February 29, 2004
God Alone Shall You
Serve
(Luke 4:1-13)
The story goes that after Jesus was baptized and heard God call him “My
Beloved,” he does something equally extraordinary. Instead of calling
attention to himself, he walks off into the desert for forty days to fast
and pray. He turns inward, goes into solitude for a time of introspection
to reflect and pray for guidance about what it means to be God’s
beloved.
Lent is a good time for us to do the same thing. These forty days are
a time for prayer, penance, and conversion. It’s a time to repent
of the sin of war and violence and turn back to the God of peace and nonviolence,
a time to reflect on what it means that we too are God’s beloved.
So let’s look at the three things that happen to him.
First, the tempter says, “If you are the Son of God, command this
stone to turn into bread.” Jesus is tempted to doubt that he is
the beloved of God. “If you really are God’s beloved, then
prove it.” That’s what happens to us too. We start thinking
we’re not lovable, we’re not God’s beloved, that God
does not love us because life is so hard. If God loved us we wouldn’t
be hungry or suffer or die or have so much injustice in the world. But
Jesus refuses to deny his identity or doubt God or use supernatural powers
to satisfy his needs and turn stones to bread. He doesn’t choose
the easy way out. Instead he embraces pain and suffering love and becomes
like us, and he insists that “One does not live by bread alone but
by the Word of God.” The word of God is clear, “You are my
beloved.” He is going to be God‘s beloved and call us to live
in that way of love, no matter what, and we have to do the same thing.
So we can reflect with Jesus in the desert how we too can believe that
we are the beloved by God, and live by that great Word. What’s also
amazing is that Jesus who fasted and was hungry in the desert, who refused
to turn stones into bread, today will turn bread into himself, and feed
us and the whole human race at the altar of God.
Second, the tempter shows Jesus all “the kingdoms of the world”
(including the USA) and promises to make him all powerful--with one condition,
that he must worship false gods, idols, not the living God. This is the
great temptation we face too, in our hearts, to be in powerful, successful,
to have our own little “kingdom,” to be somebody in everybody
else’s eyes, but it comes with a price, the loss of soul, and going
along with everyone else by worshiping idols, and we all do that in a
variety of ways. Certainly as a nation, we have chosen to be the most
powerful people in the world, doing whatever we want--bombing Iraq, overthrowing
a democratically elected president in Haiti, threatening humanity with
an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction--but this comes with a price,
the worship of the idols of death, the loss of our souls as a people.
But Jesus issues a new commandment today: “You shall worship the
Lord your God and God alone shall your serve.” He refuses to be
all powerful or successful or to have all “the kingdoms of the world,”
and instead resists the evil of “the kingdoms of the world,”
and risks being a failure and powerless because he is determined to be
faithful to God no matter what. He ends up on the cross, totally powerless,
in charge of nothing, apparently without any “kingdom,” and
he invites us to do the same thing, to pursue powerlessness, the cross
and fidelity to the God of peace. So we might reflect how we can reject
power and idolatry and turn back to God and worship the living God, no
matter what.
Finally, the tempter takes him to the top of the Temple in Jerusalem and
says, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down because God
will protect you.” So Jesus is tempted to test God, to see if God
is really going to protect him, and to hurt himself in the process, and
we too are tempted to doubt that God really cares for us and is really
going to protect us. We start thinking “If God loved me, then why
do I have to suffer, why is there so much suffering and death, why do
loved ones die, why can’t I live a comfortable life without any
pain?” We want to test God because we can’t quite believe
we are God’s beloved in the face of our problems and pains and suffering
and death, and the world of war and injustice around us.
But Jesus refused to test God or doubt God. He believed that he was the
beloved of God and he was going to be faithful to that vocation, no matter
what, and we have to do the same. Not only that, Jesus learned in the
desert that being the beloved of God, being human, means not avoiding
suffering, but accepting suffering with love, and giving our lives in
suffering love for others, so he goes from the desert to the cross and
lays down his life knowing that God loves him, that true unearned suffering
love in a spirit of truth for humanity is redemptive and saves us all.
I am reminded of the great labor movement hero, Cesar Chavez, who spoke
along these lines at the end of his famous 1968 fast. “When we are
really honest with ourselves,” he said, “we must admit that
our lives are all that really belong to us. So it is how we use our lives
that determines what kind of persons we are. It is my deepest belief that
only by giving our lives do we find life. I am convinced that the truest
act of courage, the strongest act of humanity is to sacrifice ourselves
for others in a totally nonviolent struggle for justice. To be human is
to suffer for others. God help us to be human.” Just before Cesar’s
death, I asked him if he still believed this, and he told me he did.
So Jesus says, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”
Instead we are going to trust God, have faith in God, be God’s beloved,
and walk forward through life with God from the desert to the cross, accepting
suffering as it comes, in a spirit of love, and instead of being superhuman,
we will be truly human and live well in love, suffer well with love, and
die well with love for others. Lent is a good time to reflect on these
things, a good time to get ready to go forward like Jesus with great faith,
hope, love and trust as God’s beloved--to the cross.
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