Temptation

Lent 1A, 3/9/14
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
Matthew 4:1-11

Oh Lord, open my lips, that my mouth might proclaim your praise. Amen.

I have a confession to make this morning.

I can’t write sermons in my office.

In almost eight years of preaching – in three years of ordained ministry – I don’t think I’ve written a single sermon in my office at the church.

There are just so many other things to do in the office!

It takes a long time to write a sermon – easily 10 hours, on average – so if I sit in the office for 2 ½ hours between meetings and try to put something down on paper, it hardly seems that progress has been made.

And in any case, I’m likely to get interrupted by phone calls or people dropping in… or by an email that just has to be responded to immediately… or by that pile of mail on my desk that has been sitting there for days, begging for attention… or by that one project that I said I’d do for the clergy in the Ministerium… you get the picture, right?

It’s hard for me to focus in my office.

Actually, the same thing is true at home. I’ll set up shop at home, away from the distractions in my office, and I’ll write two or three sentences… and then the dryer buzzes to tell me the laundry is done. Or I realize that if I want to have dinner at a reasonable time, I should really start cooking the rice now. Or I remember that I signed up to bring treats to the next clergy meeting and so I should probably bake some brownies instead of working on my sermon.

Again, you get the picture? There are so many distractions at home.

There are so many temptations.

I never thought I would describe laundry and going through stacks of junk mail as temptation, but when it comes to working on something like a sermon that takes so long to get ready… really, any distraction that offers measurable results is a temptation to stray from the true purpose of the work day.

This is why I love knitting. I make a lot of dishcloths. They’re small – I can finish them quick – they offer fast, measurable results.

I don’t get that too often in my day job.

The same thing goes for baking.

Or going through old piles of mail in the office sometimes.

It’s nice sometimes to feel a sense of accomplishment. Anything that can do that is a distraction from the everyday work that I should be doing.

And yet, whatever distracts from my purpose – from the calling I have from God – whatever causes me to shirk my responsibilities, that is something I need to avoid.

That’s why I write my sermons in coffee shops and restaurants. There’s a lot of noise in those places, but none of it relates to me. I can just hunker down with my computer or my books and get to work, ignoring anything else that’s going on around me. Working from outside of the office is how I can be most productive, and it’s how I can best avoid temptation.

I think we all experience some form of temptation in our daily lives. I’m sure you can think of things that distract you from the important work you’re supposed to be doing each day. For me, the temptation is to put off sermon writing or other important tasks that are a part of my call to be your pastor, and to do other things with visible results instead. For you… you know, one of my colleagues suggested that I have you all turn to one another and tell each other what you’re tempted by. But I’m not going to do that to you. You all know what your own temptations are.

Does that mean that going through mail and doing laundry and taking a break for some knitting are sinful things?

No, of course not.

In and of itself, almost any activity can be a good and useful thing.

But God has a calling for us, and when an activity draws us away from that calling, it’s a temptation, and temptation can easily draw us into sin.

It’s not just pastors who are called by God into a profession – God calls people to be nurses and grandparents and farmers and teachers, and to fill all kinds of roles in society. Temptation tries to draw us away from that primary calling.

When I spend a half hour visiting with someone who drops by the church office, or work on a project for the Ministerium, those are good things to do.

When I spend time on my hobbies like baking or knitting, things that give me those measurable results, those are good things also.

But if I spend so much time with my knitting that I am no longer able to perform the tasks of daily life, and if I focus so much on talking with the person who just drops in that I end up without time for the person who’s stuck in the hospital – when an activity leads me to neglect the care of my congregation or my family, well then, I have given in to temptation.

At that point, I’m no better than Eve and Adam when presented with the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Today’s first reading gives us a great example of what not to do.

Don’t give in to temptation.

Don’t do those things that separate you from God and from your loved ones.

But we’ve all heard that before, right?

We know that if a talking snake comes up to us and offers us something to eat, we should say no every time!

It’s easy to think that we have nothing new to learn from the temptation story in the book of Genesis – we’ve heard it all before.

And then today’s Gospel reading gives us an example that is nearly as irrelevant to us. We’ve heard the temptation of Jesus before; we know this story. And it can be hard to relate to it.

We know not to make the same mistakes that Adam and Eve did… but we are also fully aware that we don’t have Jesus’ resolve, or faith, or knowledge of Scripture in order to combat temptations when they come our way.

Sure, Jesus offers a great example of how to resist falling into sin, in contrast with Eve and Adam – but we are not Jesus. We are nowhere near as good as he is, so how can we even try to emulate him here?

What more is there to say about these two stories of temptation?

Don’t be like Adam and Eve.

Do try to be like Jesus… but then, if that’s our goal, we’ll fail every time.

In Matthew, Jesus passed each tempting test with flying colors – he’s the guy who throws off the curve in “resisting temptation” class, and all the other kids end up a little jealous of him because their accomplishments look pretty bleak compared to his.

We’re those other kids in the class, you know.

In Genesis, Eve and Adam give in to the temptation of the serpent and eat the forbidden fruit. What they do seems so blatantly wrong in hindsight that we have a hard time even appreciating the inner struggle that must have gone on with them before making a decision.

In each of these stories, the person being tempted is hard to relate to.

And yet we are well acquainted with temptation in many forms.

Temptation comes to us in food and drink… in opportunities for power and in empty promises from people we know… and sometimes in the things we really want to do.

It is inevitable that temptation will come to us. We’re going to be offered appealing choices, and we have to thoughtfully discern whether they fit with God’s calling for our lives or not.

And that’s really the point of the temptation stories today.

Listen to God’s calling for us, stay focused on that, and by doing so, we can avoid giving in to the temptations that come our way.

God does show up in both of these Bible stories. God may not be an active character in the story. But God’s promises are mentioned in both Genesis and Matthew.

God has given us instructions for living. And if we can only remember those instructions – and if we can only believe them – we can successfully avoid giving in to temptation.

Adam and Eve remembered the promise of God, but they didn’t seem to take it seriously. That was their mistake.

Jesus remembered the promises of God, and he did take them seriously. That was what saved him.

The good news – the divine promise – in the temptation stories today is that God is there to save us from temptation.

This does not mean that we will never be presented with options that draw us away from God’s calling… but it does mean that when temptation happens, we can rely on God’s instruction and promises to draw us back.

We actually have it a little easier than any of today’s Bible characters.

We have more ways of knowing what God wants us to do. We have more than just a single conversation with God, like the one that Adam and Eve relied upon. We have more than the Old Testament, which is what Jesus relied on.

We have the full Bible, Old and New Testaments. We have the example of the life of Jesus. We have two thousand years of church history and guidance from God. And we have our own prayer life, our own conversations with God, that can give us encouragement and direction in life.

God is there to save us from temptation. In Scripture, in the example of Jesus, and in the voice of our creator if we would only remember it – God is there to help keep us from falling into sin.

And here’s the other bit of good news.

We will fall into sin sometimes.

OK, that’s not the good news.

We will fall into sin, but when we do, Jesus is there to rescue us. Because of his death and resurrection, the penalty for our sins has been taken away.

Today’s Gospel reading takes place way at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Over the coming pages, the story of our redemption is told. The rest of Jesus’ ministry, which we’ll hear in summary over the course of these next six weeks of Lent, is what saves us from our sin.

Jesus’ life, death and resurrection don’t keep us from temptation.

It’s still up to us to remember the voice of God when distractions come our way.

But Jesus’ ministry will save us in those times when we forget to listen for God’s voice and we are drawn in by whatever it is that distracts us from our calling.

God our creator guides us, tries to steer us clear from temptations. And when that fails – when we fail – Jesus is there to rescue us.

Now that truly is good news.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.