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"Modern Temptations"
Lent I, Year A, February 10, 2008
The Rev. David Stanford at St. Mark’s, Glen Ellyn
Gen. 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Ps. 32, Rom. 5:12-19; Matt. 4:1-11
Good morning, St. Mark’s! It’s a pleasure to be
with you today, since this is my first opportunity to do a Lawrence
Hall presentation here. I’m grateful for George Smith’s
kind invitation to be with you and to say something about outreach
and the world around us in the context of this Lenten sermon.
But first let me say a word about Lawrence Hall and the Episcopal
Charities - an umbrella organization of 13 independent agencies
under one diocesan banner. Being the oldest and largest of these
13 agencies, Lawrence Hall was started in 1865 by an Episcopal
Priest, Fr. Van Arsdale, taking in orphans from the Civil War.
Then it merged with the Bootblack Association and the Newspaper
Boys Association of Chicago in the last half of the 19th century.
In the early 1900’s, it was given a piece of property
on Lawrence and Francisco from which it derived its name, Lawrence
Hall School for Boys, at that time. In 1988 it merged with Judge
Mary Bartelme Homes and Services. Judge Bartelme was the first
woman elected judge in Illinois, and had established a home
for “wayward girls”. The two agencies merged and
formed a much larger agency, Lawrence Hall Youth Services, one
of the largest of the youth service agencies in the state.
Today we serve over 550 youth and their families every day
in our four service areas: residential care, foster care, therapeutic
day school, and independent living programs. Our motto and mission
has stayed the same over the years, that is, “making a
difference to last a lifetime” in the lives of at-risk
youth in northern Illinois.
In two weeks, on Feb. 23, I cordially invite you to join us
for the long-awaited grand opening of our new Residential Treatment
Facility. This effort represents the hard work and planning
of our Board and donors for over 10 years, and it is Phase I
of our 3-phase, $35 million project to rebuild our facilities
to meet the needs of the children who need a chance and opportunity
to get a new start in life. Thank you here at St. Mark’s
for your support and prayers over the years.
Now as we come to our lessons for this first Sunday of Lent,
our theme for both the Old Testament and gospel lessons is that
of temptation or testing.
Two explanations of testing come from Dt. 8 and 13. In Dt.
13:3b, the author writes: “…for the Lord your God
is testing you, to know whether you indeed love the Lord your
God with all your heart and soul.” Or in Dt. 8:16, we
get a slightly different reason, “…it is to humble
you and test you, and in the end to do you good.”
Perhaps the reason for Jesus’ first temptation in our
gospel story comes from the context out of which Jesus lifts
the quote. Continuing in the dueteronomic way of thinking, Dt.
8:2-3 reads:
“Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led
you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble
you, testing you to know what is in your heart, whether or not
you would keep his commandments. He humbled you by letting you
hunger, then by feeding you manna…in order to make you
understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every
word that comes from the mouth of God.”
In the Greek Septuagint (LXX), peirazo and ekpeirazo generally
refer to a test, like a driving instructor would give a student,
or a test that a doctor orders up for a patient. The goal is
not to flunk the testee, but rather to discover what they know
and what they can do.
But the same words can be used with a negative connotation,
“to tempt”, or “to try to make one make a
mistake,” or “to try and cause one to sin.”
This is the sense in which Satan tempts Adam and Eve in the
Garden, or tempts Jesus in the wilderness. Simply put: “God’s
purpose is to strengthen faith. Satan’s purpose is to
weaken faith.” (Brian Stoffregen’s exegetical notes
for the first Sunday of Lent, Yr.) A, P. 2)
I’ve just started reading a book entitled: Living Lent:
Meditations for these Forty Days, written by Barbara Crafton
and published by Morehouse. She seems to have captured something
of what our temptations are in this modern era. In her Ash Wednesday
meditation she writes reflecting on the words of hymn 149 (1982
Hymnal): “So daily dying to the way of self, so daily
living to your way of love…” She reflects:
“We didn’t even know what moderation was. What it
felt like. We didn’t just work. We inhaled our jobs, sucked
in and became them. Stayed late, brought work home – it
was never enough, though, no matter how much time we put in.
“…We ordered things we didn’t need from the
shiny catalogues that came to our houses. We ordered 3 times
as much as we could use, and we ordered 3 times as much as our
children could use.
“We just didn’t eat. We stuffed ourselves. We had
only gained 3 pounds since the previous year, we told ourselves.
Three pounds is not a lot. We had gained about that much in
each of the 25 years since high school. We did not do the math.
“We re-did living rooms in which the furniture was not
worn out. We threw away clothing that was merely out of style…”
“We felt that it was important to be good to ourselves,
and that it was dangerous to tell ourselves no. About anything,
ever. …I work hard, we told ourselves. I deserve a little
treat. We treated ourselves every day.
“And if it was dangerous for us to want and not have,
it was even more so for our children. They must never know what
it is to want something and not have it immediately. It will
make them bitter, we told ourselves. So we anticipated their
needs and their desire. We got them both the doll and the bike.
If their grades were good, we got them their own telephone.
The net result for our lives is a sense of un-ease and dis-ease.
She writes:
“There were times, coming into the house from work or
waking early when all was quiet, when we felt uneasy about the
sense of entitlement that characterized our days. When we wondered
if the mad slalom between fevered overwork and excess of appetite
were not two sides of the same coin. Probably yes, we decided
at those times. Suddenly we say it all clearly: I am driven
by my creatures – my schedule, my work, my possessions,
my hungers. I do not drive them; they drive me. Probably yes.
Certainly yes. This is how it is.
“We looked for others whose lives were similarly overstuffed;
we found them. ‘This is just the way it is,’ we
said to one another on the train, in the restaurant. This is
modern life.”
But the moment of recognition and truth finally does hit us,
she writes:
“When did the collision between our appetites and the
needs of our souls happen? Was there a heart attack? Did we
get laid off from work, one of those thousands [labeled] as
extraneous? Did a beloved child become a bored stranger, a marriage
fall silent and cold? Or by some exquisite working of God’s
grace, did we find the courage to look truth straight in the
eye and, for once, not blink? How did we come to know that we
were dying a slow and unacknowledged death? And that the only
way back to life was to set all our packages down, and begin
again, carrying with us only what we needed?
“We travail. We are heavy laden. Refresh us, O homeless,
jobless, possession-less Savior. You came naked, and naked you
go. And so it is for us. So it is for all of us.”
And so Crafton ends this first meditation with these haunting
images for me. I hear the hiss of the serpent as all those important
meetings and obligations crowd into my life.
But in my saner moments, I also hear the words of our Savior
inviting me to new life and new priorities. “Then Jesus
told his disciples, ‘If any want to become my followers,
let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow
me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and
those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
My friends, God provides seasons like these to examine our
hearts, our lives and our priorities. It is an opportunity to
test our lives; to see what we are made of. And then to ask
the deeper questions: Who am I? Where am I going? And where
does God want me to be.
Bp. Frank Vest of Southern Virginia was fond of quoting Frederick
Beuchner who said: “Our vocation emerges when the world’s
greatest need intersects with our greatest gifts.”
Lent is a time to explore, to listen – both as individuals
and corporately. What are our gifts and what is God calling
us to do to meet the needs of our hungry and needy world. May
your journey this lent uncover God’s call to you.
And may God richly bless us all we lighten our loads, attune
our listening, and see if we can discern that still, quiet voice
of our Savior through the cries of our world.
In the name of God: Creator, Redeemer and Giver of new life.
Amen.
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