Reflection for
1st Sunday of Lent All
Saints’ Church Southern Shores, N.C. March 5, 2017 Thomas
E. Wilson, Rector Genesis 2:15-17;
3:1-7 Romans 5:12-19 Matthew 4:1-11 Psalm 32
Walking With Jesus: Beside Me On
My Own Strength; Temptation
In Celtic Christianity there is a
favorite hymn called The Deer's Cry or the Lorica taken from a
Prayer of St. Patrick in which Patrick and his monks call on Christ to be
with them as they arise. The story that is told of that Prayer is that Patrick
and his monks were warned of an ambush by the Druids and when they sang this
song, their appearance was hidden from the Druids who only saw deer running.
It may have come from an old Pre-Christian Druid exercise where the singers
bind all the forces of nature to themselves when they arise. Each verse in
the Lorica begins: “I arise today”
and then describes each element to which they bind themselves. The Lorica is like a tunic which has the
power to deflect slings and arrows and disease, but if anything does get
through, it ensures admission to heaven.
In the 19th Century, poet and hymnist Cecil Frances
Alexander did a metical version of the Prayer and called it St. Patrick's
Breastplate. Charles Sanford Villiers put to music and Ralph Vaughan Williams
did the music for the 6th verse, which we will be singing during
the Sundays of Lent. The 6th verse goes: “Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before
me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ
in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.”
Our theme this Lent is “Walking
with Jesus”, and for the five weeks of Lent we will look at how this Christ
Jesus walks with, around, and in each of us - on the side of our strength, on
the weaker side, behind us, in front of us, and inside of us.
This week we begin with the idea
that we need more than our own strength to make it through faithfully each
day. Each of us has a dominant side of our strength and in this we usually
place our trust: “I can do this.” In this first week of Lent, the Gospel
lesson is always about the Temptation in the Wilderness - last year it was
Luke’s account, next year it is Mark’s, and this year it is from Matthew. John
does not have a temptation narrative.
The three temptations in this
passage begin with the suggestion to turn the stones into bread, the
Temptation to meet one’s own needs as the foundation of life’s purpose. In
modern day America, each of us is a targeted consumer; our worth is
determined by our ability to consume food, things, time, and services.
Consumers are users who make decisions as to the amounts they will pay for
different goods and services. The Tempter suggests that it is normal not to give
precedence to anything else as the center of your own life except entitled
pointless consumption. The fasting that Jesus is doing is to cleanse himself
from the habitual daily habit of consuming so that he might devote that time
to moving closer to God. Yes he could, by his own power, change the stones
into bread, and later in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus will perform the miracle of
the loaves and fishes in order to feed someone else’s suffering. It is not
about using your own strength; it is about what you do with it that is
important. As T. S. Eliot notes: “The last act is the greatest treason, to do
the right deed for the wrong reason.”
The second temptation in Matthew,
to throw himself off the pinnacle of the Temple to impress, is the temptation
to impress without cost. If he tossed himself from the pinnacle of the Temple,
the people who went to the Temple, the Jews, his own people, would be so
impressed that they would conclude that he really was part of the divine, and
it would not bring him any suffering since the angels would catch him. A
miracle would be the basis of proving his divinity to all people. Jesus
refuses that temptation because it would make him an exception from the human
condition of suffering. Jesus enters into the entire world, including the
suffering. Earlier I noted that John did not have a Temptation Narrative in
that Gospel, but I think the temptation is transferred to the night in the
garden when Jesus struggles with following the path that leads to the Cross
and embrace the suffering of the world.
The third temptation is the power
over all the kingdoms of the world, the Temptation of power to control
others. The Tempter says that Power over all will be given if Jesus will
serve the father of all evil, thereby losing Jesus’ moral compass. We have this tendency to think that, because
we have the power, we usually feel we need to use it. But for what purpose?
Harry Truman said that the reason he approved the use of the atomic bomb in
World War II was that he was sure if he did not use these weapons, since we
had them, to launch terror on civilian targets to end the war, he would be
condemned by history and the other party. The bomb was also a good way to
frighten the Soviets into joining us in the fight against the Japanese and
gain post-war leverage with our fleeting power. We ended up using the same
weapons as we used to condemn, in the same way as the bombings of London were
answered by the fire bombings of Dresden. We succumbed to the notion that the
way to win anything is to create terror in our enemies. We live now reaping
what we sowed by our enemies who have learned those lessons well.
In our daily lives we see this in
our losing of a community of discourse to solve problems; rather, we become
contemptuous of losers and fearful of not being classed as winners. In the
early 20th Century, Grantland Rice used to say: “It is not if you
won or lost; it’s how you play the game.” But that mantra was replaced in the
later 20th century with “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only
thing.”
These temptations are the temptations
that all of us face on a daily basis as we walk with Jesus if we place our
trust only in our own strength. If we rely only on our strength, we will be
tempted to see this world as a place where our own desires rule us, and where
we so fear suffering that we flee from it and thereby we cannot share the
sufferings of our brothers and sisters in this broken world, and where we
justify any use of our strength as long as we win.
Walking with Jesus shows us that
there is another way to live.
Walking With Jesus: Beside Me On My Own Strength; Temptation
Offered a Prayer not to be lead
into temptation
but here am I summoning a wish free
being set.
What if I conquer relying only on
my own sweat,
am I strong enough to do this and
get an ovation?
My ego longs for the thronging
crowds adoring;
“Oh, you are so good, you are a
superior being,
rising above mortal human limits!”
Them seeing
life is my own power and it won’t
need be boring.
But under the temptations is the
most dangerous,
the one that most allures me, of
the need to affirm
my own worth and prance around and
not squirm
with nagging fear that I'm not most
glamourous.
I pray I will not give into the
deeper temptation
to
think of myself as the center of all creation.
.
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Spiritual reflections influenced by the Eucharistic Lectionary lessons for the Episcopal Church Year, by prayerful consideration on what is happening in the world and in movies I have seen, people I have known, with dreams and poems that are given to my imagination filtered through the world view of a small town retired parson on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
Thursday, March 2, 2017
Walking With Jesus: Temptation
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