Passing the Test
David Orendorff · Luke 4:1-13 · February 25, 2007
I begin our Lenten Sundays with a love story. I don’t know if it is true, but it contains the truth.
John Blanchard stood up from the bench, straightened his Army uniform, and studied the crowd of people making their way through Grand Central Station. He looked for the girl whose heart he knew, but whose face he didn't, the girl with the rose.
His interest in her had begun thirteen months before in a Florida library. Taking a book off the shelf he found himself intrigued, not with the words of the book, but with the notes penciled in the margin. The soft handwriting reflected a thoughtful soul and insightful mind.
In the front of the book, he discovered the previous owner's name, Miss Hollis Maynell. With time and effort he located her address. She lived in New York City. He wrote her a letter introducing himself and inviting her to correspond. The next day he was shipped overseas for service in World War II. During the next year and one month the two grew to know each other through the mail. Each letter was a seed falling on a fertile heart. A romance was budding.
Blanchard requested a photograph, but she refused. She felt that if he really cared, it wouldn't matter what she looked like.
When the day finally came for him to return from Europe, they scheduled their first meeting - 7:00 PM at the Grand Central Station in New York. "You'll recognize me," she wrote, "by the red rose I'll be wearing on my lapel." So at 7:00 he was in the station looking for a girl whose heart he loved, but whose face he'd never seen. I'll let Mr. Blanchard tell you what happened:
A young woman was coming toward me, her figure long and slim. Her blonde hair lay back in curls from her delicate ears; her eyes were blue as flowers. Her lips and chin had a gentle firmness, and in her pale green suit she was like springtime come alive. I started toward her, entirely forgetting to notice that she was not wearing a rose. As I moved, a small, provocative smile curved her lips. "Going my way, sailor?" she murmured. Almost uncontrollably I made one step closer to her, and then I saw Hollis Maynell.
She was standing almost directly behind the girl. A woman well past 40, she had graying hair tucked under a worn hat. She was more than plump, her thick-ankled feet thrust into low-heeled shoes.
The girl in the green suit was walking quickly away. I felt as though I was split in two, so keen was my desire to follow her, and yet so deep was my longing for the woman whose spirit had truly companioned me and upheld my own. And there she stood. Her pale, plump face was gentle and sensible, her gray eyes had a warm and kindly twinkle.
What choice would Blanchard make? Will he follow his immediate desires or follow a different kind of love in friendship? I leave you hanging for the moment.
Jesus story is also a love story. Just prior to today's scripture, Jesus is baptized by John in the River Jordan for the forgiveness of sins. Following his forgiveness the heavens opened, the Spirit descended upon in the form of a dove, and Jesus heard a voice from heaven say, “You are my beloved child; with you I am well pleased.”
God loves Jesus and Jesus loves God. The Spirit then commands Jesus to go into a lonely, deserted place. The traditional sight of this wilderness is the desert outside of Jericho. Here Jesus suffers for forty days and nights. It is a hilly, barren, hot, deserted place even today. There is nothing to eat or drink; the only inhabitants are bandits, wild animals, snakes, insects; all of them fierce and always hungry. It is uncivilized, lonely and dangerous. It is not a place anyone goes willingly. It is the antithesis of safety and community.
And then, as if things are not bad enough, the Devil appears. The Devil is the tempter or tester and the jury is all of heaven and earth. The Devil asks three questions, each cleverly designed to cause Jesus to reveal what it is he will do with his life as the “beloved child of God.”
First he asks, "If you are a child of God, say to that stone ‘You become bread!’" It is a wicked test for a desperately hungry man. And by now Jesus desires not just bread, but also water, maybe a good pizza or cheeseburger. And what about a place to call home, something simple with a queen sized bed, indoor plumbing, digital cable TV, and a garage big enough for the cars, the boat, and the carpentry shop. And Jesus, like all of us, needs a friend. Surely if a stone can become bread it can also become a friend. He is tempted.
But Jesus remembers Moses and his grandparents on their 40 year journey in the wilderness; their thirsty, hungry, and homeless wandering from the slavery of Egypt to some yet to be seen promised land. It was God who fed them, clothed them, bound up their wounds and brought them safe thus far. And he remembers how Moses is concerned about the people for when they reach the Promised Land and rest with full bellies and big homes, large flocks and great wealth, will they remember God or will they think they made the bread and brought the abundance? So Moses says to the people:
God humbled you and suffered you to hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, neither did your fathers know; that God might make you to understand that you do not live by bread alone; but by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord do you live.1 Deuteronomy 8:3
Jesus, in his moment of deprivation, does forget God. Jesus remembers that it is not he who makes bread, but God. And when he later teaches his disciples, he will not teach them to make bread, but to pray to God for their daily bread, and for all the needs of their lives. For the life of the body comes from and is sustained by the mercies of God alone. And so forced to choose between bread of his own making and God, Jesus chooses God, quotes Moses to the Devil, "We do not live by bread alone."
The Devil, undaunted, comes with a second temptation, again designed to test what Jesus, "the beloved child of God," will do with his life. This time taking Jesus high above the earth, where they can see all the civilized world, the Roman empire and all her states from England to India, from Africa to northern Europe. The Devil says to him, "I will give to you all this power and its glory…if you will but bow down before me."
Again, it is a wicked and well aimed test. Because of his great love and his desire to end the suffering of all creation, Jesus wants to change the world. What if instead of century after century of struggle for the good, it could be done in one life time. Think of how much quicker would be the path of political coercion than the tedious, slow, persuasive path of love. And if it can be faster, why should the poor, the abused, the widow and her child have to wait centuries. If Jesus didn't have to wait for one man and one woman at a time, didn't have to wait for millennia of human spiritual maturity, think of how quickly he could change the laws, change the economic system, and end all wars and all suffering.
But Jesus again remembers Moses, his grandparents, and the long exodus to freedom. The Promised Land, the land of milk and honey for all, does not come by coercion, by war, by power over, but by the worship of God. If Jesus and the world he loves are to have true shalom, true peace, then they will have it by the patient, transforming persuasion of servant love. And so Jesus says to the Devil, as Moses said to the people, "You shall worship the Lord your God and serve God only."2 Deuteronomy 6:13
The Devil, ever persistent, comes with a third question, again designed to test what Jesus, "the beloved child of God," will do with his life. Standing on the very high southwest corner of the great Temple in Jerusalem, Jesus is challenged "If you are the child of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written that 'God gives to the angels charge over you to care for you' and that ‘upon their hands they will lift you, lest your foot stumble against a stone.’"
Jesus knows his future. He knows that in a very short time he will be handed over to the religious court of his faith and be charged as a heretic, the enemy of God. He knows that he will be then handed over to the Roman court and found guilty of treason and revolution, humiliated and tortured, marched through the market carrying the means of his death and slowly executed.
The Devil offers him another future. It is an escape not only from the passion to come, but from all suffering. It is a way to avoid cancer and heart disease, to avoid disease, accidents and the cross. If Jesus takes this bargain he can have children and better yet, he can have grandchildren. Why not make his love affair with God on the condition that God keep him from all suffering?
But Jesus again remembers Moses, his grandparents and the Exodus. A whole generation, wandering circles in the wilderness with only a vague and ever more distant promise; a generation who gave their lives for the freedom of their children and for the world. Begrudgingly, childishly, sinfully, they remained faithful to God. They trusted God even as their eyes became blind, even as their friends and family perished, even as their hope withered? Jesus remembers how Moses, having surrendered the greatest security of his time as the adopted son of Pharaoh, died standing on a mountain, looking over the Jordan River and into the Promised Land knowing he would never arrive. Freedom from suffering in life does not come in a bargain with God.
There is no security, no safety, in this world for the children of God but God. There is no bargain to make that wards off suffering. One day the mountain lion runs away and another day it attacks and we die. Most every day cancer begins and ends in our bodies. One day it stays and there is suffering and sometimes life, and sometimes death before we live again. Most days our children walk the streets in safety, and then one day a drunk sends them into the next life. There is no bargain, no test of God's love in suffering. But always God is there, in the hands of those who help, in the ears of those who hear, in the hearts of those who love, in the life to come that is without heartache or weeping. Jesus anticipates God's mercy in life, in death, and in life again. And he again quotes Moses, "Do not test the Lord your God."3 Deuteronomy 6:13
The temptations that Jesus endures in the wilderness is not only his test, but it is the test of John Blanchard. John must make a choice. In a moment he must decide whether to pursue the desire of his flesh or to pursue the love of God offered through a name in a book and love letters in the midst of war. In a small moment he must choose how he will live his life as a child of God. Whether her will pursue his immediate desire or continue a love offered in letters. In but an instant, for she is walking away, he must choose to pursue a future that teases with the promise of quick joy, or a future that offers an uncertain and untested happiness. How will he decide this test? He writes:
I did not hesitate. My fingers gripped the small worn blue leather copy of the book that was to identify me to her. This would not be love, but it would be something precious, something perhaps even better than love, a friendship for which I had been and must ever be grateful. I squared my shoulders and saluted and held out the book to the woman, even though while I spoke I felt choked by the bitterness of my disappointment. "I'm Lieutenant John Blanchard, and you must be Miss Maynell. I am so glad you could meet me; may I take you to dinner?"
The woman's face broadened into a tolerant smile. "I don't know what this is about, son," she answered, "but the young lady in the green suit who just went by, she begged me to wear this rose on my coat. And she said if you were to ask me out to dinner, I should go and tell you that she is waiting for you in the big restaurant across the street. She said it was some kind of test!" It’s not difficult to understand and admire Miss Maynell's wisdom.
"Tell me whom you love," Houssaye wrote, "And I will tell you who you are."
And I add, "Tell me whom you love, and I will tell you how you will live as the 'beloved child of God.'" We too are tested in the wilderness part of our lives by the devil in our desires for more bread, more power, and more security. Will we like Jesus stay steadfast in our servant love of God and neighbor? Or will we succumb to our immediate desires? “Tell me whom you love, and I will tell you how you will live as the ‘beloved child of God.’”
Shalom and Amen.