Scripture: Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7; Matthew
4:1-11
According to the Bible, the human struggle with temptation goes back to the very
beginning of the human race. In the second biblical version of creation, found in chapters
2 and 3 of Genesis, Adam and Eve could not resist doing the one action God had expressly
told them not to do. God said that if they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, they would die.
Poetic stories lend themselves to a variety of interpretations, but surely God did not
mean that if they resisted the tree, their human bodies would live forever. The witness of
scripture seems to be that if they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
their innocence would die and they would carry, to some degree, the burden and pain that
the Divine Creator carries, knowing that both Good and Evil exist. Humanity would face the
challenge of choosing between life and death, good and evil: the joy of celebrating the
right choices, and the pain of choosing the wrong ones.
The choice between doing good and doing evil has always been part of the human
condition. The capacity for such knowledge is part of what we mean when we say we are
created in the image of God. Such knowledge is a gift, a good and holy aspect of life.
Affirming that the capacity to know the difference between good and evil is a holy gift
does not mean that the difference is always easy to discern, nor is it easy to live with
the discernments we make. But the more we exercise our ethical capacities, the more we act
from the good, healthy dimensions of our character, the more we practice living faithfully
before God and rightly with our neighbors, the more natural it becomes and the easier it
gets.
As Christians, and particularly as Presbyterians, we believe we need each other to help
us discern what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil, what brings
life and what has the potential for destruction. The Bible does not, nor do Jesus' words
within it, tell us explicitly how we ought to respond to issues such as cloning and stem
cell research, abortion and capital punishment, wide-band technology, nuclear waste or
even terrorism. Rather, we believe that the Holy Spirit works among us and within us as we
come together, bringing what we have lived and seen, who we are and what we know into the
crucible where we meet God through scripture and community. We are refined in that
crucible and become ever more able to live faithfully, serving the God in whose image we
are created.
The story we just read in Matthew tells us that even Jesus faced temptation. If we
believe he was fully human, then he must have faced it as fully as we do. By the choices
he made, he shows us how to live faithfully, as well. At the beginning of Lent, we hear a
story of Jesus choosing between the promise of gratification and power on the one hand,
and faithfulness to God's path, no matter how difficult it may be, on the other.
Fortunately for us, Jesus made the right choice. At the end of Lent, we will hear the
story of where that choice led: it led to the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus was faced
with choosing between the promise of a peaceful life in oblivion or following God's path
to a cross and another time of temptation. Once again, Jesus chose God. And because he
did, we now know that the choice to follow God, though it lead to crucifixion, has
resurrection on the other side.
Lent is a season of the church year when Christians traditionally look at the
temptations we face in our life. Both individually and as a community, we reflect upon how
to live more faithfully and what it means for us to follow Christ to the cross today. In
the coming weeks we'll address several of the most powerful temptations that face humanity
in every generation, but particularly today. I want to touch briefly on three of them this
morning, and will save the fourth in its totality for next Sunday. You'll have to come
back to know what it is.
In The Challenge of the Disciplined Life: Christian Reflections on Money, Sex and
Power, Richard Foster writes,
"There is a crying need today for people of faith to live faithfully. This is true
in all spheres of human existence, but is particularly true with reference to money, sex
and power. No issues touch us more profoundly or more universally. No human realities have
greater power to bless or to curse.
"Jesus gave considerable attention to the themes of money, sex and power. Of the
three, he spoke more about money and power than he did about sex for the simple reason
that sexuality was not the burning issue then that it has become in our day. Jesus
actually spoke more about money than any other topic except the kingdom of God.
"Throughout history, and in our own experience, these issues seem inseparably
intertwined. Money gives people power. Sex is used to acquire both money and power. And
power is often called 'the best aphrodisiac.' Sex is called the poor man's holiday and the
poor woman's disaster. Power is frequently used to manipulate wealth, and wealth is used
just as frequently to buy power."
In Troy, New York, I was appointed Chair of the City's Board of Ethics, charged with
drafting a new code of ethics and implementing it. At the same time, I had the opportunity
to serve on this denomination's special committee to draft a Standard of Ethics for the
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). I have also chaired an Investigating Committee for the
presbytery. In each of these settings, I was struck that every topic we addressed fell
under one of these three headings: Money, Sex, or Power. They are three of the most
important dimensions of life, designed for good, and easily abused for ill and evil. These
are areas that the church, and we as individual Christians, find difficult to address
directly, even as they affect such a large part of our life, or maybe precisely because
they affect such a large part of our life. Your pastors plan to address each of them from
the pulpit this Lent.
I begin by affirming that we -- all of us here -- are, at the core good, faithful,
well-intentioned people who want to do good and not ill. We are horrified by stories of
temptation writ large: more than 80 priests in the Boston Diocese charged with sexual
misconduct, some version of Enron greed in the news each day, and the local dentist
accused of misusing her power by endangering the lives of children in order to receive
more patient fees.
In speaking to the temptations of money, our faith is clear, as Jesus said to the
tempter: we do not live by bread alone, whether that bread is whole wheat or cold cash. We
live by our faith in God, by our faith that God will provide what is sufficient for the
day. The chasm between most of the world's poverty and our affluence is growing rapidly,
but we do not see it because our focus is comparing ourselves to Allie McBeal, Friends,
and the ads in the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, rather than comparing ourselves to
the hundreds of millions of people who consider themselves lucky to live in a house half
the size of my garage.
The Christian faith gives us an antidote to this myopia. Our scripture and centuries of
tradition give us an alternative vision of a simple lifestyle that makes it possible for
others simply to live, and reminds us of our gratitude to the One from whom our life has
come. It is not necessary to renounce money completely or take a vow of poverty to live
this way. But we need to hear the church's witness that unless we consciously to resist
the slippery slope, our possessions actually possess us. We need to hear this ethical
witness of faithful living: we who love our possessions more than we love the Gospel, we
who live in fear of a downsizing economy and not in trust of God, we who define people in
terms of their net worth, we who cruise the malls and the internet, pushing and shoving to
gain a larger piece of the consumer pie. If we want to take up a cross and follow Christ,
we need to free our shoulders from the load we carry in our desire to have more and our
fear of not having enough. How we do that concretely in our life is a matter of difficult
discernment to which we'll return on a future Sunday. Christ has gone this way before us
and calls us to follow.
When we turn our attention to sexuality, we realize that our lives are bombarded
constantly with images and ethics, values and behaviors which cannot possibly be what this
intimate, vulnerable and tender part of human life is intended to be. Where can we go to
sort out the images on television, movies and internet, the pull of the bar scene and
workplace flirtations, the stresses and strains of marriage and long-term relationships,
the allure of an affair, the natural enjoyment of human scenery on the beach, the life of
singleness, if that is our path?
Here too, although we seldom speak of it, we need one another to help us discern a
faithful response to this dimension of life that is intended for intimacy and joy.
Scripture and tradition once again provide us guidance, although not unambiguous answers.
We find stories of people who went beyond the boundaries of acceptable behavior and yet
were considered, by God, to be righteous. We find lists of rules and consequences, some
we've discarded, some we've held onto, some that form the battleground of current debate.
As faithful Christians, we believe that the fullest expression of our God-given
sexuality is intended for committed, faithful, mutual relationships, and when we cross
those boundaries, we invite disaster and injury, just as surely as jumping off the highest
pinnacle of the temple and defying the laws of gravity invite disaster and injury.
Certainly God can bring good from every situation if we ask for God's help. But it is
no more appropriate for us to put God to the test by exceeding these boundaries and then
asking God to save us and the ones we have hurt, than it would have been for Jesus to defy
the law of gravity and ask God to rescue him. We know the difference between right and
wrong, more or less, and so does God. But we need each other to help us sort it out and to
keep before us a life-giving vision of sexuality. Therefore, we will return to this topic
again, as well.
And finally, each of us is susceptible to the temptation to abuse our power. It may be
the power of a parent over a child, the power of one friend to gossip about another, the
power to coerce someone whose job depends on us to do what we want them to do, the power
to act inappropriately with clients, patients, parishioners, employers, or contractors,
whether by siphoning off their funds, by crossing physical boundaries, or by seeking
favors. No one escapes the third temptation Jesus faced: the temptation to abuse our
power, and turn from God, even if it is in the name of good. In the midst of this
power-crazed society, it takes effort, commitment and a focus on God beyond ourselves to
keep living with integrity.
As with money and sexuality, power carries the temptation for abuse, but that does not
make power, itself, bad. It does mean that we need one another to hold us accountable, and
to hold before us a vision of the God who set aside coercive power, the God who, instead,
walked among the poor and died on a cross. When we live from that type of power and
worship that God, we will in some way die many times each day. Sometimes we will even
choose to experience significant crucifixions in our life, as we choose not the easy path,
but the cross.
To do such on our own is impossible. Yet with God's help, we do choose God and good
over sin and evil, for we stand on the foundation of scripture and tradition, held within
the love and accountability of Christian community, and encouraged by our faith that Jesus
of Nazareth who dared die on a cross is the Christ who was raised by God on Easter, and
that we, too, shall experience the power and joy of resurrection. Finally, we know that
when we fall down, we are still loved by the God who died for us, that we might rise and
walk again.
Money, sex and power hold the potential for righteousness and sin. As Christians, we
believe it is a sacred gift to know the difference between good and evil, for that gift
makes it possible to choose the cross and experience resurrection. Come, let us choose,
together, the way of the cross. Amen.
