Rickety

1 Lent A 2011
Gen 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Ps 32; Rom 5: 12-19; Mt 4: 1-11


How do we feel about being “rickety”?

In the 19th century a few dedicated people revived monastic life in the Church of England. One of the first Orders had a rough beginning—only three or four men to start, no money, lots of suspicion in a country and a church where monks had been suppressed centuries before. One or two members of the original group left.

After several hard years, things picked up for these monks. They attracted a couple of wealthy patrons, and moved into a nice building. Public attention became more positive. They attracted more new members.

It did not last. One of the patrons died and the other decided to do other things with his money. Several of the new candidates did not stay. The monks were back to being broke with only a few members sticking it out.

One of these, very discouraged, complained to another: “We’re back to where we started! Things feel all rickety again!”

After a moment, the other monk replied, “The day things stop being rickety is the day we stop depending on God.”

The truth is, thing are always “rickety”, insecure, unstable, liable to change at any moment. We ourselves are “rickety”—fragile, with weak and changeable wills and uncertain faith. At different life-stages we change—we acquire new health concerns, our relationships change or end, even the state of our souls change. Faith that was once warm goes cold. Things we felt to be sure feel less certain, or completely uncertain.

This week we were given stark reminders that our life on this planet is rickety. A technologically advanced nation is brought to a standstill by an earthquake that even they did not expect. Thousands of miles away, the waves wrecked docks and boats and swept the unwary out to sea. As of Friday Noon, the Vicar of St. Timothy’s Church Brookings was at sea with his father, having chosen like experienced sailors to ride the tsunami surge in open water.

But the rickety nature of our lives calls forth what is deepest in us, and faces us with choice. The Oregonian printed a photo of a Japanese soldier tenderly carrying an old man on his back through flood waters. The article said that an American aircraft carrier is steaming to Japan’s coast to offer aid. There are still those among us here who remember a time when gentle Japanese soldiers and American ships coming to help Japan would be inconceivable. But we are called away from anger and fear and the ways of war to the ways of peace, once we acknowledge our common human “ricketyness” and our dependence on one anther in this lovely, uncertain, rickety life we share.

The Gospel says that Jesus the Son of God completely shared our rickety life.

Jesus’ own baptism was an experience of wonder and assurance and light. But Jesus does not go from this moment of wonder into a successful career as professional Messiah. He goes into the desert, away from fame and assurance and light. In the desert, life is stripped to its basics. In the desert, you realize that you are small and not strong at all. In the desert, you are not in control. Wild animals call the desert home. Spirits are there. The devil is there. And God is there, although God can be as strange and unpredictable as the wild animals.

That desert, that disorienting place where we are small and rickety and not in control—that is the place where the baptized Jesus must face what is real.

“Temptations” are not urges to be naughty. Temptations are tests—to uncover what is in our hearts, to reveal what is true about our humanity. Tests—to reveal what is true about the world and about God. Tests—the kind of tests where, one way or the other, we emerge changed. That change is unpredictable.

The proctor of the test is the devil, whose name in Hebrew means “the accuser”, the one who knows our weaknesses and uncovers our doubts and fears, our anger and our greed.

“Command these stones to turn into bread”—gratify yourself, be self-sufficient, feed yourself independently of God or farmers or bakers or anyone else.

“Throw yourself down”—be exceptional, unique, entitled to care and supernatural tricks over and above any other human being who walks this earth.

“All these I will give you…” be greater, be in control of others, be master of your own fate. But the devil trips himself up here—he adds “worship me.” For as Bob Dylan said, you gotta serve someone.

Jesus refuses—refuses a self-sufficient life, refuses an exceptional life entitled to more care than any other person, refuses a dominating life controlling others and his own fate. He brings God into the equation—we live through God’s constant living speech, we are entrusted to God’s care, all true power belongs to God and we are entrusted with the humble care of one another.

Jesus chose a rickety life.

Rickety means that we entrust ourselves to God. Rickety means that we know we cannot and do not have to manage our lives alone. Rickety means that God is at the center, and we rely on God for all things. Rickety means that we are free to live a loved and vulnerable human life, dependent on one another, dependent on the earth and its creatures, dependent on God the source of all that is good.

Rickety is the only true strength.