February 25, 2007--First Sunday of Lent

Lectionary Texts:
Deuteronomy 26:1-11;
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16;
Romans 10:8b-13;
Luke 4:1-13

Sermon Text: Luke 4:1-13

What We Really Need

There is often quite a gap between what we really want and what we really need. Our desires and urges push us toward things that meet our desires the most quickly. We are in a world that says, “He (or she) who dies with the most toys wins.” We want the immediate, the shortest route on Mapquest, convection oven quality in the microwave. The result is a chaotic excuse for existence that we call living, but the Bible calls walking death.

Jesus, fresh from His baptism, is not thrust into the spotlight for all the world to see. He does not immediately go “on tour” now that He has become a “hit,” what with the voice of God and the words of the increasingly popular John the Baptist giving Him public affirmation. Instead, Jesus goes into the wilderness! He is led by the Spirit into the wilderness, in fact (Mark’s account uses the Greek word ekballo, which implies an urgent “casting” of Jesus into the wilderness!).

A good public relations person would say that Jesus now needs exposure, He needs to capitalize on the momentum, He needs take advantage of this moment of fame and recognition in order to provide himself with physical and financial comforts that will “maximize” his potential. Instead, Jesus chooses wilderness.

It reminds me of the words of a famous theologian and seminary founder, Lewis Sperry Chafer. When asked what he would do if he had only one year to live, said he would spend nine months preparing to live the final three to the full. What Jesus, who was human as well as God, really needed was preparation, not immediate, expedient momentum.

As we begin the season of Lent, we are focusing upon the “Jesus Walk” (the title of the series that will lead us to Easter). And the first lesson of the Jesus walk begins not in a crowded arena, but in a lonely wilderness. Lent is patterned after this forty day experience, and as we begin, this text brings to bear to questions: one for Jesus, which becomes a question that applies to us.

The temptations Jesus experiences at the end of the wilderness experience are summed up by Phillip Yancey in his book, The Jesus I Never Knew: “What kind of Messiah are you going to be?” To answer that, Jesus demonstrated the need to pull away from the many voices that have their own version of what the Messiah should be and listen intently to the voice that ultimately matters most. The three temptations Jesus experiences in the wilderness are temptations that ask: “What kind of Messiah are you?” and “What kind of Kingdom do you preside over?”

These questions are crucial in light of the human condition. We are built with what Abraham Maslow referred to as a hierarchy of needs. We need food, clothing, shelter, emotional comfort and so on. Much of our efforts are spent trying to get these. So, the devil exhorts this newly anointed Messiah: “Demonstrate your ability to get food quickly, to accumulate power and prestige and to protect yourself--to keep yourself safe and comfortable from the dangers of the world.” The devil demonstrates his knowledge of the hierarchy of human need well before Maslow spelled it out for us. Jesus is tempted to simply take care of himself. Isn’t that the way to be a Messiah to all these folks who share these same human needs and desires? Not according to Jesus! Jesus, fully human, does not deny that the need for food, for affirmation and for safety are human needs. Instead, Jesus demonstrates that He will be the kind of Messiah that points us to our ultimate and underlying need: the need to encounter God in a real relationship. Therefore, Jesus’ response to the devil from Scripture should not be seen as simply using the “Scripture gun” to shoot the devil down, like holding up a cross to a vampire. Rather, we have Jesus reminding the devil (and us) of what we really need:

We really need to hear and interact with the words of God (4:4)

We really need to find our identity through our worship and service of God (4:8)

We really need to trust God instead of having to always go around trying to prove God (4:12)

Jesus answers firmly that the kind of Messiah He is to be; One who calls us to see the gap between what we think we need and what we really need. He is kingdom is one in which all who follow Him on this “Jesus Walk” seek out the things of God and what brings honor to God before any other desire or need.

This brings us to the way Jesus’s question applies to the question we are being asked through this text, especially during this season of Lent:

What kind of Christians are we going to be?

Like Jesus we have before us temptations toward expediency and personal comfort. These are not all bad in and of themselves--until they cause us to take shortcuts in our relationship with the Living God who loves us. Jesus’s longing for extended time with the Father even in good times--the time of affirmation after His baptism--calls us to extended and focused times with God to seek out God’s will above our own personal comfort. This is what we are called to be as followers of Jesus. This is why an intentional re-focusing occurs in the days leading up to Easter by the Church in this season of Lent. We need it. Otherwise, we can end up like Larry the Cucumber in the Veggie Tales series, who tells his friend Bob the Tomato about a new gadget (a car) he has received, and how he only needed a few more accessories in order to really make him happy. Bob responds, “Are you sure that these things will make you happy?” “I don’t know,” replies Larry. Bob follows up, “How much stuff will it take to make you happy?” Larry replies: “I don’t know . . . . How much stuff is there?”

No amount of stuff – whether that stuff be basic needs, power, prestige, personal comfort--will ultimately give us the fulfillment we crave. Jesus modeled that as one who had all power, but chose to give it up (to “empty himself” in the words of Paul) in order to point the way to ultimate fulfillment in this life and beyond.

Dr. Wes Tracy once pointed out in a sermon that we would like for the model of the Christian life to go something like this: “Call of God, new beginning, and some wilderness along the way.” However, Tracy reminds us that the biblical pattern in both the Old and New Testaments is more like this: “Call of God, wilderness, and then new beginning!” That is on purpose, since it is during that time of wilderness that God allows us to be confronted with the question, “What kind of Christian are you really going to be?” And during that wilderness, we are reminded that our ultimate need is not self-indulgence or expedient fulfillment, but a consistent interaction and relationship with God. That comes in times of focus, of preparation, and of obedience as we draw upon the strength that God gives us in His Word, and as we allow messengers (a translation of the words “angels,” or angelos in the Greek) to help us along the way. In the words of Duke chapel dean, Dr. Sam Wells, “We’ve got forty days. Let’s get to it.”