The Devil Inside
By Rev. Daniel Smith
February 21, 2010
First Sunday in Lent
Lessons: Luke 4: 1-13
More often than not, our lectionary pairs this First Sunday of Lent with one of the gospels stories of Jesus being led into the wilderness for forty days. Now, you might think it’s tempting to take a text like this and offer a little pastoral commentary about Tiger Woods, say, or some other recently scandal-clad and sad contemporary figure who has succumbed to temptation and who failed tests of fidelity, or sobriety, or just basic integrity. And, you might be right. You might also think that since this is the first Sunday of Lent that it would be tempting to use this text and Jesus’ role in it as a holy exemplar of our own Lenten discipline. Again, you might be right. You might further think that it would be tempting for me to spend the next few minutes talking about temptation in general, the temptation to sin and all those ways you and I do and don’t abide by the “do’s and don’ts” of daily life. The fact is that though any of those sermons might be right for another day, or another congregation, they all feel a little too preachy for this preacher. Instead, I’d like for us to look beyond what is tempting both within and about this passage, beyond first and even lasting impressions we have about this text, and for that matter this season. Neither this text, nor this season, are so much about naming particular behaviors, or about identifying things we should or should not be doing. Instead both text and season point, more deeply, to a countercultural way of being that is far removed from self-help, or resolutions, or relentless piety.
Granted, many of us have been conditioned to think of Jesus’ time in the wilderness as a template for our own temptations, and as a model of resistance. Yes, but, there are at least two things that create a serious disconnect here and make this story hard to relate to. The first disconnect is that there is an assumption in this story that Jesus is already a man of unearthly power and exceeding greatness. I mean, can you relate to these temptations? Has anyone ever dared you to turn stones into bread? These are not exactly the kind of temptations that are keeping me up at night. I’m just saying.
The other thing that strikes me as odd is the specific content of these three temptations. In and of themselves, they could all lead to great good. If Jesus responded to the first request, there could be bread for all and hunger for none! If he had done so with the second, Jesus could have been the true King of Kings, as we love to sing. War would be no more! And, lastly, we could have savior who could, among other things, start by saving himself! All of these sound like good and maybe even virtuous, right? I ask you….when was the last time you thought of temptation in terms of doing good!
I start by trying to have a little fun with this passage if only because it’s otherwise so rich in meaning, so drenched in soul-searching interpretation and tradition, that it can sometimes overwhelm us. And, as one commentator [William Barclay] has noted, this may be the most sacred of stories, for unlike other stories that were supposedly witnessed by Jesus’ early followers, this one can only have come from Jesus’ own lips. Can we all just a take a moment with this remarkable observation? …From his own lips. At some point, he must have shared this most intimate experience of his soul with his disciples. Unless the devil came to them sometime and whispered in their ear what had happened. Not exactly a credible witness. Though maybe the story is not about Jesus and some horn-headed apparition. Maybe the story began as a dramatic retelling of an internal dialogue in Jesus’ own soul. As the 80s rock band, INXS, used to sing, maybe it’s “The devil inside. The devil inside. Every single one of us has the devil inside”!
Well…bearing all this in mind, I’d like for us, at least for today, to resist thinking about this story as a play in three parts, with a neat beginning, middle, and end, with a two-person cast of characters. After all, in keeping with the traditions of Moses and Elijah’s own wilderness journeys, this was supposed to have happened over a period of 40 days, and in fact there is a way in which this dialogue plays out over Jesus lifetime. The so-called devil we are told is set to return at an “opportune time.” Don’t you love that phrase?
Taken literally, the confrontation in this passage is between Jesus and the devil, but what if, more deeply, it’s a face to face encounter between Jesus and his own humanity, between Jesus and himself. After all, he is many ways a “novice prophet,” still wet behind the ears from the waters of his baptism, this fits right in there with other hero stories of his time and ours. This hero models for us, even in his so-called private moments, not merely a way of humility and self-restraint but a way of confrontation, of face-to-face encounter, even with himself!
Seen in this light, the more common Lenten themes of journey, desert, wilderness, prayer, self-restraint, and indeed, temptation, may give way to another theme: confrontation! By this, I don’t just mean conflict or hostile opposition, but a secondary definition of this word, a softer sense that is drawn from its medieval Latin roots – con, meaning with or together – and front or frontem, meaning forehead or face. To confront is, literally, to set one’s face to someone or something. A confrontation is a face to face encounter, a facing up or facing off.
Those of us who have read Martin Smith’s Season of the Spirit last Lent will be familiar with the prayer from Dorothy Sayers’ novel Gaudy Night, “Lord,. Teach us to take our hearts and look them in face, however difficult it may be.” This what the journey of Lent is—a journey of encounter, self-awareness, and self confrontation, all held within the embrace of God’s ever-liberating grace. This kind of honest to God, face to face, dealing with ourselves and sharing it with one another is part of what it means to walk the way with Jesus, and to rely on God’s grace. It’s the way towards healing, towards wholeness, towards peace for ourselves and so for our world.
Though it’s not at first apparent that Jesus was ever in any real danger of succumbing to the devil’s temptations, if indeed the devil was inside of him, then surely the encounter was one in which Jesus was looking his own human heart in the face. What’s more, imagine again that Jesus actually told someone about what he saw there, about what really happened during those 40 days in the wilderness. He must have looked someone in the else in the face to share this story of his own struggle! Now’s that what I call a Lenten discipline – finding the fidelity (as in faithfulness), the integrity (as in the wholeness) and the sobriety (as in a solemn facing of the truth) to confront oneself and to share that struggle with someone else on the journey. Wouldn’t that be an intense Lenten practice? All held in a beautiful con-frontation with God, who, as the good book tells, lifts her countenance, her face, upon us. What would that look like? What would it feel like to share the facing of our own demons and downfalls, in vulnerability, with another, in faith.
I have some ideas for myself. I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours! Sounds rather tempting doesn’t it. We might also want to revisit this notion of our being tempted by that which is good. Perfectionists, Neat Freaks, Workaholics, even Peaceniks, unite! Let us look our hearts in the face and learn again that our striving and battles may be as much against the evil and dysfunction within us as it is against the evils out there in the world! Let’s talk about our struggles and sort out the why’s and the what’s together!
This Lent, at First Church, we will be exploring the theme of “Walking the Way.” Walking the Way is a handy and alliterative metaphor for our spiritual journeys, whoever and wherever we are on them, but it’s also a term that the early church employed to describe a distinctly Christian way of life. In fact, before the term “Christian” became commonplace, followers of Jesus were called “the People of the Way.” It’s a way of unrelenting compassion, to be sure, a way of love for neighbor, for self, and for God. But it’s also a way of confrontation. Much more than a matter of individual piety or self -help, this confrontation with oneself, held up in God’s love, is the first step on the journey. Jesus had to go through this before he began his public ministry. Here, with himself, he set out the way of genuine, face to face encounter, which we are called to share with one another, and certainly with God.
As we will learn together during our upcoming adult formation hours on Sundays during Lent, this notion of “the Way” has a particular history, in the Hebrew bible, in the Gospels, in the early church of the first five centuries, right up through our present moment. A guiding question for all of us this Lent might be “How do you see yourself walking the way of Jesus?” To put this another way, at least for this first Sunday of Lent, how are you engaging in a practice of mindful and caring confrontation of yourself and God and how are you sharing that with others? What are you setting your face to for these 40 days?
Just a few chapters ahead, we learn that Jesus eventually “sets his face to Jerusalem” – and with it to the great Temple, the seat of the religious and political powers of his time. Talk about a brewing confrontation. But before he can do this, he must endure a face-off with his own demons in desert wilderness. We are told the devil will return at an opportune time. Perhaps it’s in the Garden Of Gethsemane when Jesus has another human moment, asking God to take the cup away from him. Talk about a face to face encounter, a moment for the truth of his own human limits to be set in confrontation with the truth of God’s high and holy purpose for his life. In the end, perhaps we can relate to these moments. They may be less dramatic for us, but their depth and claim on our lives is measured by our willingness to face those things, which may be very different for each one of us in this room, that keep us off The Way, unable to see God’s Truth, unable to live the life to which God calls us. As James Baldwin said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed but nothing can be changed until it’s faced.”
So I ask again, What are you setting your face to for these 40 days? To what faithful confrontation are you being called? And are you ready to share it with someone, here in this community? Are you ready to share it with God? I don’t know about you, but right about now seems like “an opportune time” to me. Amen.