a W-2.

For Wal-Mart, we’re consumers.

For the stock market, we’re investors.

For the insurance, we’re just some claim.

To the courts, we’re a case.

For the dentist, we’re a cavity.

For the polls, we’re a vote.

For the kids, we’re just parents.

For the parents, we’re still just kids.

But if today’s text tells us nothing else, it reminds us that in the wilderness comes Temptation in such subtle shadowy forms. The Devil, it seems, doesn’t always look like the bad-guy on daytime TV. Indeed we are confronted with temptation every day---the temptations we laugh at—and the ones that whisper to us in the darkness of night. And always, always, always the greatest temptation is to forget….to forget the Old Stories perhaps….to forget the words that formed us…to forget Who We Are.

It is my Lenten prayer for you and me today, that as we enter the wilderness of Lent, we do so together, with our eyes open and ears alert. Notice this Lent all the hundreds of times a day this world around us—in all its beauty and brokenness—tries to convince us of who we are. And while we live in this world that we can’t and shouldn’t ignore, may we also listen for Stories, especially the Old Stories that first told us Who We Are.

Were you in Sunday School, or at home, or sitting beside some Michigan lake the first time someone called you a child of God? Were you by a campfire or sitting in some sanctuary like this when you first sang your favorite hymn? Were you standing around the table the first time you said a prayer out loud? Whose lap first held you in church? Whose voice first sang to you: Jesus love me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so?

As we enter Lent, I ask you: What are your stories—your Old Stories? For, in the desert friends, they are precious and you will need them. And somehow, that I can’t quite explain, your stories are woven with my stories, and with the stories of the person beside you, and across the sanctuary from you. For our stories together—old and new—make up the story of this place, of St. Andrews. And they are woven through time and across the miles, with the stories of our parents and our parents’ parents, our children and our children’s children. That has been the case since the story first began here.

So go, friends, with the waters of baptism still dripping from your chin, and follow where the Spirit leads, even into the wilderness this Lent, knowing that you are not alone, we are there with you even when you can’t see us. And together we will tell the stories so that none of us forgets. Amen.

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