Feb 25

1. When Sharilee printed the first draft of the bulletin for today, she typed the title of the sermon as if we were still in the previous series: “Fears of Our Lives – Letting Go.” I pointed out to her that this is the beginning of a whole new series of sermons during Lent called “Death and Dying.” She shuddered and kind of giggled and said, “I guess I don’t want to deal with that! I don’t want to go there!” You may feel the same way! You may be less than enthusiastic about spending the next five Sundays having to think about death and dying. After all, we take all sorts of pains to avoid the pain of death – sympathy cards read, “She is not dead, she’s just asleep.” And funeral directors fix the body in such a way that the person we love even looks asleep. As a rule, we are given three days to “get over” a death. If I were in charge of the world, I’d insist that we do like orthodox Jewish people do. For one whole week, those most closely affected by the death do absolutely nothing – they do not get dressed or bathe or go to work. They simply grieve. Their friends bring them food every day. At the end of that week, they take a bath and get dressed. And very slowly, over a period of one year, they get back into life. I like that practice! I think many of our personal problems today are rooted in a failure to grieve our losses adequately.

2. The death of someone important to us changes our lives, there is no doubt about that! However, other kinds of death can have the same effect on us. I’m thinking of the death of a dream, or the demise of a deeply-held conviction. Although I’ll touch on literal human death during Lent, the primary focus of these sermons will be the figurative deaths we endure. They are as life-changing as is the death of someone we love. It was one of those deaths that Jesus experienced in this passage from Luke. It’s obvious from Scripture that Jesus had known for a long time that God was preparing him for a most special purpose. It’s also obvious from Scripture that he didn’t dwell on it. There is no scriptural evidence that he lived differently from any other Jewish young man, outside of that one day he stayed behind at the temple when he was 12. No different, that is, until John baptized him. Luke’s story of Jesus’ life jumps from age 12 to about age 30. At the beginning of Luke 3, we read these words:

Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

3. That same Spirit which descended on him like a dove led him promptly into the wilderness for 40 days. Mark wrote that the Spirit drove him out into the wilderness for 40 days. Whether the Spirit was in front of him, leading, (as we read in Matthew and Luke), or behind him, pushing, (as we read in Mark), we’ll never know. What we DO know, and must remember, is that God’s Spirit was with him the whole time. Jesus had some very hard decisions to make, and needed strength to make those decisions. He had to let go – let go of some dreams of power he may have cherished. After all, everybody expected God to choose a new King who would be a powerhouse, like King David and King Solomon! Ride around on a majestic white horse; have a whole palace full of servants to do his bidding. But somewhere during the first 30+ years of his life, Jesus realized that personal privilege is not God’s modus operandi. Having everything he wanted when he wanted it was not God’s method of function. In a very real sense, Jesus had to let that dream die so he could live as God intended.

4. Whether it be power and privilege in the marketplace, power and privilege in the church, or power and privilege in government, Jesus knew God wanted just the opposite. God does not want power and privilege for a few people. God wants it shared – spread around. Jesus knew that! So each time the devil, the one who opposes God, offered him power and privilege, Jesus “just said ‘No,’” to borrow a phrase from the anti-drug pushers. We don’t know what that was like for him. After all, he was out there a long time. How hard did he resist? Was he tortured? How long did it take him to counter each temptation? We don’t know any of those details from the witness we have in Scripture – which, by the way, must have come from Jesus himself. Jesus and this “devil” were the only two involved, and I don’t think a devil was Luke’s source of information. We don’t know how, and we don’t know how long, but we do know it was a struggle. The writer of Hebrews tells us all we need to know:

We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15).

5. We are tempted as he was! Much of what we see today mirrors the struggle Jesus experienced in the wilderness. The bigger the corporation, the more power it has; the bigger the church, the more prestige it has; the bigger the country, the more privilege it has. The difference is that he wasn’t seduced by promises of power – he didn’t hurt anyone; he didn’t sin. The more we buy into that power model of living, the less we know his shalom . . . the peace that passes all understanding . . . that peace that knows no end . . . the peace that is the opposite of what “the devil” wanted for Jesus. There is a story about the time St. Ignatius wanted to teach his students how the satan would lure people away from following Jesus. He said, “First, he would lead people from a legitimate striving for security to a wrongful striving after money. That’s greed. Then he would lead people from a legitimate striving for acceptance to a wrongful striving after recognition. That’s power. Then he would lead people from a legitimate appreciation of their self-worth to a sinful self-indulgence. That’s pride.” “Thus,” he concluded, “the satan’s strategy is to seduce people gradually, leading them from legitimate self-striving to sinful self-indulgence.”^{^[i]} It is for times such as this that Lent was created. Lent is that time we spend letting of the self-indulgence practices which threaten to kill us. Letting go takes concentrated effort.

6. Last week I read about the tragic death of a minister whom I have known and respected for many years. One minute he was alive and on his way to pick up his wife. The next minute his car crossed the center line and hit an 18-wheeler. I was having a hard time letting him go. Not that we stayed in contact with any frequency. Our paths rarely crossed, but I knew the world was a better place because he was in it, and the people with whom he lived and worked were in good hands. After a couple of days of being stunned by his death, I had to go walk the Labyrinth to help me let go. Letting go takes time and effort. Whether it’s letting go of a person who has died, or letting go of some desire we have that separates us from God’s will for human life, it is a challenge. That’s the bad news. But the good news is that we don’t have to do it all by ourselves! Remember? The Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness, but it never left him there alone. The devil departed, but not the Holy Spirit. We have that same Spirit to lead us through these 40 days! Thanks be to God!

^{^[i]}”Satan’s Strategy” by St. Ignatius in More Sower’s Seeds – Second Planting, edited by Brian Cavanaugh, Paulist Press, 1992, p. 78