A sermon by Senior Minister John B. McCall, February 25, 2007
Luke 4:1-13
Every year on this first Sunday in Lent we read the account of how the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness where he was tempted three times by Satan. The evil one made Jesus great promises if he would turn stones to bread, hurl himself from the high wall of the temple, or fall down and worship the Devil.
Christians have adopted Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness as our own. Through the weeks of Lent we walk a path parallel to his trials and temptations in the wilderness. You may remember that the number 40 is holy in scripture. It usually means a long but finite time. We find it also in:
• the flood of forty days and nights that cleansed the earth in the time of Noah;
• the 40 years of Exodus and the exile in the wilderness; and
• Moses’ 40 days on Mount Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments.
These stories and several others share common elements:
• in each the people have wandered,
• in each they find themselves in the wilderness,
• in each the feeling of God’s absence leads to a crisis
• and in each that crisis leads to the fulfillment of a promise because God was truly present through it all.
You know something about wilderness: it’s a trackless place with no signs or rest areas. Like Jesus we feel hungry, thirsty, lonely, and afraid when we’re in the wilderness. So we’re vulnerable to the temptations that are much like those in the Gospel:
• to use our power unwisely,
• to woo others’ allegiance through false promises, or
• to act out of deep self-centered needs that obscure the rightful needs of others.
Just as Jesus began his ministry, Satan appeared and wanted to turn him away from his calling. I don’t often speak of Satan or think of “the Devil,” but we’d better take evil very seriously. Don’t dismiss it. Every day we encounter powers that stand in opposition to wholeness, love, health, and peace. Evil speaks our language. Real temptation strikes your weak point, your Achilles heel. We could have a lively discussion about our temptations if we were able to be honest. That’s for another time.
I’ve had several experiences lately that are pointing me toward what I believe may be the greatest temptation of our time. I’ll begin with four quick snapshots:
• Three weeks ago the pastor of the First Baptist Church, just a mile down Sawyer Road, entitled his sermon “The Only Way to Destroy the Jewish Race.” It sent a shockwave into the Jewish community and generated great debate. A few days later I went to him and introduced myself and we talked. I also reconnected with my friend Rabbi Alice Dubinsky at Congregation Bet Ha’am.
• Ten days ago at the University of Southern Maine I was in the audience listening to a world-class Jewish professor and scholar from Jerusalem talking about inter-religious dialogue without relativism; how he sees the perpetual conflict that grips his people and his part of the world.
• Last weekend on Saturday Andrea and I went to the Portland Freedom Trail celebration, launching a major effort to commemorate the African American slave experience and the role of the Portland community in bringing former slaves to freedom and security before and during the Civil war.
• And last Sunday Andrea and I attended a reading of (I’ll just abbreviate) the “V-Monologues,” pointedly expressing a female understanding and raising awareness about sexual assault.
These four snap shots may sound random but they share a common element. In each case I found myself trying hard to grasp another person’s experience that’s distinctly different from my own. I think our innate human response is to dismiss most of what’s outside our understanding. I honestly believe our future as a world, as a nation, as religious communities, in our neighborhoods and in our families all come back to this single point:
We will rise or fall in proportion to our ability to listen to, to understand, and to honor the life experiences of others – no matter how different they are from our own.
Our greatest temptation is to claim our experience is True, righteous, and holy, and to declare therefore that our proper goal is to make everyone else accept our claim.
Robert Burns once wrote in his ode To a Louse: (loosely translated into United States English) “O would some Power the gift to give us – To see ourselves as others see us!” It’s a profound (and not always pleasant) experience to see ourselves as others see us. And I suggest that it’s even more important to see others as they are – not as we wish them to be. In my four snap-shots over the past two weeks I had amazing opportunities to engage the realities of different world-views:
• A fundamentalist Christian community that knows only born-again baptized believers who understand the Bible as the literal Word of God are saved.
• A Jewish community that knows that the words and labels we choose are a clear indication of whether someone is a true ally or someone who harbors anti-Semitic prejudice.
• An African American community that carries the shared experience of prejudice and the shared memory of slavery and terror as their ancestors were kidnapped and brought to this country as slaves and treated as property, and
• A chorus of women in community that knows how it feels to be female in our culture and what it means to be treated as an object and be victimized by others.
It’s hard work for any of us to honor these voices that express something we don’t know personally. I believe this is holy work – effort that leads us just a little closer to the world that God envisions.
For much of the world’s history, religions, cultures and nations existed in parallel, so each could claim its way was Right and its perspective was True. That era is gone forever. I believe fundamentalism of any kind, be it Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or “other” has become a threat to God’s world. Each insists that they are holy and righteous, they understand God, they have the right path and everyone else is wrong… or evil. The philosopher Blaise Pascal once remarked “People never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”
But we can no longer afford such a world view. Nations and religions no longer dwell in isolated pockets. There’s constant contact and interaction with each other. Refusing to listen to each other only raises the risk of mutual destruction.
As I read the lesson today from Luke and try to imagine what happened there in the wilderness, I think the three temptations were all pieces of the same puzzle. Satan knew that all God’s people are hungry for much the same things. And any of us is vulnerable when we’re offered food, self-determination, and power. God knows our hungers, but Satan, the Devil, the Evil One, corrupts the message and offers us short cuts and cheap tricks.
There is no short cut to the world God has promised. It demands that we give up the fantasy that this group or that has exclusive claim to God’s truth; that this group or that purely knows and honors the will of the Holy One. The hard work begins in each human heart – especially in the hearts of those who claim to be religious people. For true peace must be built among the world’s religions before it can be found among the world’s nations.
On this first Sunday of Lent, think what might happen if we could learn a deeper way of listening and honoring others – especially those whose experiences are different from our own.
What if we started right at home really listened to the experiences of spouse or partner and began to understand more deeply what his or her life feels like? What if we listened to children in our community about the hopes and fears they carry? If we could do that, couldn’t we build from there?
• What might happen if our nation’s leaders agreed to sit down at the table with leaders of other nations, each of whom considers the other to be an enemy?
• What if bishops in the world-wide Anglican Communion believed they could hold differing views about homosexuality rather than splitting over who’s right and who’s wrong?
I don’t offer some Pollyana vision of a world without any barriers or boundaries. I know that conflicts are inevitable. I know that good people are drawn in opposite directions by their deepest convictions. An evangelical Christian can’t not evangelize, and a Jew can’t not be offended or frightened. Such differences are uncollapsible.
But we can take the steps to build trust and to talk earnestly together. To that end, we’ve invited all the clergy from all the congregations in South Portland to come here to Wright Pavilion this week and bring a lunch, so we can at least know each other on a first-name basis. It’s harder to dismiss someone when you’ve shared a meal and when you know the names of their kids.
Quite simply, I think that’s what Jesus did. He sat down to meals with sinners and tax collectors and Pharisees alike and listened to them. And when they dismissed each other as evil he built bridges. I believe he accepted the self-sacrifice of the cross in order to show the world that every power that wields death is opposed to the will of God.
As a progressive Christian I deeply believe God calls me to follow Jesus Christ as my path, and to follow him without apology or fear. God also cautions me to forsake the false certainty that my way is the only way. God also urges me to keep a heart open to others – to their stories, their perspectives, their pain and their joy.
As we begin our Lenten journey together, consider this: rather than giving up something, take on one new spiritual challenge. Think of some person or community that you’ve dismissed or ignored. Make a pledge to yourself and to God that between now and Easter you’ll find a way to start a conversation or otherwise build a bridge. The goal isn’t to convert the other to your point of view, or to yield your own convictions. Rather our hope is that each of us and all of us may take a part in moving toward understanding, and toward the common vision of peace.