I'm remiss in not posting this homily last weekend. This is my homily from this past Sunday, March 9th, the first Sunday of Lent, Cycle C. The readings from last Sunday are here.
I want to tell you about my Friday evening. I did the Stations of the Cross here at church at 7 pm - I know some of you were here for that. I hadn’t eaten dinner beforehand, so by the time Stations finished and I had the church locked up again and had arrived back home, it was after 8 pm and I was really hungry. While I was finishing my belated dinner, one of the kids, perhaps not remembering that I usually give up sweets during Lent, tossed a batch of brownies into the oven. And they weren’t just any brownies: they were these brownies from a Ghirardelli Chocolate mix that are to die for.
I told myself: Ugh - I've given up sweets for Lent, and now there are brownies in the oven. But that’s okay: I’m going to stay strong: I’m not going to eat any brownies. But - as I sat in my recliner after dinner, the smell of fresh brownies baking in the oven filled the room. It was kind of overpowering, really.
What I was experiencing was temptation. At the beginning of Lent, I made a spiritual commitment to give up sweets. I knew I shouldn’t eat a brownie, but I really wanted to eat a brownie. The very thing I knew I shouldn’t do was precisely the thing that I wanted to do more than anything else.
I expect all of us have experienced temptation. Sometimes we stay strong; sometimes we succumb. When we succumb, we sin. Students are tempted to do something fun rather than attend to their studies. Married people are tempted to stray from their marital vows. Workers who need their jobs but dislike their jobs are tempted to stay home from work, or even to quit. People with addiction problems are tempted to have a drink or place a bet on a football game. All of us are tempted to do the wrong thing, to sin from time to time.
To be sure, compared with what Jesus went through in our Gospel reading today, my temptation was trivial. I rarely miss a meal, but according to our Gospel reading, Jesus had fasted for 40 days. He must have been famished. And so, when the devil suggested Jesus turn the stones into bread, we can imagine that Jesus was sorely tempted. To a starving man, a loaf of bread sounds like just the thing that will restore him. This is what the devil does: he figures out our vulnerable point, and that’s where he seeks to tempt us.
But Jesus seems to have the devil’s number. Just as the devil sized up Jesus by offering him bread, Jesus seems to have sized up the devil as a liar. Elsewhere in the Gospel, Jesus refers to the devil as the “father of lies” – that is, the source of lying in the world. And so Jesus parries the devil’s lies with the truth: that what we really owe is attentiveness to God’s word and worship of God. We are to reject Satan and follow God instead. And then, in the story's climax, he reveals who he is when he tells Satan, "You shall not put the Lord, your God," - that is, him - "to the test."
It’s interesting that the author of today’s Gospel passage, Luke, is forthright in attributing Jesus's experience of temptation to the devil. I’ve noticed there are people in today’s world who may believe in God, but who don’t think there is such a being as the devil. But to claim that there are no devils is to contradict two thousand years of Christian teaching and tradition, including what the Bible tells us quite plainly.
Personally, I think the abundance of evil in the world is a strong proof of the devil’s existence. My thinking is: if we can look around us at all the natural beauty in the world – the flowers, the mountains, the oceans and so on – and think to ourselves, To imagine such goodness and beauty, and then to create it all, perhaps there really is a God, and he is good; then likewise we might look around at all the evil and all the suffering in the world and think, Well, yes, there may well be malevolent spiritual forces who are contributing to the propagation of these evils.
Pope Francis certainly thinks the devil exists. Within the last year, when considering the story of Jesus’s temptations, he said, “Never dialogue with the devil. When he comes with temptation -- 'this would be nice, that would be nice' -- stop yourself.”
Pope Francis then gave us this remarkable insight: “The strongest proof of the existence of Satan is found not in sinners or the possessed, but in the saints. It is in the lives of the saints that the devil is forced to come out into the open, to cast himself 'against the light.'"
We may say to ourselves, “Well, of course Jesus doesn’t succumb to the devil’s temptations – after all, he is the Son of God!” There are two replies to that objection. The first is: that doesn’t take sufficient account of the nature of Jesus. Yes, Jesus was fully divine. But he was also fully human. And like all humans he was subject to temptations. We shouldn't imagine that Jesus's rejection of Satan's temptations was effortless. The difference between Jesus and us is not that we are tempted and he isn’t, but that he successfully resisted the devil’s temptations, and we don’t always resist.
(…and I did eat a brownie.)
The second reply to that objection that we can’t expect to hold ourselves to Jesus’s standard is that Jesus didn’t do it alone – he had help. And when we face temptation, we can call upon someone for help, too.
If we ask ourselves, “How many characters are there in this story of Jesus’s temptations?” our first answer might be, “Two: Jesus and the devil.” But actually, there are three. This story of the three temptations is so interesting that we may overlook the very first line of the passage: “Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days.” The Holy Spirit is an important character in today’s dramatic episode. We should understand that the Holy Spirit strengthened Jesus with spiritual strength to resist the devil’s temptations.
That is an important lesson to take away from this Gospel story: when we face temptation, we would do well to ask the Holy Spirit to help us to stay strong and resist the devil. In our tradition, one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit is fortitude – that is, the spiritual strength to resist adversity, such as the temptation to sin.
Most of us aren’t strong enough by ourselves to resist every temptation every time. But we don’t have to do it by ourselves. We can ask the Holy Spirit to help us. Holy Spirit, please give us the courage and strength to resist the temptations of the devil.
Good thoughts, Jim. I'm glad I'm not the only one who doesn't always do a good job resisting even minor temptations.
ReplyDeleteThis gospel reading is always a little puzzling. Apparently Satan hadn't really sorted out yet who and what Jesus actually was. Did he at this point think Jesus was "just" a holy major prophet sent by God? In another reading, in which Jesus is casting out demons from a possessed man, they say, "We know who you are, the holy one of God." But what does that mean? They didn't have certain knowledge that Jesus was the Son of God, God himself. Because, they had closed themselves off from God, who wouldn't have consulted with them about what the Incarnation really meant. But obviously they felt threatened by it. It is a chilling sentence at the end of the reading, when it says the devil "...departed from him, for a time." Meaning he would be back.
There were only two witnesses to this incident, Satan and Jesus. Which means that Jesus had to have told others about it. Some would say it was just an allegory meant to make a point. But I don't think so; Jesus did suffer everything that we do. Including the seductive voice heard when one is at a low point, unsupported by others.
My husband also had to preach last Sunday. He focused on the temptation actually being three temptations; that is, the one to prioritize material things, the temptation to power, and the temptation to pride.
Interesting question about what the devil knew. Maybe part of his game was to induce Jesus to reveal himself. And Jesus does reveal himself at the end, about which we might conclude that while doing so may have served Satan's purpose, presumably it served God's, too. So there may have been wheels within wheels.
DeleteWe had Stations of the. Cross last night too. K wasn't on to lead this time, it was the other deacon's turn. But I was playing the accompaniment, with a few choir members to sing. We always do Benediction with Stations. We were mad when we found out that OCP had changed the English words to the Benediction hymns in this year's music edition. We had sung the words, like forever. Don't move our cheese! It didn't even make any sense, it wasn't a direct translation from the Latin words, and they didn't fit really smoothly with the music. I guess they wanted us to do more penance!
ReplyDeleteJim, there are several versions of the Stations. Which one does your parish use? We use one that has a Scripture passage for each one, from both old and and new Testaments Most of the OT passages are from either Isaiah (the suffering servant parts) or Psalms. Judging from some of the spellings it was published in the UK. Another version is the one from St. Alphonsus Ligouri, which seems a little stilted to my ears.
DeleteWe use a little brown booklet. It may be the first one you mention. We also have a non-traditional version, with new-composed, poetic reflections for each station, but I never choose it - I stick with the traditional, scriptural version.
DeleteI am sorry to hear that about OCP. Traditionally they have been pastorally sensitive.
DeleteTonight we have Confirmation here, with the archbishop as the main celebrant. My choir is singing, but I'm very glad I won't be the accompanist. That would be way more stress than I want!
DeleteIsn't the whole point of the three temptations to demonstrate that Jesus was both fully divine and fully human, and thus subject to the same temptations and fears as the rest of us?
ReplyDeleteI am not a very self-indulgent person about material things, and I don't have a sweet tooth, but I am growing slowly but steadily more resentful about my limitations. So I try to find more pleasure and gratitude in life during Lent to recalibrate my expectations. Not doing too good this year.