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United Church of Paducah
4600 Buckner Lane
Paducah, KY 42001
(270) 442-3722
Worship Times
Sunday Service: 10:00a
Refreshments &
Fellowship: 11:15a
Christian Education
For All Ages:
11:20a - Noon
Nursery Services Provided Handicap Accessible
All Are Welcome!
A Congregation Of The
"Never place a period where God has placed a comma." - Gracie
Allen
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From February 10, 2008
Into The Wild
Matthew 4: 1-11
"Kaaaaren. Kaaaaaaren." The dime inside Jay
Riley's desk was calling my name. I had seen it countless
times before, nestled in a cubby space, and hadn't given it
any thought. That is until the day I asked Tony Knight to
walk me home after school. Stopping at the Fourth Street
Market and springing for a little treat would clinch it for
me in the 3rd grade girlfriend department.
"Kaaaaren. Jay won't miss me. You can replace me tomorrow
and he'll never, ever know." That dime sounded so sure of
everything.
Jesus wasn't the one to hear a seductive voice laying out
choices. We do, too. And it finds us in all sorts of
places--not just in the wilderness. That voice finds us at
school and work, in the mall and family gatherings. Where we
go, it goes. It's just as simple as that.
Traditionally, the first Sunday in Lent begins with a story
that can leave us unsettled. Still wet from his baptism in
the Jordan, skin still tingling where the Holy Spirit
touched him, Jesus goes into the wild to spend 40 days and
nights without food, companionship, or creature comforts. At
the end of his desert time, Jesus is worn down. And it's
then that he comes face to face with temptation.
Escape your situation, whispers the tempter. Turn stones
into bread and banish your hunger.
Exploit your godly advantage, says the tempter. Toss
yourself from the temple and let angels sweep down from
heaven to rescue you.
Enhance who you are, purrs the tempter. Turn your allegiance
and entire kingdoms are yours.
This is how Lent begins. It begins by going with Jesus into
the wild where we learn how vulnerable he is to temptation.
Not even the Son of God, the Messiah, is spared an encounter
with those forces that hope to get us to choose the easy
rather than the good.
I don't know about you, but I don't like what happens out
there in the wild and so I'd rather not go with him. And yet
when I do, when I spend time with him there, I learn some
enormously important things. We all do.
First, we learn that Jesus is unwilling to escape his human
condition. Then that he refuses to exploit his identity. And
finally we learn that Jesus has no interest in enhancing his
power, particularly when it means compromising his
allegiance to God.
As we proceed with Jesus through the Lenten season, again
and again we will see how Jesus is presented with very real
temptations. As he makes his way toward Jerusalem, Jesus
will be tempted to contort himself in order to prove himself
to the disbelieving. He will be tempted to justify his
actions to those who refuse to be convinced. Jesus will be
tempted to enter into power plays. And in the end, Jesus
will be tempted to play it safe rather than risk everything
for the sake of love.
As Lent unfolds, we will see that Jesus' temptations do not
end when he comes back from the wild; instead, they follow
him everywhere. Just as ours do.
Keeping our eyes and ears open not only to Jesus' experience
but out own this holy season, we begin to discover that most
temptations involve some variation on the three Jesus
encountered in the wilderness. Escape who you are. Enhance
who you are. Exploit who you are.
Who doesn't want to escape, sometimes? Escape a situation,
an awareness, a reality that is fearsome or troubling or
painful or threatening or at odds with the way we think
about ourselves.
Who hasn't wanted to enhance ourselves? Upgrade our image?
Make others think better of us? Make ourselves think better
about ourselves?
And who among us hasn't been put in the position of having a
talent, a relationship, a connection we could exploit to
further ourselves or an agenda we have?
Although Lent is about far more than temptation, great
instruction can come in paying attention to how often we are
tempted and by what. The challenge is to suspend judgment
about ourselves long enough to learn what is there to learn
about ourselves. Self-study is never easy but its rewards,
ultimately, are many.
Let me say more about this. A common practice among
Christians during the Lenten season is to take on or give up
something that helps us draw closer to God. And while there
is merit in the doing or the not-doing, there is more to be
gained. Whether we take something on or give something up,
this choice becomes a window through which we can observe
ourselves and the process of being tempted.
There's a saying that goes: how you do anything is how you
do everything. Rather than being vigilant in Lent in
identifying every temptation, choosing just one thing to
give up or take on allows us to watch the inner workings of
temptation. How it deceives and distracts and keeps us from
richer and more meaningful relationships with ourselves,
with others, and with God.
So the man who decides to pray each morning for 15 minutes
during Lent finds himself noticing the voice within that
keeps offering up alternative uses for that time. And that
often those options sound worthwhile. "Call your mother.
It's been so long since you've spoken. You can always pray
before you go to bed," a helpful voice chimes up, but is
nowhere to be found at the end of a long day.
Taking up or giving up something enables us to learn about
ourselves. This is how the woman who opts to quit drinking
coffee during Lent starts noticing that voice inside that
doesn't much care what she decided to do; it wants her to
stop at Market Square Coffee--now! It can be insistent, that
voice can. And it's not above using a belittling tone when
it is met with resistance or after it has gotten its way.
"You really shouldn't have, you know," the voice hisses,
sounding utterly disgusted.
Talking about Lent with colleagues the other day, one pastor
said proudly, "You'll not find me eating even one bite of
asparagus until after Easter." We all laughed because we
knew what he meant: asparagus is his annual Lenten sacrifice
because he hates it.
He's clever, this guy is. He thinks he's cheated the devil.
But he's also cheated himself. Cheated himself out of
learning--not about virtue or faithfulness, but about
himself. He's deprived himself of the opportunity to those
nuanced and persistent ways we humans wind up choosing the
easy over the good.
And those ways are nuanced and persistent.
There is an old story of a minister who stopped in to see a
parishioner. A hospitable woman, she invited him in and
pointed him to the most comfortable chair. Then she excused
herself, returning a few minutes later with a glass of iced
tea in one hand and bowl of peanuts in the other, both of
which she set down next to her pastor.
As they chatted, the man sipped at his tea and took one
peanut, then another. By the time he got ready to leave, the
bowl of peanuts was empty and his belly was full. Commenting
later, the pastor remarked, "If you had told me that I was
going to eat the whole bowl, I would have said that no, I
would not do that. But one peanut at a time, I did just
that."
Out in the wild, the tempter's efforts were obvious to
Jesus. The temptations you and I come upon are more like
peanuts, calling so faintly we may not notice until later,
until we've done the very thing we said we would never do.
I encourage you to go into the wild this Lent and that you
take on or give up something. Not so that you can tally your
successes or note your failures but so that you can go
deeper. So that you can spend time watching that side of
yourself that is so quick to tempt. What does it want you to
escape? What would it have you exploit? What does it want to
enhance?
You have nothing to lose by exploring these questions. And
so very much to gain. Amen.
© Rev. Karen Winkel
United Church of Paducah (UCC) |
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