Church got snowed out in Connecticut last Sunday—or at least our in-person worship did. I ended up recording my sermon from home and sharing it on YouTube, as many congregations learned how to do during the pandemic. Rather than following the lectionary, I am working my way through Matthew’s gospel, so this week’s sermon looks at Jesus’ temptations, which were what followed his baptism.
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One of the greatest false myths of American life is the idea of the self-made person. No such person exists. Every last one of us was shaped by others, whether they were our parents and family, friends, teachers, pastors, or even interactions with people we don’t know well. We learn who we are, we don’t invent ourselves. And part of the way we learn is we make choices based on the information we have and the feedback we get from others. We have to choose who and what to trust.
I think of myself as a cook because my mother told me I was good at cooking from the time I was an inquisitive little boy asking what she was doing. She had the wherewithal to hear my question as an opening to shape my identity. When I did something, she complimented it, or the next time we were in the kitchen she would say, “I showed you how to do this the other day. Why don’t you do this while I work on something else.” I learned to trust her confidence in me and, thus, came to see myself as a cook.
I do not think of myself as a mathematician because of my Algebra II teacher. We had just moved to Houston from Africa in the middle of my junior year in high school. I had gone from a school with 400 students from K-12 to a school with 400 students in my grade alone. I didn’t know anyone. I was struggling to find myself. Up until then, I had made good grades in math, but Algebra was hard. One day in class I asked a question and my teacher’s response was, “I don’t have time for stupid questions.” I learned to trust her lack of confidence in me and never took another math class.
Jesus was fresh from hearing “You are my beloved child in whom I delight” when the Spirit led him deeper into the wilderness to be tested or tempted, depending on the translation. The root of the word means “to attempt to influence.” Matthew sums up almost six weeks in a sentence: Jesus didn’t eat for forty days and he was starving. The slanderer, or the tempter, or the devil (again, it depends on the translation) showed up when Jesus was at his most vulnerable to see whether he was going to trust that he was God’s beloved son or not.
There’s an old saying that has floated around churches for many years: “Remember who you are and whose you are.” It should really be inverted. We know who we are because of whose we are. It starts with “You are my beloved child.” And that’s kind of what temptations boil down to: will we forget whose we are and, thus, forget who we are? Because once we don’t remember whose we are and who we are, we’ll do all kinds of things to dispel our insecurity bred by less affirming voices.
Which leads me to an important side note: Most all of us have some sort of image that pops into our heads when we hear the word devil, and it’s probably fair to say most all of those images aren’t what the biblical writers had in mind. Part of the reason I say that is because the biblical writers are not united in how they name or describe the devil. When and however the tempter shows up, they work to undermine our trust in our identity as beloved children of God who are called to be people of love and justice. The tempter then fosters the insecurity that breaks our connection with God and makes us think we have to define ourselves by something other than being God’s beloved.
Some commentators I read drew a connection between Jesus’ test in the desert and Adam and Eve’s conversation with the serpent in the Garden of Eden, pointing to the way the tempter tries to sow mistrust in both cases. Listen to these words from theologian David Lose:
When the serpent comes, he doesn’t start out with a temptation but instead sows mistrust in Adam and Eve – and let’s remember that this one isn’t on Eve; Adam is there all the time and just can’t seem to find anything to say. In particular, the serpent tries to undermine the relationship of trust between God and God’s children. “Did God really say,” the serpent asks, misrepresenting and undermining God’s instructions. “You will not die,” the serpent asserts, suggesting that there are things God knows but isn’t telling. Only when this primary relationship has been undermined are they susceptible to the temptation to forge their identity on their own, independent on their relationship with God, and so take and eat the forbidden fruit.
The tempter’s approach with Jesus is different but trying to get to the same end. The slanderer tries to undermine Jesus’ relationship with God by suggesting that he should create food for himself, or throw himself off the mountain, or pledge allegiance to the devil rather than trust God’s provision. Each time Jesus resists by quoting Scripture, and each verse is specifically about God’s trustworthiness and the need to depend on God for all good things. He keeps reminding himself of God’s promise to care for all of God’s beloved. He will not let his trust in God be undermined, which also helps him remember who God has called him to be.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks drew an interesting distinction between the ways God and the serpent dealt with Adam and Eve. He said that Adam and Eve never saw God, they only heard the Divine Voice. The serpent showed them the tree and the fruit. The rabbi went on to say,
If I were asked how to find God, I would say, Learn to listen. Listen to the song of the universe in the call of birds, the rustle of trees, the crash and heave of the waves. Listen to the poetry of prayer, the music of the Psalms. Listen deeply to those you love and who love you. Listen to the words of God in the Torah and hear them speak to you. Listen to the debates of the Sages through the centuries as they tried to hear the texts’ intimations and inflections.
Don’t worry about how you or others look. The world of appearances is a false world of masks, disguises, and concealments. Listening is not easy. I confess I find it formidably hard. But listening alone bridges the abyss between soul and soul, self and other, I and the Divine.
As I read his words, I was struck that the same was true in Jesus’ story. He heard the voice telling him he was God’s beloved, and then the tempter showed him what he hoped would sow distrust.
It’s interesting that when we talk about someone trying to be someone they are not we say they are “putting on appearances,” which has to do with seeing. If we are going to truly be ourselves, we have to listen, we have to pay attention. Integrity and truth are about more than how things look. We learn to trust those whose words and actions confirm their true identity: they show a state of being the same. They know whose they are and who they are.
Which takes me back to algebra class. Late in the spring of my eleventh grade year, while I was still struggling in Algebra II, I took the ACT, which was the entrance exam for the college I wanted to attend. When the results came back, I got a higher score in math than I did in English, so high, in fact, that I placed out of my college math requirement. But my teacher’s voice was so strong in my head that it was years before I realized I wasn’t bad at math, she was just bad at teaching.
In the spring of 2002, after several months of being debilitated by my depression, I started looking for work. One thing I had figured out was that the kitchen was a depression-free zone for me. So, I decided to look for a cooking job. I found a small restaurant that was just opening and talked to the chef. He was not impressed because I had no restaurant experience. I told him about my mom and all the church dinners I had cooked, but to no avail. But I knew I was a cook, so I went back the next day and the day after that. On the fifth day, he said, “If I give you the job will you promise me you won’t come back tomorrow?”
The obvious ending to this sermon is to listen for God’s voice, for God’s affirmation and call, when it comes through others. I am happy to say that ending out loud, and I also want to ask us to think about what impact our voices have had. Whose lives have been changed by what we have said, whether intentionally or in passing? Have our voices reminded others they are beloved ones who delight God, or have we allowed our words to do damage?
We may not know the actual impact of the things we have said to others, still we can choose to be intentional about how we speak and what we say going forward. May the words of our mouths be words of love that help others see they, too, are God’s beloved. Amen.
Peace,
Milton