What's up this Sunday
Posted on Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 at 10:09 pmAccording to Luke, as soon as Jesus is baptized in the Jordan River, the Holy Spirit sends him out into the wilderness for 40 days where he is “tempted by the devil.” Isn’t it interesting that after the “spiritual high” of Jesus’ experience at the Jordan, he is immediately thrust into the depths of spiritual wilderness and challenge? Jesus’ story is not unlike ours! Often the spiritual highs in our lives are quickly followed by a period of darkness and challenge. Many of us take this as a sign of weakness, or that our experience was inauthentic. Yet Luke’s gospel suggests that this plunge into the depths is natural and should be expected. In fact, the challenge of the wilderness was meant to serve as a tremendous resource – provided we meet the challenge as Jesus did.
In worship this weekend, we’ll ask, “Who is this ‘devil’ we meet in the wilderness, and what is the nature of his temptations?” and “How do we discern the difference between a dead-end path and our true path?” The answers to these questions may not only surprise you, but may help you deal more effectively with challenges in your everyday life.
I intellectually understand the power of dying to this world and recognizing we can’t be in control, that we need to stop and listen and discern where God wants to lead us. BUT when I hear that insight, I also flash to pre-Civil War America and the established power elite twisting those words to convince African American slaves that the only freedom they should seek was spiritual, not physical. Is there a faith/works marriage embedded here?
Help, please!
Deb, do you mean to imply that people might actually take an important spiritual principle and twist it to serve their own ends? How shocking. (Not!) It seems that we have a prime example of this very thing happening in the story of the wilderness temptations themselves. Here Jesus has three temptations laid out before him: feeding the hungry, performing miracles, and changing the political system. All three are GOOD things, not bad things. Imagine if Jesus had concluded, “Because the devil twisted X (x=that particular GOOD), I won’t ever do X.”
If our highest spiritual principles weren’t also the primary principles that “the devil” or “the negative side of existence” or “Maya” or “Dukkha” (or whatever else we choose to call it) is most focused at twisting and corrupting, we’d all be walking Jesuses by now.
OF COURSE the slaves were told that the only freedom they should seek was spiritual. And this convinced some not to rebel or escape, but only so long as they also believed the other thing their masters had to convince them of: that there is absolutely no relationship between the spiritual and material world. The first principle is entirely biblical (and not just biblical – i.e., Jewish and Christian – but is also strongly affirmed in the Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist and Islamic traditions). The second principle is entirely unbiblical. it’s what the Gnostics wanted us to believe. Had they won the debate, it would have been a permanent boon for slave owners world-wide. But Gnosticism was declared antithetical to Christian faith.
To put it another way, those slaves who “got” the principle that the only true freedom is spiritual freedom, and refused to believe the heretical principle – that the spiritual and material world are separate – were the ones who fought slavery tooth-and-nail. To many of these slaves, slavery was far worse than physical death. So they acted with incredible boldness to escape from, or subvert the system, even though they knew they could be severely punished or killed for doing so. “The only true freedom is spiritual freedom,” also means “the only true death is spiritual death” (another principle articulated by Jesus, which has scared the heck out of slave owners and despots ever since!). Thus, the threat of severe punishment or death was not a deterrent.
Wow.
You know how to answer a question!
Thanks.