By The Rev. Bernard W. Poppe, RectorOne of the earliest Gospel stories in the Lenten season is the temptation of Jesus in the desert by the Devil. In that story, the Devil tempts Jesus to make bread out of stone, he takes Jesus up to the top of a mountain and tempts him to jump off so the angels will catch him to prove how much God will take care of him and protect him, and then he takes him to the top of the temple offers him power over all the cities below if Jesus will worship him.
Each of these tests Jesus passes because he knows who he is and is confidant in the authority he possesses. He's confidant of his relationship with God and knows that his service to God is unique. He answers that we don't live by bread alone, but that are nourished by God's love. He knows that God's love for him is unconditional and doesn't need to be tested. He knows that his authority is from God and that power is a false god for those who don't know how to claim the authority within.
Three years later Jesus enters Jerusalem in the humble way described centuries earlier by the prophet Zechariah, namely on a donkey. It's a sign of humility and it was a message to those who knew what to look for. Yet as he was entering the city gates, people gathered about him with their own expectations and their own desires for him. Much like his experience in the desert they were tempting him to claim power. They offered him, very much like the devil, a crown. But also like the devil, that crown came with a price tag. The devil's price was for Jesus to compromise himself and his integrity -- his very humanity and divinity by worshiping the devil. Evil was the price tag for power.
Similarly, there was a price tag for the crown offered by the people waving the palm branches. They wanted him to lead them against the Romans. They had an agenda all set for him to walk into. The message they were sending was very clear and the price tag was do their will. And in exchange they would follow him. But deeper than the price tag they charged was another price that reached into his very soul. Again, the temptation to put aside his own mission of love and justice for power. The temptation to compromise the very ideals and values that he preached his whole ministry. Sadly, this was the moment his own disciples were waiting for. This was their dream too. To take the city by storm, set themselves up in power and usher in a golden age. Or so they thought.
Jesus fulfilled the prophecy of Zechariah, not out of false humility, but sincere humility. He rejected their notions of power and was again secure in his own authority to witness God's love and forgiveness of the deepest of sins, even the ones they were committing by looking at him and seeing a king they made in their own image rather than the God who made them in his.
This act of humility was bearing their sins. Knowing that the deepest part of those people, even his own disciples misunderstood him. They decided to project their wishes on him and expected him to comply, the way they would carve an image out of stone and pray to it, putting on it all their wishes. Their sin was to make him like one of their gods, not knowing that the One true God was in their very midst and they still didn't see or understand. The One who once healed the blind was confronted with the blindness of all of them.
The events of Holy Week re-enact the Passion story. Our Confirmation Class just read the familiar passages and our services play them out liturgically in scripture, song, symbol and re-enactment. The drama is as deep and ancient as any between God and humanity. The struggle between the God who made us and the desire humans have as lesser gods.
From the Garden of Eden to this very day, we see God in the actions of humility and want to take him hostage to serve our needs for power even at the cost of justice and peace. Humanity is insatiable in the need for power and it's always to fill an emptiness, to reach a height, to quench a thirst that is ultimately impossible. Ironically we seek to be gods because we don't know how to be in relationship with God.
God became human to show us how. To demonstrate through love, justice and forgiveness how to build that relationship with the divine. The drama of Holy Week is the reminder of how humanity failed. But it's also the story of God's love even through the failure. God's love through the misunderstandings, the betrayal, even the murder. God's love which knows no bounds.
Our nation and our church still fight these same battles over power rather than authority. Sacrificing dignity and integrity at the expense of the poor and powerless. The nails we've passed out these last few years after communion serve as reminders of our human failings when we place our faith in those to whom we offer power, rather than faith in God whose authority is love.
Perhaps one of God's temptations from the Devil is to leave us in the midst of our own failings. Let us destroy ourselves by our own greed and fear of each other, and start over. Yet it seems God did not yield to this temptation either. The love of God demonstrated so often in his life and ministry culminates in the knowledge that not even death can separate us from God's love. The overwhelming power of God's love reaches out to us as strong as ever.
The witness of the Biblical characters show time and again that God's love is genuine and constant no matter what. I don't care who we are or what we think we may have done to lose God's love. We're no worse than some of those characters in the Bible, and if you haven't read about them, it's high time you do. They're in there for a reason. It's so that we cannot say that God's promise is false. God loves us so much that he came to Earth and bore our sins, and loves us through our failings and that's the Good News of the Gospel.
Wars, politics, bigotry, fear and cruelty are human inventions. God's love calls us out of those temptations to claim our full humanity and the divinity in each of us. We've abdicated them long enough. When we gather on the road that Jesus travels, may we not be blinded by the false gods we create out of our own fears and needs, but open our eyes fully to see the God who calls us, and loves us. Amen.
© 2007 St. George's Episcopal Church, Maplewood, NJ
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