Readings: Deut 26.1-11; Rom 10.8b-13; Luke 4.1-13
Boundaries are risky dangerous places. And not just for exhausted refugees coming face to face with barbed wire. Physical boundaries and emotional boundaries. Social boundaries. Moving home. New job. First baby. Retiring! The transition from one vicar to another. Valentine’s Day, a boundary place of great potential for joy – or occasion of deep disappointment. Change can be exciting, but it is also scary. Full of potential danger.
In the thinking of ancient Israel, dangerous ‘cracks’ in the earth’s surface awaited the traveller at boundary places. As you crossed the boundary, you could quite literally fall through the ‘crack’ into the abyss, into the chaos roaring below. The primordial chaos that existed before God brought order to the universe in the separating of heaven and earth, dry land and water. Thus there were particular rituals to protect the traveller at such places. Like the Israelite practice of cleansing, purifying women after childbirth. Thinking which gets mixed up with the story of Jesus’ presentation in the Temple, the climax of the Christmas story which we were thinking about a couple of weeks ago. In the Christian West, even into the twentieth century, new mothers were ‘churched’ after giving birth. Of course we now understand that an issue of blood does not make the person unclean, unacceptable to God. Nevertheless, rituals at boundaries serve an important purpose. They help us make the psychological leaps necessary to our onward journeying.
Jesus in his thirty years has crossed many boundaries, Geographical, social, and psychological. The boy transitioning into adulthood goes to the Temple in Jerusalem in search of understanding as he comes to recognise he is different from others. As a grown and mature man he joins the revered prophet John the Baptist, to learn more. As a disciple of the Baptist he also seeks baptism. And the most powerful transition of his life occurs at this moment! As Jesus humbly submits to the rituals of repentance and cleansing, he becomes intensely aware of the Spirit descending upon him, becomes intensely aware of the depth of God’s love for him, receives powerful affirmation of the call of God on his life with which he has been wrestling for so long. Receives the stunning knowledge, assurance, that he is indeed, the Son of God.
Jesus obviously had an extraordinary personal charisma. And he must by this time have had a keen awareness of his own potential to draw a following of disciples, usurp his teacher’s role and position. The uncertainty and the tension overwhelming. What should he do?
Luke tells the story in the plainest of fashions, stating simply that Jesus began his ministry when he was about thirty years old. However in what happens next after his baptism, such easy simplicity could hardly be further from the reality of Jesus’ experience! At this catastrophic moment in Jesus’ life, in the psychological trauma of powerful conflicting choices, Jesus, driven out by the Spirit, is alone into the wilderness for forty days.
Here in the area between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, known as ‘Jeshimmon’ which means ‘The Devastation’, thus called for its jagged rocks and blistering heat, here Jesus faces his inner ‘demons’.
What happens next can be summed up as three different ways of taking that power he has received from God, and using it for his own exaltation rather than to fulfil his mission. Here is a boundary never crossed before, the meeting of humanity with the power of divinity, and there are no rituals. Jesus indeed falls through the cracks into terrifying experience wrestling with agonising indecision. How should he use his power, his power to work miracles, his charisma? Turn the stones all around him into bread for an impoverished and hungry people? As we know from the fate of lottery winners cheap answers we haven’t worked for, rarely fulfil our real needs.
Will he ‘worship the devil’? Turn to deceit and subtle corruption? If he is willing do so, he may conquer the world! As Adam and Eve discovered in the Garden, knowledge gives us choices. We may use our knowledge for good or evil. But in this choosing we become responsible for ourselves and for others. Will Jesus compromise who he is, will he choose to pervert his gifts for self-aggrandisement?
Lastly, how about a bit of spectacular showmanship! Jump from the pinnacle of the Temple? Dazzle the people into running after him? Demonstrate he is more powerful than all the splendour of the Temple! This last is no idle temptation, it is touching close to what indeed are God’s intentions for the Temple and its worship. For as we shall discover later in the gospels, in the giving of his life Jesus will indeed, supersede Temple sacrifice. It is in this, God’s Son that God is revealed, that God is with us, in his Son that the forgiveness of sins will come to reside, – and not in the Temple or its rituals.
For us too, perhaps it is when what tempts us is close to what is good and wholesome, that we are most in danger. Our discernment is blurred by our desires. We don’t see what is happening, and our will to resist is at its weakest.
Jesus rebuts every temptation with scripture. In the wilderness he responds with words from the Book of Deuteronomy. Throughout his life, Jesus has made time, given his energy and attention to coming into the presence of God in prayer, searching out understanding of God’s will in deep reading of the Scriptures. All of which has been profoundly shaping his thinking, his attitudes, his whole personality. Jesus is certain of his desire to serve God. Moved always by deep love for his fellow human beings. As each temptation sweeps over him he knows what he must do, knows how he will respond, it’s there already in his character, in the person he has grown into. Such spiritual practice is what we too, need to be exercising ourselves with in Lent. Reading our Scriptures, embedding those texts into our very being such that resisting temptation becomes less and less of a struggle as we grow in the likeness of Jesus. A good place to start is Jesus’ ‘Sermon on the Mount’ – Matthew’s gospel chapters five to seven. Forgive. Love your enemy. Do not judge. Or the challenge of Paul’s famous hymn to love, 1 Corinthians 13. Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful. Love is patient and kind. Or from Romans chapter twelve: -480‘Outdo one another in showing honour.’ Quite a challenge to seek the honour of our neighbour above our own! How different would the world be if we all practised Paul’s injunction?! So many wars in history, and I also guess what is happening in the Middle East today, result from either one person, such as Kaiser Wilhelm in 1914, or whole communities of people, experiencing a profound lack of respect from their neighbours, from those around them who hold the power to control their lives.
It is always easier to practice spiritual disciplines in the company of others. Lent is the opportunity to do some serious reflection on how we conduct our lives, knowing that others are doing so too! Armed with the tools of Scripture and prayer and spiritual reading – this year for us it’s Rowan Williams on the apostle Paul – armed with these things we equip ourselves to be ready to cross those boundaries when we reach them, traverse those transitional places of change and danger with equanimity and peace – and success. Even discover they are places of personal growth and fulfilment. Amen.