9:30am Westfield
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 : Romans 5:12-21 : Matthew 4:1-11
A man was granted three wishes. Because his wife was nagging him mercilessly he
said in a moment of frustration, “I wish my wife was gone!” Poof! She was gone.
After a week or so the man realised he missed his wife and so he said, “I wish I
had my wife back again.” Poof! She was back. He now realised that he had only
one wish left and that he had better use it wisely.
So he consulted
a friend, who told him to wish for money. “You can buy almost anything if you
have the money,” said the friend. But another friend said, “What good is money
if you haven’t got your health? I’d wish for good health if I were
you.”
Confused, the man went to see the Enlightened One, who said,
“Ask to be contented no matter what you have …”
This story could illustrate several themes but the pertinent one for today is security and insecurity. We live in a society that constantly bombards us with the hissed whisper that we can never be secure enough. We need to plan for the future. We need more “super” – and we get enough advice on television alone to thoroughly confuse us.
We’re told we can’t be content or secure unless we have the biggest or the bestest or the rightest. If our cars don’t rate enough stars we risk serious injury or death, one advert implies. Or if we don’t ask for and insist on ESC then we might skid into a bus because our car won’t be able to re-adjust immediately.
All over the place we covet security. All over the place the disembodied voices tell us we don’t have enough of this, that or the other. We need more. And we are definitely NOT content with what we have. We know we are not content because the voice on the TV or radio told us. Or we read it in the newspaper or any number of magazines.
What a contrast, then, to hear Jesus calmly knocking back the first-Century ad-guy, popularly known as The Devil, among other names. I have long-imagined that Jesus, after forty days of fasting, had something of a struggle, especially when tempted to do magic tricks with the rocks and hoe into some freshly-baked bread. No doubt modern cinema has helped with that!
But reading this now we see a Jesus who is assured and in control of his desires and needs. His first – and apparently only – thought is about the Living God. Clearly those forty days were not wasted!
So even after extreme physical deprivation Jesus shows that relationship with God remains possible. Mark’s gospel is rather light on details but Luke reflects Matthew in showing an assured Jesus dealing with the Devil’s temptations with apparent ease.
What underlies Jesus’ assurance is his security in the Living God. Though he might be hungry he won’t damage the natural order simply to satisfy a human need, however understandable it would be if he did. Far more significantly, Jesus does not bite – he does not even nibble – when the Devil insinuates that he is not the Son of God. Jesus knows exactly who he is and does not have to prove anything to anyone. I reckon most of us would just about kill or do some pretty serious damage to share that equanimity and personal security – I know I might!
So the Devil tries it on again, upping the ante by inviting Jesus to play loose and fast with his life and God’s forbearance. Maybe Jesus just wasn’t into bungee-jumping without a bungee but it’s far more likely that, as before, he simply didn’t need to prove to anyone, let alone the Devil – whatever that might be – who or what he was.
At this point yon Devil sounds uncomfortably like our ego playing one of the thousands of miles of negative tape we all have going through our heads. You’re not good enough. You need to prove yourself. Who do you think you are? Show us, then! Go on – do something to prove it!
But Jesus doesn’t take the bait. Nor does he snap at the offer to rule the world. Nowadays we tend to scoff at such notions and we satirise the notion as insane, emanating from the twisted minds of characters like Dr Evil. But in Jesus’ time it was a real aspiration. They weren’t that far in history from Alexander the Great, the legend who “wept because there were no more worlds to conquer”. It was a great age of empires and empire-building – and here was Jesus declining the opportunity to rule the world.
We don’t know for certain what Jesus knew or believed about God but we can say that he seems to have drawn his security from his relationship with the Living God because that was not only far more important but far more stabilising. When we imagine the good Jesus could have done as ruler of the world, the global justice he could have introduced, feeding the hungry, curing the sick of every land – when we imagine that and more, it’s quite a thing he refuses.
But that’s always the way it is with insecurity. In the words of John Kabat-Zinn, founder of the University of Massachusetts Mind-Based Stress-Reduction clinic, “The mind likes to hang out in the future.”[1] If our minds are not constantly making plans to shore up our fundamental dis-ease and secure the mythical future, then they’re wading woefully through the past, filled with regret and guilt and anger and bitterness over opportunities squandered, tasks unaccomplished, injustices perpetrated against us …
Jesus advises us: Give us today our daily bread. Live in the present moment. Here and now is the only place we can live, here and now is the only place we can find everything we need to get us through to the next moment. And as Laurence Freeman, a Benedictine priest and Director of the World Community for Christian Meditation, puts it: “God is here and now. I am here and now …” Can any of us have a better chance of connecting with the Living God than in each present moment of our lives?
The Genesis story offers one explanation for how the “lie” of the future came into being, via the duplicity of a talking snake – not identified as the Devil, by the way – and the insecurity-fuelled gullibility of humankind. And suddenly the two child-like adults, Adam and Eve, become street-wise earth-people, literally disconnected from the Creator.
But Paul reminds us that Jesus restored the connection. All that talk about justification and righteousness is relationship talk. Though we use two different words in English – justify and righteous – they have the same root in Greek and convey a totally related meaning.
That meanings is relationship – restored relationship. What righteousness and justification mean is being back on speaking terms with God. After centuries of living in fear of God, regretting the stupidity of listening to talking snakes, or planning for a future that never seems to arrive, this Jesus comes along and shows that our security is here and now, and that God-with-us, here and now, STILL yearns to hold us, cuddle us and share the security that only the Living God can provide.
So we think that what we’ve done in the past is too awful even for God to deal with? Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. Jesus is God’s gracious – free-given, no-strings-attached – love and welcome every day of our lives. As far as we who follow Jesus are concerned, Jesus is the only security we can know or need. And it’s a daily gift.
But we have to be in a place, mentally and spiritually, where we can receive this gift. This means focusing on God, and focusing on God means spending time in the kind of prayer that does not make demands of God – demands that too often emerge from our insecurities rather than an authentic desire to commune with God.
We need to spend these crucial moments in silence, in God’s presence, asking for nothing, while past and future fly through our minds, letting go the “stuff” and returning faithfully, again and again and again, to God. Whether we call it “meditation” or “contemplation” or “silent prayer” or some other name doesn’t matter. What does matter is spending the time with God, entering the Mystery that is God, into which God invites us.
Out of this silence we find our moment of security. And it is only a moment. But it is a God-given moment. And God’s moment will always seem to last a lifetime.
May our prayer this Lent be deepened immeasurably as we draw closer to God through focused prayer that seeks to listen rather than tell or demand, that is content with the security of God’s presence allowing us simply to be.
[1] Jon Kabat-Zinn, Mindfulness meditation. CD.
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