From Rev'd Jane Bearden
Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid. Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
I received an email from a friend in Alabama, who studied creative writing in Vermont. She wanted to tell me how beautiful the weather is there and how she had been walking in the sunshine and 60 degrees. I wrote this back.
The sun is out here too, but the snow still covers the ground and the wind is blowing with a vengeance. Don’t you just LOVE New England.! I am sermon writing. Wrestling with good and evil, temptation and deliverance, God and Satan, Jesus and Pat Robertson, earthquakes and Tiger Woods, faith and despair. Tis Lent and that is the storyline…
She responded: "Well, as long as you have it narrowed down to a manageable topic" ... Ouch! Her sarcasm hit home. I was floundering. These texts seemed difficult to me. Was it because I was overwhelmed by the enormity of the problems in the world? Or perhaps because temptation and lack of trust, disasters and evil are such basic human struggles? Or perhaps because scripture seems - at times - to present conflicting or inadequate answers to the questions of where God is in all of this. Or so it seems to me.
When I first read the lessons for today, I sort of threw off the Psalm as having been stuck in here because of the reference to it in the Gospel. But as this week has gone by I have been drawn back to it again and again. Three things happened this week that I want to share with you, but first let’s go back and look at this psalm again, so that we can do some reflection through the lens of the promises it makes.
He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, *abides under the shadow of the Almighty. He shall say to the LORD, "You are my refuge and my stronghold, *
my God in whom I put my trust." Because you have made the LORD your refuge, *
and the Most High your habitation, There shall no evil happen to you, *
neither shall any plague come near your dwelling. For he shall give his angels charge over you, * to keep you in all your ways. They shall bear you in their hands, *
lest you dash your foot against a stone. You shall tread upon the lion and adder; *
you shall trample the young lion and the serpent under your feet. Because he is bound to me in love, therefore will I deliver him; * I will protect him, because he knows my Name.
He shall call upon me, and I will answer him; * I am with him in trouble; I will rescue him and bring him to honor. With long life will I satisfy him, * and show him my salvation.
The first experience I want to share had to do with Haiti and the comments that Pat Robertson made about the earthquake. He rather bluntly declared that the devastation caused by the earthquake was some sort of punishment on the people for consorting with the devil. I might add that the same accusation was made about New Orleans after Katrina - the Super Bowl put that one to rest I think. The second experience was a conversation I had with someone over the healing prayers that we do here each Sunday. What does it mean to pray for healing? The last experience was perhaps the hardest to hear. A young woman for whom conception was taking longer than she had hoped told me about being at a party where she witnessed some one who was pregnant using recreational drugs without regard to the detrimental effect it might have on the baby. She expressed her frustration at God’s seeming indifference to her desire to give birth and yet allowing someone who had little or no gratitude for the miracle to have the very gift she longed for. What these experiences have in common is the very human need to take away suffering from our lives, to equate our faithfulness and God’s blessing with our well-being.
This Psalm that we just read offers great comfort to us. It describes God as refuge and fortress – a shelter where no harm can touch us. The words are comforting but they also seem to tempt us to a connection between prayer and protection from harm. Certainly believers through the years have used this Psalm as an indication of some kind of magical formula for protection from danger. There is not a day that goes by that someone doesn’t email me to pray for something or that I don’t tell someone that I will pray for this or that. Yesterday it was a cure for cancer and sunshine for a wedding… What’s up with that?!? Will God listen to my prayer more than yours? Tis a slippery slope that we walk sometimes.
The temptation to connect trust in God to freedom from suffering is one that causes most Christians to stir uneasily in their seats. The questions inevitably arise, Why did God let that happen? Why did this person have to die when that person still lives? Why did God cause the earthquake, or tsunami, or hurricane to wipe out so many and cause such misery? Where was God when the Twin Towers came down? Where is God when so many are dying of malaria, heart disease, cancer, HIVAIDS, hunger, violence. You know as well as I that these questions have no answers in this world of ours.
There have been volumes written on why bad things happen to good people, why there is evil in the world and yet we still struggle to sort it out in our minds. There are probably as many who blame God for suffering as there are who turn to God for refuge and I suspect that the line of demarcation between the two is difficult to determine most of the time. It is tempting to believe that we can pray our way to miracles, but then what do we do when the miracle does not happen? If there is one thing I am sure of it is that life always throws a curveball just when I think I have it all sorted out.
In our Gospel reading Jesus is tempted too. Luke tells us that Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit. I can just imagine his face shining like someone who has had just returned from a powerful retreat. It is in this state of exhilaration that Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness and is confronted by Satan who presents him with three temptations. The first challenge is to turn the stones into bread that would feed not only a hungry Jesus but also a starving nation. The second is to overcome the powers of the world and take up the mantle of ruler himself thereby offering Jesus a quick fix for the injustice of foreign rule. And the last temptation is perhaps the most tantalizing of all. Satan shows Jesus that even scripture can be used to tempt one to deny God. He challenges Jesus to test out the promise of Psalm 91 and deliberately put himself in danger – expecting God’s angels to pull him to safety at the last minute.
This gospel story has less to do with what Jesus is tempted with - than it does with how Jesus deals with the temptation. In the political turmoil of the day it is hard to say that these temptations were clearly wrong. Feeding people is good, getting rid of despotic rulers is good, and trusting in God’s protection is good. But it was the price of these things that was too high. Bread is not worth the price of one’s fidelity; freedom from oppression was not really possible because there is no authority apart from God. And lastly Jesus dismisses Satan’s literal reading of Psalm 91, because our faith is not something that God must earn by saving the fool who jumps off the roof.
Jesus’ response to Satan is one of complete allegiance to God. From this point on in our journey to Easter – everything that we know about Jesus hangs on this statement of faith. Jesus will not turn from God for any power, or success or security. He has one focus and one purpose and that is to bring to the world the love, compassion, and saving mercy of God even though that road is riddled with suffering.
The question here is who will be trusted and worshipped - not whether or not we can expect God to compensate us for our fidelity. Do we worship power or wealth or health or do we worship God? Sometimes what we need gets mixed up with what we want and sometimes it is really hard to tell truth from falsehood. We are all confronted with the temptation to try to manipulate God or to seek some sort of special blessing from God, to blame God for some bad things that happen in the world. When you think about it - maybe even giving God credit when things go well is a temptation to think that we have controlled God’s action with our prayer. How many times has David Ortiz rounded third base and pointed skyward in thanksgiving. Does God really blow those balls over the center field fence or did David work hard to do the most with the life God had given to him. Would David be less loved by God if he struck out? I don’t think so, although I might be a little ticked off.
This Lenten season we are on a journey to open our hearts to God’s probing, God’s presence, and God’s healing. The promise of Psalm 91 is that for those of us who listen for God, who seek God out, who open our hearts to God’s touch, who trust in God - that God will dwell in our hearts and will be a loving, abiding presence through good times and bad. When we pray the prayers of healing – we are not praying for some super-natural act of God. We are praying that whatever besets us in this life that God will be with us in the roses and in the muck. This Lent we have the opportunity to be led into the wilderness by the Spirit and there to open our hearts to the shelter of God’s loving care even in the midst of our tumultuous lives.
Let us pray: Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid. Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
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