February 10, 2008

Known by Heart

by Julianne Stokstad

Let me begin with these words from Psalm 139: "Search me O God and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting." Here in the church the forty days before Easter are a time set aside for preparation, self-examination, forgiveness and change. Lent is a contemplative, quiet time. The forty days remember the forty years the Hebrew people wandered in the desert wilderness before they entered the Promised Land.

Each week we say in the Lord's Prayer "lead me not into temptation...but deliver me from evil." Temptations are ever-present. They can be large or small and always involve a choice in action. Will we or won't we choose to do something we know we shouldn't do. The scriptures this first Sunday of Lent traditionally are stories of temptations, of devious tempters and of the choice to trust God or not. Today we hear three stories of temptation.

The first one comes from Genesis right after the second creation story in the Bible. God put Adam in the Garden and told him the rules, what he could eat and what he couldn't. In this story, the tempter comes in the form of a talking snake that questions what God had said. He first puts doubt into their minds about whether God told them the truth or not. Then the tempter puts them to the test as he puts ideas in their heads. He tells them they will be like gods when they eat the forbidden fruit. They begin to consider breaking the rules and then they choose to eat the forbidden fruit. It is good, just like the tempter told them, but he didn't tell them the whole story. When they disobey God, gaining the knowledge of good and evil they have to take the consequences. They have lost their innocence and trusting relationship with God. Oh, Adam tried to get out of his responsibility, but God didn't buy his excuses and kicked them out of the Garden.

The second temptation story comes from a much later time. It begins immediately after Jesus' baptism when he is led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit to be tempted by the devil. For forty days he fasted and then the tempter appeared to him. The first thing the tempter offered the hungry Jesus was food. Jesus was given three chances to be as God is. He was offered fabulous power: economic, political and spiritual power. How clever the tempter was, to offer this as the power to do great good, but with questionable means. In each case Jesus said NO!, rejecting the offer and quoted Hebrew scripture from Deuteronomy: "One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God; Do not put the Lord your God to the test; Worship the Lord your God and serve him only."

In both these stories of temptation, a choice is freely given. Humans have free will, even in the story of the Garden of Eden. God did not create us to be puppets, but to have choices. But with this freedom of choice, we must accept the consequences of our actions. Adam and Jesus are tempted with the chance to play God. Adam succumbed to the temptation and as the Bible says, humanity has been cursed ever since. Jesus however did not step over that line, saying no to the temptation and letting God be God. Jesus shows us another way.

The third story is ours and it can be told a thousand different ways. It's our story. Yesterday we had a memorial service here. At such a time as that, when the temptations and test is over, it is natural to reflect on trust in God and faith. We all find it comforting to hear how Pat DeHaan always knew who was in charge, and as she said, it wasn't her. In the living of your life, where is God? How is it that you are tempted to play God? How are you tempted to trivialize or ignore God's importance?

This is the time to consider sneaky ways our culture has tempted us in relationship to our faith. This Lent instead of choosing any temptation as our source of worth, let us choose to offer our hearts up to God. It's not that hard. All you have to say, is something like "ok, God, here I am. I give you my heart. Use me." You know, you cannot fail at the spiritual life. You don't have to go off and live in a monastery, fasting and praying the whole day long. The spiritual life simply means that you have a relationship with God, the divine One who created us in amazing love and who loves us no matter what we do.

In my previous church, I had several people who worked in the advertising industry and they used to say how can we possibly entice people to come-what we offer is given away freely to anyone who asks, you don't have to do anything, or even act any special way. When I say this, I think of how Pastor Danny from the Mountain Chapel in Weaverville would shake his head. He preached hellfire and damnation and kept his people on very short leashes. If they didn't behave the way he told them, they would go to hell in a hand-basket. His youth group had great rock music and it was the largest group in town. But at the monthly clergy group I got to know Pastor Danny better and he told me how his heart was broken because once the youth left home, they so often fell into a life of drugs and crime and ended up in jail. He truly cared but I disagree with his putting God's judgment on his people. I believe God weeps at the suffering of all people, at the stubborn lack of understanding, at the lack of knowledge of God's love and the bad choices we make.

Most people have picked up the idea somewhere in their life experience that they are not good enough and that if God really knew us, God wouldn't love us. But that fear is a false one. Let me tell you, let that one go. We are enough. PERIOD. We might have made some choices we as to how to live that have come with consequences we don't like. God doesn't give us these consequences. Release the fear that God doesn't love us because there is nothing, NOTHING we can do to make God love us more than God already does. There is also nothing, NOTHING, we can do to make God love us less. We can't buy divine love with good behavior and we can't lose it with bad behavior. How do you want to live? Trusting God's love or not? If you think about it, when you realize you are loved by God not because you deserve it, then you have to acknowledge that every one else is also God's beloved.

In this time of Lent, just for these forty days, each of us can start with small ways in which we can practice resisting our temptations. We can start with our own relationship with God or if we've got that one down pat, we can move on to how we treat other people. In this self-indulgent culture, we are taught to only think of ourselves. Self-centeredness distracts us from treating others as we want to be treated. In most of our lives our temptations do not lead us into evil we deplore. It is an even greater temptation to be silent about the evil that underlies much of our way of life. The evil we are involved with is systemic and so embedded in our way of life, it is hard to see. When we recognize it, it is a great temptation to despair. If we despair, we can ask God for a ray of hope each day. If we feel powerless, that we can't make any positive difference in the world, we can take one small step and begin to change ourselves. One small step might be to choose not drive our cars one day a week. Believe me, it is very challenging and demands more time and organization then you might think. We must end our addiction to gasoline for our planet's sake and also to lessen the inevitable wars that will come in the future. Another small step might be to choose to buy fair-trade coffee, paying more so that those who raise the coffee get a fair price for their labor. One small step might be to reach out to someone you care about but haven't contacted recently. Trusting God and God's love is the foundation of a Christian life. The temptations to forget that are many, mighty and sneaky.

The story of Adam's temptationstory aeems to me rather like a story of adolescent rebellion. That is certainly a part of human growth. Jesus in his rejection of the temptations showed a more mature trust and surrender to God based on Jesus' clear experience of God's love for him and also of God's power and goodness being God's alone. The way Jesus shows us is not an easy way, not the way the world has chosen. The third temptation story is ours. How will it be written?

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