March 2003 (click here to return to “March 2003 Sermons” page)

1^st Sunday in Lent (March 9, 2003)

“Vocation?  Temptation!”        Dr. Julie Adkins

Text:  Mark 1:9-15                   

 

SERMON

It’s true confessions time …

In all my years of preaching,

            and all the First Sundays in Lent I’ve wandered through …

I never before noticed,

            or at least I never paid any attention to it,

                        that Mark doesn’t give us any details

                        about Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness.

Matthew and Luke both tell us he was there forty days,

            and that there were three specific things that

                        the devil, or Satan, tried to get him to do …

            but Mark has none of that.

In a way, I suppose I should have reasoned it out:

            You may recall that Luke and Matthew

                        put the three temptations in a slightly different order.

Well, biblical scholars are fairly well agreed

            that both of them borrowed from Mark …

So if there’s something that the two of them disagree about,

            it probably isn’t in Mark!

Never occurred to me.

At any rate,

            it kind of plays havoc with the sorts of things preachers usually like to do

                        with the narratives about the temptation:

            We like to see if there are parallels with our own lives as Christ’s                 followers today,

                        although we’re careful not to imply that we are somehow like                         Jesus,

                                    since we give in to temptation, and he didn’t!

There are lots of different things, some of them very useful,

            that one can do with those three different things

                        that were offered to Jesus as options.

But Mark doesn’t care.

Mark’s gospel pretty much blows right through the early part of Jesus’ life –

            remember, he doesn’t tell us anything about his birth, either.

What Mark is interested in is how it all turns out,

            about the end of Jesus’ life … his earthly life, anyway.

In fact, and I may have told you this before,

            one scholar refers to Mark’s gospel as being just

                        “a passion narrative with an extended introduction.”

The events of Jesus’ ministry fly by us at a breathtaking pace,

            until we get to what we now call Holy Week.

“Immediately” Jesus did this; “immediately” he went there;

            “immediately” is one of Mark’s favorite words;

                        he keeps rushing the story along.

No time for details;

            just the facts, ma’am.

 

So, in just three verses, Jesus gets baptized.

(And notice, there’s also none of the dialogue we’re used to

            with John saying “I should be baptized by you”;

                        we just plow ahead here, too.)

Jesus gets baptized:  he’s in the water, he’s out,

            the talking dove says its piece …

And immediately the Spirit drives him out into the wilderness,

            and we get two whole verses about that.

And then John gets arrested, so Jesus comes back out of the wilderness,

            and we get that in all of two verses as well.

Mark’s gospel is exhausting!

Anyway, what struck me as interesting

            is that Mark includes those two little verses about the temptation

                        even though he doesn’t give us any content.

So for him, clearly, that wasn’t important.

But the fact of the temptation was important enough to include it.  Why?

And does it matter at all to us,

            or only to Jesus?

  

The clue, I think,

            comes in the context.

It is not coincidental

            that the temptation follows “immediately” upon the baptism.

Not before; that wouldn’t make sense …

            not some undefined amount of time later,

                        but right away.

No, we have this moment in which Jesus is identified by God,

            called by God,

                        stamped with the divine seal of approval;

            and hardly does he have time to get into a set of dry clothes

                        before he gets driven out into the wilderness, the desert.

Not just “driven” out … the Greek word is ekballw,

            the same word that gets used for “casting out” demons.

The suggestion Mark is making, I think,

            is that there is a strong and potentially dangerous correlation

                        between vocation and temptation.

Between that wonderful sense of being called by God to do something …

            and I don’t just mean clergy; I mean all of us who are baptized …

A connection between a calling from God

            and a temptation to misuse or abuse that calling …

                        and, to find clever ways to justify it to ourselves.

The temptation, the “wild beasts” of whatever wilderness we enter,

            wouldn’t be an issue if we didn’t have a relationship with God.

You can’t be tempted to do what’s wrong

            if you haven’t yet had a chance to learn what’s right.

It’s only when you know yourself to be called,

            to be chosen in some particular way,

                        to be named and touched by God …

            then, it seems, the wild beasts gather;

                        Satan, if you want to think about it in that way,

                                    suddenly has a shot at you.

The thing about temptation, at least for most of us,

            is that it is insidious; it’s not obvious; it disguises itself.

It masquerades as something good.

If Jesus had turned stones into bread,

            as Matthew and Luke tell us he was offered the chance,

                        do you really think he would have fed only himself?

            Imagine how he, or we, could bring hunger to an end

                        if we could really turn rocks into rolls.

We are called to feed the hungry, after all.

Wouldn’t it be lovely to be able to do that with a wave of the magic wand?

            No real effort,

            no challenge to a system that leaves some of us overweight while others               starve.

That’s why evil is so scary.

It doesn’t come to us and say

            “Look at me; I’m evil; worship me!”

Any of us would say no to that;

            we’re not idiots and we’re not bad people at heart.

It says,

            “Here’s a shortcut for you to accomplish something good;

                        you won’t mind that, will you?

              I know it’s important to you to accomplish good things.

              Surely the end justifies the means.”

Either that, or it persuades us,

            “I know that there are rules people are supposed to live by …

              But you’re special; you’re called by God.

              Those rules don’t apply to you;

                        just to all those other people.”

That one is how you get preachers who get themselves in trouble

            doing things they oughtn’t to be doing:

The “wild beast” of temptation somehow gets in and allows us to deceive ourselves,

            to think of ourselves as “different.”

  

I can’t remember if I’ve told you about a college classmate of mine …

            I’ll call him Don, though that’s not his real name …

Don was really smart, and, except for being a Republican,

            was a pretty good guy …

I was astonished, a few years ago,

            to see his photograph while flipping through the pages of Texas Monthly.

Rising young man in state politics, perhaps?

No, Don was in prison.

Don had had a nice job as a bank officer,

            and was indeed a “rising young man”

            in the downtown Presbyterian church where he and his family were members.

Not rising fast enough to suit Don, however.

Don gradually began embezzling little bits of money from the bank where he worked …

            then, gradually, a little more …

                        not to buy things for himself or his wife,

            but so that he could increase his pledge to the church!

Because then, they would elect him to office.

And yes, that would be a good thing in terms of the prestige factor,

            but it also would enable him to do more good,

                        to have more of an influence in the church’s outreach programs;

                                    and that was a very active and engaged downtown church.

And Don always said that he intended to pay it back;

            and I don’t doubt that.

Somehow, evil, Satan, the dark side, whatever you want to call it,

            persuaded Don that because he was a Christian,

                        and because his motives were at heart good,

            that it was okay for him to give in to the temptation

                        to do something that he knew was wrong.

If Don hadn’t been a Christian,

            if he hadn’t had a passion for God’s people,

                        he would never have had that particular temptation.

I saw Don a couple of years ago

            at one of the retirement parties for my dad …

                        he’s out of prison, doing pretty well for himself,

                                    sadder but wiser; you know the story.

I look at what happened to him and I realize,

            it could happen to me;

                        it could happen to any of us.

Our own particular temptation may be something other than financial,

            but it could happen to us.

Along with the calling from God to serve and to care

            comes the temptation to get there the wrong way,

                        and to fool ourselves about our motives and our truthfulness.

When we become passionate about our vocation in God’s world,

            we always risk the possibility of our passion becoming misdirected.

  

We can ignore God …

            we can decide to say “no” to our calling as God’s people …

                        and we’ll have little problem with evil.

We’re hardly an interesting target

            if we have no real relationship with God.

But once we have decided to follow,

            the “wild beasts” of the wilderness will be looking for us …

                        to distract us, to frighten us, to tempt us.

We are never alone in the wilderness, this much is true …

But we are tested.

Perhaps one could see that as a positive sign, in a warped sort of way …

            If we are struggling with temptation,

                        it means that we are important enough to God

                                    that someone is trying to pull us away.

May we live out our vocation more and more faithfully each day,

            and successfully dodge the temptations that come looking for us.

Amen.

 

© 2003 Julie Adkins (e-mail: DrJAdkins@trinitypresdallas.org)