The fight

1 Lent A 2014
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Lent/ALent1_RCL.html


A monk named John, a very enthusiastic young man, wanted to be perfect. So he prayed to God to take all temptation away from him. God granted his request.

So John went proudly to some of the older monks and said, “You see before you a man without temptations.”

An old monk said, “That’s not good for you. Pray to God that you will have plenty of temptations so your life will be worth something.”

John was stunned, but he did what the old monk said. He prayed and God gave him back temptations. In fact God gave John more temptations than he had before. From then on, when he was tempted John did not pray “Take this temptation away from me.” Instead he prayed “Lord, give me strength for the fight.”

Each year this first Sunday in Lent could easily be named “Temptation Sunday.” It’s a hard day for those of us who were raised in traditions that taught a strong sense of shame about our humanity, about our desires and emotions and attractions. It’s as if we were to somehow be embarrassed by our very complex and unresolved human nature. For Christmas this past year my youngest daughter gave me a hip summary of the Bible entitled “God Is Disappointed In You.” On a day like this I found myself feeling kind of glum, because once again my human weakness was pointed out to me and once again I did not measure up. Part of me wanted to be like young John the monk, and just have God take all temptation away from me forever. The other part of me secretly thought that life would be bland and pointless without passion and thrill and even some naughtiness, so I never tried making John’s prayer.

It’s good that I never tried.

The old monk is right—we are complex and unresolved creatures, and that is the mystery of the human person. Our old familiar story in Genesis today assures us that there are always serpents and invitations and attractions. The Garden story is the tale of how we became human, with self-awareness and self-reflection and a more mature sense of who we are in the world. And with that came shame and pain and alienation. It is a story of the glory and tragedy of human nature, and poses a question—who are we truly called to be?

We’re not supposed to go back to the Garden. It is no accident that all of the experiments in creating Utopias, making perfect places on earth, end with frustration and even tragedy. Think Jonestown. We are not meant to go back to the Garden where everything is perfect and all we need do is breathe and play and pet the animals.

We are meant to be more. In just six weeks at the Easter Vigil Deacon Tracy will sing “O happy fault, that such a sin should bring so great a Savior.”

We are meant to walk with one another in our human truth. We are meant to think and to feel. We are meant to know the glory, the ambiguity, the pain and struggle of what it is to be human and to be aware. We are meant to taste and touch and feel and desire and question and to long for fulfillment, and even to know frustration and loss. We are meant to “order our loves”, as one saint said, so that our longing and our desiring and our celebrating and our grieving reflect what is best in us and respect what is best in others. We are meant to struggle for a more just world even when our efforts seem futile. I like the Spanish version of that Baptismal promise—literally it reads “Will you struggle for justice and peace, and respect the dignity of every human being?”

All this would be in the end a noble recipe for despair, except that it is God who calls us and Christ who walks with us, who struggles and feels every tug and every temptation to self-destruction, to harm of others, to delusion, to despair.

Jesus Christ is in the desert of temptation because we are in that desert. Like Jesus we have been given a message of infinite love and infinite worth in our own Baptisms. Like Jesus we do not get to sit besides the Baptismal font playing in the water, happy and safe, every question answered and all pain taken away.

Like Jesus, we are driven into the desert of vulnerability before God and before the world. Like Jesus, we feel hunger and fear never having enough. We feel afraid, and want perfect security and control. We feel our mortality and smallness, and want to live forever with fame and acknowledgment. “Command these stones to be bread…”Throw yourself down and angels will catch you…All these kingdoms I will give you…”

There is ultimate hope, not because God will place us back in the Garden to play and forget, but because Jesus walks every step we do, feels every draw to be less than we most truly are, hears every invitation to be what our fear and our longing for power and control and immortality says we can be.

In the desert, and in the desert of our lives, Jesus chooses a different path, a path of liberation. He takes a chance that we are called to be something more, people more free, people whose destiny is more mysterious. We’re called to be people whose very lives reflect the ecstasy and the vulnerability and the delight and the grief and the mystery of God.

Some say that there in the desert we were set free.

No ancient warrior went into battle alone if they could help it. There was always a companion, a shield-bearer, a chariot-driver to come with us, to have our back.

We have one another. And we have the veteran himself. Look into the vulnerable eyes of Christ and see there the light of a human spirit set alight with joy amidst sorrow. See at the same time the endless light of the divine.

Lord, give me strength for the fight.