Power and Glory - February 10, 2008

Sermon preached at Glen Ayr United Church on February 10, 2008 by Fran Ota

Lent 1 Matthew 4:1-11

Funny how things come together sometime. I was sitting at home yesterday, procrastinating about writing my sermon, watching a movie on TV called “Sneakers”, with one of my least favourite actors - Robert Redford - and three of my favourites - Ben Kingsley, Sidney Poitier, and Dan Aykroyd. I was trying to get a handle on the sermon, and really scratching my head, because these same texts come up every year at the beginning of Lent, and I was wondering how I could come up with something new this year.

... Robert Redford, at the end of the movie, standing on top of a high building looking out over a city, and Ben Kingsley holding a gun on him saying “Think of the power we could have, the control we would have over everything...” and Robert Redford saying “I don’t want it.”

... and there it was!

... that took me to a line from one the first Harry Potter story. Right near the end, when Harry faces Lord Voldemort, and is holding the philosopher’s stone in his hand - Voldemort says to him “There is no such thing as good and evil. There is only power, and those too weak to use it.”

One of the problems with the story of Jesus today , is that we have tended to make it into something literal. The media, in general, when portraying these things, haven’t helped much. We have got so used to seeing literal visual depictions of a devil with horns, tail and pitchfork, or some evil thing which possesses others by diabolic means, that we can’t put it into terms which make sense for today at all.

The Greek word used in the Gospel text is ‘diabolos’ - and that’s where we get the word ‘diabolic’. But ‘diabolos’ does not translate as ‘devil’, it translates as ‘traducer’. A traducer is one who confuses the other. So the role of the ‘diabolos’ is to confuse, distract, take focus away from - and turn it to something else..

Matthew tells us Jesus was led by the spirit - not the Holy Spirit, I think - but his own spirit, his own humanity. He was wrestling with his own devil, his own Job if you will, and that ‘devil within’ was trying to confuse and distract him.

In the Hebrew scriptures, diabolos is not God's adversary, but an adversary to people; not the embodiment of evil, but the embodiment of crisis when a faithful or unfaithful choice is being provoked. In the book of Job, Satan is one of the company of heaven, an expected being, in conversation with, but subservient to, God. In the story of Job, Satan is also the embodiment of crisis, and the adversary of Job.

Those who hear us preach have so much cultural baggage around "the devil" that comes more from Greek mythology of the underworld, medieval art, and movie demons, that it is hard to separate that and hear what the scripture actually says. The gospel writers did not have the same baggage that 21st century people have; so more likely they would have used the term in the sense their Hebrew ancestors had - the adversary, the confuser.

Much of my thought around this has been the humanity or divinity of Jesus. Some of my colleagues were having trouble thinking of Jesus as being tempted, claiming that it was no contest. They were seeing it only from the point of view of Jesus being divine, hence of course he would overcome evil. So why would the Gospel writer even bother to put the story in, then? For me, the whole story comes apart if it is no contest and Jesus is divine. It literally means nothing unless we think of Jesus as a human being, subject to the same pressures that others would be. I think the whole meaning of this story is the humanity of Jesus - and the purpose of the story is like the parables Jesus told; to provide a vehicle for commentary on our lives and how we deal with them.

Take a look at it again. Jesus goes off on retreat, somewhere far away from others, to fast and meditate. He is feeling a call to ministry and needs to do some discernment about his role. And as he comes to an understanding of ministry, he is faced with making some decisions; he has to wrestle with the power he has, and how to use it. And there is a little voice saying ‘do this with it, and you can have all of that’. He has an experience where he views the world as if from a high place, and comes face to face with his own person. He can either seize power and use it in the wrong way, or refuse it.

When we get into discussions about the humanness/divinity of God, I have to say that I believe that all of God which could be contained in human form was in Jesus; Jesus was the all of God that could be revealed through the medium of "human". Thus Jesus was as divine as a human could be, and as human as the divine can be. But we are also told that humans were made in the image of God, so that means we also have the power to do what Jesus did, and make the choices Jesus did. Jesus could have chosen any response that he wanted. Jesus had to be completely human in order to have any meaning for me the human that I am. Jesus had to be tempted to choose his own pleasure, his own response to power, his own use of power, and his own relationship with God.

I also believe that Jesus grew both in his understanding of God and his own life. This time in the desert certainly was a major part of his growth in his self-concept (maturity) and his relationship with God. Real temptation - real possibilities - real choices - just as real as the temptations I experience. The temptations I experience also help form my growth in my self-concept (maturity) and my relationship with God (and others).

I constantly marvel at how much more powerful the story of Jesus is when we see him in this light. It is so easy to cop out if we relate to Jesus as divine. When we worship Jesus as God the world at best is unchanged and often becomes more divided. When we walk in the footsteps of Jesus as a human who struggled with choices in life as we do, a part of this troubled space is healed.

May it be so.

With thanks to Rev. Susan Leo, Rev. Sharon Jacobsen, Rev. Tom Watson, Rev. Marilyn Leuty for their inspiration and ideas.