Sermons from St
Faith's
It's very
tempting!
Fr Dennis Smith, Sunday 14th
February, 2016
During the second World War, one little boy couldn’t
resist the temptation to eat sweet things. Packets of
dried fruits received from Australia disappeared from the
store cupboard. Sweets and chocolates suffered the same
fate! So the rest of the family found a hiding place that
he never discovered. It was in the bottom of the
grandfather clock!
In the bible the word “temptation” means more than the
impulse to do something we shouldn’t, for it refers to
being tested”.
Today’s Old Testament reading reminds us of the physical,
moral and spiritual testing the children of Israel faced
as they journeyed from being nomads to slaves in Egypt;
and as they escaped from bondage to face years in the
wilderness, before settling in their promised land.
They were tested about belief and trust in God, by the
hardness of slavery, by the privations of the wilderness
years, by the commandments God had given them through
Moses, and by what it meant to be a nation living in their
own land. So, at the annual liturgy, they recalled their
incredible testing journey by reciting, “A wandering
Aramean was my ancestor … he went down into Egypt … . When
the Egyptians treated us harshly we cried to the Lord …
sand the lord brought us out … with a mighty hand … and
brought us to this land flowing with milk and honey.”
Their testing history continues to unfold down the
centuries until it brings us to the personal journey and
temptations of Jesus. After his years of formation and
family life, he answered the call of God, was baptised,
and, like his ancient forebears, was led into the
wilderness to face the test of deciding the right ways to
carry out that calling. He was clear that his heavenly
Father wanted him to meet human need, but could feeding
bodies alone, by tuning stones to bread, be the best way
of achieving this?
“Bread alone” is insufficient, as the negative side of our
consumer society keeps reminding us, for we can have many
possessions but still be lonely, vulnerable and afraid;
selfish, greedy and aggressive. Jesus’ goal was to
establish God’s truth and reign over the whole earth, so
what about using the world’s methods of dominance –
political, economic and military power?
But then, force of arms, or the methods of
totalitarianism, instead of the power of self giving love,
would surely not produce a Kingdom that has anything at
all to do with God. In the battle to win hearts and minds,
what if Jesus was to jump off the high point of the temple
and survive, thus proving himself as God’s Son? Some might
follow a Messiah who, like Superman, is physically
indestructible; but wouldn’t avoiding the possibility of
suffering make God into the servant of misplaced ambitions
and values? At the send of the temptations we are told
that, “The devil … departed from him until an
opportune time.”
The wilderness wasn’t the only place of testing for Jesus.
Through the circumstances of his daily life he passed
every searching test of character with flying colours,
never using power for his own benefit, but always
unstintingly for others to bring hope and wholeness
to people who were lost, sick, sad or afflicted by
guilt.
Jesus never sought to win the battle for hearts and minds
in ways that compromised the love and integrity of
God. Near the end of his ministry Jesus faced the
greatest of all tests, that of suffering. Teaching
that “The Son of Man must suffer many things” he went to
Jerusalem, faced his enemies, and drove the unjust traders
out of the temple. In the Garden of Gethsemane, he faced
the greatest struggle of all’ such inner anguish that St.
Luke tells us the sweat dripped from his face like drops
of blood. But still he said to God, “Not my will be done,
but yours”.
The consequence of saying ‘no’ to the wilderness
temptations is to bring him to the cross, where the
earthly powers he rejected are confronted and defeated by
the power of perfect love. Through all of this, Jesus
gives us the example to follow. As Hebrews chapter 2 verse
eighteen puts it, “Because he himself was tested by what
he suffered, he is able to help those who are being
tested.”
So we come to our own journeys, temptations and tests.
Like Jesus we need to decide what we will not do, the
means we will not take, and the ends we will not pursue.
We must reject the ways of self-centred survival that
ignore the needs of others; we must turn away from
manip0ulative power that seeks to dominate others; we must
forego trying to control god to become our servant,
seeking instead to be servants of God.
Then, just like Jesus, we face tests of character every
time we face a choice. Will we choose truth or falsehood,
selfishness or altruism, greed or generosity, and so on?
Some of the tests are far from clear cut. A married man
with a family is offered the opportunity to work abroad
and the tension between ambition and concern for his
children’s education tests him hard. A career woman finds
that she is pregnant and the new situation tests her sense
of what is really valuable.
The choices we make mould and shape our character and
therefore the direction our life takes. Weak, indulgent,
soft choices make for weak persons. Principles,
thoughtful, caring choices make for more rounded and
creative people.
As with Jesus, our greatest tests come through suffering.
When we are in danger, when someone we love falls ill or
dies, when our sense of security is suddenly rocked, our
strength, character and faith, can be tested to breaking
point.
In Kaled Hosseini’s insightful novel about Afghanistan, “A
Thousand Splendid Suns", Mariam is so overwhelmed by the
cruelty that surround and mistreats her, we are told, “The
past held only this wisdom; that love was a damaging
mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous
illusion.” Yet despite the depths of her despair she finds
the courage to die for her friend.
There are two sides to every testing experience. We don’t
want it, nor would we wish it on anyone. In fact Jesus
teaches us to pray to be saved “from the time of trial”,
though that petition probably asks that we should not be
tested beyond our strength to cope. Yet we also know that
through testing circumstances we learn important lessons
and grow as the result. When we see children tested by
disappointment or love tested by disloyalty, though we
feel nothing but sympathy for the sufferers, we know in
our hearts that such experiences can often have value in
later life.
Tough present experience helps us to face what may be yet
to come. The whole adventure of human life is about growth
and being shaped and changed into something other than we
are now. As it's been said, “God doesn’t create us ready
made; it is the process of development, the growing up
into maturity of body, mind and spirit that makes us the
opposite of puppets, that makes us true children of God.
God wants us to grow and the medium of growth is the
bitter-sweet soil of daily life and experience.”
For the Christian the goal and aim of life is to be made
perfect in love, to attain to mature manhood and
womanhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness
of Christ. These weeks of lent give us another chance to
bring our lives into line with his, so that something of
his faith, his courage, his stand for truth and right, his
concern for others, and his invincible love in the face of
testing, may come to light in us.
