Posts Tagged ‘temptations’

Lent 1 – competing with God

February 21, 2026

Lent 1 – 2026

Matthew 4:1-11

Marian Free

In the name of God, Source of all being, Word of life, Enlivening Spirit. Amen.

All around the world scientists and other professionals are doing research and offering advice to third world countries in the belief that they can help reduce food-scarcity, increase access to clean water and provide cheap, easy to construct housing that will withstand cyclones. One such programme developed bananas that contained a vitamin that was lacking in the diets of some populations in East Africa. Another produced amazing results simply by delivering salt to an isolated population in the Himalayas. The absence of salt in their diet had led to stunted growth and the early loss of teeth.  When salt was added to the diet the effect was phenomenal.

Such achievements are all well and good, but it is not always easy to predict all the consequences of these sorts of interventions. Many years ago, I watched a documentary on the effects of aid in third world countries and in particular on the unintended results. I no longer remember the country involved, but I clearly remember that the crop that was genetically enhanced was rice – the staple food of the local people. Scientists were able to develop a rice that produced a much higher yield than the rice that was traditionally grown and they were very successful in encouraging farmers to grow it. Unfortunately, while the rice produced abundantly in good years, in bad years it produced barely any grain. Before the introduction of the “new improved” rice farmers had sown a variety of rice seeds with the result that at least some of them produced a crop even in bad years. Now they no longer had those native seeds they were, at times, even worse off.

Human curiosity and the desire to push the limits of what we learn and what we can do knows no bounds, but humans have their limitations and we cannot always see the end result of what at first seems like a lifesaving, world-changing discovery.

No matter how clever or wise we think we are, only God has access to the full picture. Only God really knows what will really work long term and what will not. Only God can see the unintended domino effect that an action in one place might have in another place and time. Only God can see the length and breadth of human history and the impact of humans on the world and its peoples.

Two of this morning’s reading address the issue of the arrogance of humans who, in their desire to know and their longing to make a difference live in constant competition with God.

In both Genesis and Matthew, the devil (serpent, Satan, tempter) (1) offers human beings what appears to be a really good idea (or ideas).  In Genesis the serpent encourages the woman to eat from the forbidden tree so that she, like God will have the knowledge of good and evil. Surely it would be useful to be able to distinguish good from bad? Thousands of years later, in the desert, the devil makes a number of suggestions to Jesus, all of which have the potential for good, the potential to solve the problems of the world – bread to feed the hungry of world, power to govern justly and wisely, authority to eliminate poverty, violence and oppression and fantastic displays of God’s intervention so that the world might have absolute certainty in the identity of Jesus.  

The reactions of the humans in the two stories are polar opposites. In Genesis, Adam and Eve are seduced by the serpent.  Surely the knowledge of good and evil is just what they need to create a safe and secure community on earth? If they have the wisdom of God, what on earth could go wrong?  God’s reaction in the story indicates that God thinks that things could go very wrong indeed. God knows, as most of us do not, that knowledge in the wrong hands is a very dangerous thing. God knows too well the limitations of humankind and that humanity, represented by Adam and Eve is not ready to know all there is to know.  Indeed, there are few, if any, who have the foreknowledge, the insight and selflessness to see clearly the end results of even good intentions, few who have the maturity to understand that sometimes holding back is of more value than rushing headlong to solve a problem, or to condemn a person who does not conform and few who have the wisdom to know that power, even if used benignly has the potential to oppress and confine.

Jesus’ interaction with the devil is the exact opposite of that of Adam and Eve because Jesus, understands too well the dangers of believing that only good can come from the devil’s suggestions.  He knows that good intentions are not enough, that the issues at hand are much more complex than giving the hungry food (think of the rice), or taking it upon oneself to make changes for the better rather than empowering others to create the change they need, and that dramatic and showy interventions are more convincing than faithful, steady actions that prove one is who they say they are.

Faced with the temptation to take up the devil’s offer of short cuts to recognition, power and a world in which no one is hungry, Jesus responds with the wisdom that demonstrates that he understands that there is no magic wand. He knows that what to the devil, look like obvious solutions may create more problems than they solve.

There is only one way to bring about heaven on earth and that is to follow the example of Jesus, to entrust ourselves and the future to God and to encourage others to do the same. It is only when (like Jesus) we submit ourselves to the greater wisdom, power and foresight of God, and only when we stop trying to compete with God that God’s kingdom will come and God’s will be done.

Lent is not simply about whether or not we can spend forty days going without, it is more about what we learn about ourselves when we give up trying to be in control.

May this Lent be a time, when we see ourselves for who we really are and let go of those things that put us in competition with God.

 

  • I have used the words used in scripture, but I believe these are just ways of expressing the human desire for power, independence and control which prevent us from being in relationship with God. It is a sign of our unwillingness to take responsibility for our behaviour that we attribute our failings to an external source.

 

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Holding on to Jesus

February 3, 2024

Epiphany 5 – 2024

Mark 1:29-39

Marian Free

In the name of God who will not be held or confined. Amen.

The gospel reading set for today raises far more questions than it answers. What looks like a relatively simple healing story, followed by a story of Jesus’ sense of mission is much, much more. You will remember that Jesus has spent time in the synagogue. There he was confronted by a man with an evil spirit.  When he cast out the demon he raised the ire of the leaders of the synagogue because they interpreted the exorcism as ‘work’, something that was forbidden on the Sabbath. 

In today’s reading Jesus leaves synagogue and goes to the home of Simon and Andrew.  On hearing that Peter’s mother-in-law has a fever, Jesus goes to her, lifts her up and the fever is gone. The mother-in-law immediately gets up and serves them. At sunset – when the Sabbath has ended – people (the whole city!) bring the sick and the possessed to be healed by Jesus. We are not told, but we presume that Jesus has some time to sleep, because he gets up before dawn to find somewhere quiet to pray.

The account seems straight forward, but if we look closer we are left wondering about a number of things.

  1. Why, in a patriarchal society, is Peter’s mother-in-law living in the home of Peter and Andrew? If she is a widow, her sons not her daughter would be responsible for her and yet she is here with Peter.  
  2. If Peter has a mother-in-law, then he has a wife who is never mentioned and is presumably left to run a household and care for children while her husband and sole source of support abandons his job and his family to go with Jesus. 

We learn nothing else about Peter’s family life.

  • Another puzzle is this – why does the author say that the woman (Peter’s mother-in-law) got up and served them? Is it to prove that she is completely made well or is something else happening here. Peter’s wife is the host, it would be her role to serve the guests. The woman’s actions make sense if we understand that in the ancient world healing was seen not just as a cure for the physical ill, but as a restoration of the person to the community.  Serving guests would have been a sign of the woman’s full re-integration into the family and the community. That is well and good but why, one might ask, does the author use the word ‘diakonos’ for serve? Diakonos – the word we use for deacon – is used by Mark only for Peter’s mother-in-law, angels, and Jesus. Is this a hint that women had formal liturgical roles in the Marcan community or played a significant role among the disciples?
  • Another Greek word is equally puzzling. Mark uses the word “katadiöxen” when speaking of the disciples looking for Jesus.  This word can be translated in a number of ways – “hunted” (as in our translation), “pursued”, “looked for”, or “searched for”. ‘Hunted’ gives us a sense of the disciples’ urgency. They have woken to find Jesus missing and are anxious to bring him back. By now, they have seen what Jesus can do, and they know that they want to be part of it. As his disciples, they would also have felt a sense of responsibility for all the people of their city who still seek Jesus’ healing power.
  • Lastly, and this is the question I’d like to focus on, is why, when the crowds are searching for Jesus does he insist on abandoning them and moving to another place?

The author gives us the answer. Jesus responds to the disciples: “Let us go on to the neighbouring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.”

“So that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.”

Jesus’ primary focus was never on the miraculous, but on the message. It was never about having crowds of adoring fans, but on challenging people to change their lives around. His mission was not to heal, but to proclaim the good news, to teach God’s inclusive, unconditional love and to draw the whole community into a relationship with God that was based not on their observance of the law, but on God’s love for them.  Jesus heals because he can. Jesus heals because he has compassion not because that is what he was sent to do. Jesus casts out demons because they stand between him and his message of love and inclusion. He casts out demons because they hold people in their thrall and keep them separated from the love of God – not because he wants to draw attention to himself. 

Jesus’ mission was never about building his ego as is made clear in the accounts of the wilderness temptations in Matthew and Luke. There, the devil tempts him to turn stones into bread, to jump from the Temple so that the angels can catch him. Jesus resists the temptation to do the showy and obvious – even though that might have been a much quicker way to gain an audience and to build a following. But it is not about him. It is not about what he can do, but about the message he has come to bring.

Jesus knows that some will follow him because of what he has to offer them. He knows too that they will not last the journey.

If we turn Jesus into a miracle worker, we see only the surface. If we want a hero who works magic then we will lose interest when the magic is not in evidence. If we want someone to make everything right, we will fall away when life gets hard.  So when the disciples seek him out and urge him to return, he turns his face away from the easy option. He will not stay and be made a local hero. He will do what he came to do and preach God’s kingdom.

Who is Jesus to you?  Would you like to own and contain him as your personal helper or are you willing to stand on your own two feet, take Jesus’ teaching as your standard and your comfort and let Jesus go so that his message might ring throughout the world?

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No quick fix

February 13, 2016

                                                                       Lent 1 – 2016 – some thoughts                                                                                             Luke 4:1-15

                                                                                                                                                                  Marian Free

In the name of God who asks for all that we have so that God can give us all that we need. Amen.

Some time ago, I had surgery on my foot. As part of the healing process I was to keep off my foot for a fortnight and not drive for six weeks. It has to be said that even with lectures to prepare and movies to watch, two weeks stuck on a couch seemed like forever. Once the pain had diminished, it was tempting to move about to fill in the time in other ways, but in this instance I knew that a “quick” recovery meant doing what was required. So, bored and uncomfortable I stayed on the couch with my foot on a stool and moved about only when absolutely necessary.

It is tempting to cut corners, to avoid the hard yards that a good job requires. At first it might appear that it made no difference that we went back to work too soon, that we used an injured limb before the recommended time, that we didn’t properly prepare the timber before we painted, that we didn’t properly cream the butter and the sugar for our cake. In fact, there will be times that we don’t experience any ill consequences for our failure to do something properly. However, there will be times when the consequences of our failure to follow through are disastrous. A bad paint job will need redoing sooner rather than later, a cake that has not been properly stirred might be lumpy, but a limb that has not properly healed might cause us even worse problems later on, and a return to work when we have not fully recovered from an illness may mean that the infection returns – more virulent than before – and we lose even more time from work than had we been patient in the first place.

Here, at the beginning of his ministry, Jesus is offered a short cut, a way out of the difficult and painful course that lay before him. The tempter tells him that doesn’t have to be hungry. It would be easy enough for Jesus to turn stones into bread. As the Son of God Jesus he could simply enforce God’s rule, bend the wills of people to his own, there was no need to persuade and encourage. He didn’t have to endure the suffering and pain of the cross when he could simply call on the angels to save him.

Jesus has been driven into the wilderness to reflect on his call and on his role. The temptations are anything but theoretical. They reflect the very real choices that faced Jesus – to fully enter the human experience or to exert the power of his divinity, to impose his will or to draw people to his way of seeing things, to gain attention by being a miracle worker or by working beside people, to try to escape pain and suffering or to place his trust completely in God and believe that the cross would be worth it.

 

Forty days in the wilderness have taught Jesus that near enough would not be good enough and that easy solutions would not achieve the end goal. Jesus knew that people who were impressed by easy miracles would not stick around for the long haul, that loyalty that was forced would be no loyalty at all and that without the cross there would be no resurrection.

Jesus will be a very different sort of Christ from the one whom many expected. His leadership will be marked by service and his victory will look like defeat, but it will only be through his complete submission to God that Jesus will be able to restore the relationship between God and the people of God. So Jesus refuses to be drawn into the devil’s ruse, he resists temptation to take the easy way out and sets his mind to the task that is before him.

What is true for Jesus is true for us. Later in the gospel Jesus will ask the disciples: “Who do the crowds say that I am?” When Peter identifies him as the Christ, Jesus makes sure that the disciples know what this means telling them that he must suffer and be rejected and killed and that on the third day he will be raised. He goes on to say that those who follow him must set their minds to the same experience – figuratively if not literally. They must deny themselves and take up their cross daily. If they want to save their life, they must lose it.

Jesus’ life and death not only win our salvation, but they provide the model for our own spiritual lives. If we are to realise our full potential as children of God, we, like Jesus must be prepared to go the full distance, to put in the effort that is required, to give ourselves whole-heartedly and with conviction. In order to be formed into the image of Christ we must be prepared to stick with it,, to understand that short-term pain leads to long-term gain. We must try to see the big picture rather than getting caught up in the minutia of the every day. We must learn that near enough is simply not good enough.

Lent provides an opportunity for us to share Jesus’ wilderness experience, to ask ourselves once again, what it is that God wants of us. Lent allows us time and space to see how we are going, to ask ourselves whether we are content with the superficial or whether we are ready to explore the depths of our existence, to consider whether our focus is on the present or on eternity. Lent gives us space to ponder whether we trust God sufficiently to give ourselves completely to God or whether we are still holding something back, whether we understand that it is only by giving all that we have that we gain everything that we could ever want or need.

Lent forces us to ask whether we are just giving lip service to faith or whether we are really ready to allow God to be all in all.

How will you spend this Lent and will your practice equip you for the rest of your journey or will it simply fulfill the needs of the moment?

 

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