St. Paul’s Church in
Bergen & Church of the Incarnation, Jersey City NJ
February 18, 2018
Year B: The First
Sunday in Lent
Genesis 9:8-17
Psalm 25:1-9
1 Peter 3:18-22
Mark 1:9-15
The Temptation to Despair
Today
is the First Sunday in Lent and by now you’ve probably noticed changes to the
look of our church and the feel of our service.
Most
of the shiny things have either been put away or veiled.
There
are no flowers – and we’re not saying the “A word” until Easter.
There’s
more focus on confession, repentance, and, yes, thank God, forgiveness.
And,
as we always do on the First Sunday in Lent, we heard the story of Jesus in the
wilderness, tempted by Satan.
The
Gospels of Matthew and Luke give us a lot more detail about the exact kinds of
temptations that Satan devised for Jesus – Satan tempted Jesus to use his
divine power for his own benefit or glory – you know, turn stones into bread to
fill our Lord’s empty belly – or jump from the top of the Temple and be caught
by angels – this way everyone will know that Jesus really is God’s Son.
Matthew
and Luke give us these details but not the economical Mark, whose account we
heard today – Mark, who simply says that Jesus was in the wilderness for forty
days – a number that reminds us of Israel’s forty years of exodus in the
wilderness.
Mark simply tells
us all we really need to know: Jesus was in the wilderness, where he was
tempted by Satan.
I
really like that Mark omits the exact nature of the temptations faced by Jesus
because, let’s face it, I can’t really relate to those specific temptations
faced by Jesus: we aren’t tempted to turn stones into bread, or to jump,
confident that angels will swoop in and catch us.
No,
I prefer to use my imagination – to imagine what Jesus faced out there in the
wilderness – to imagine what temptations Satan crafted especially for Jesus of
Nazareth.
Satan
is quite skilled at coming up with temptations carefully crafted just for us –
but there are some temptations that are close to universal, and some temptations
that seem to be almost contagious during certain times and in certain places.
Like,
the temptation to despair.
We
know that Jesus himself experienced the temptation of despair – maybe in the
wilderness but definitely on the cross, when everybody he loved (or just about
everybody) abandoned him to his senseless, bloody, and shameful death – the
cross when he could no longer feel the presence of the Father, when he quoted
Psalm 22 and cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
And,
I think many of us today are sorely tempted to despair – tempted to despair
because our country seems to have turned into a horror – with the rich growing
ever wealthier while the poor lose even the little that they have - with people who have lived here for years,
decades sometimes, contributing to our communities in ways large and small,
being ripped from their homes and families because they don’t have the right
papers – with the apparently deep sickness of sexual harassment and abuse that
is only beginning to be uncovered – with the rollback of protections of air and
water, sentencing future generations to an even more poisoned planet – and,
yes, with yet another school turned into a house of death as another broken,
and, in this case, heartbreakingly young, person had no trouble at all getting
a weapon of mass destruction and unleashing it on children trying to learn and
teachers trying to teach.
I
know I’m tempted to despair – and I bet many of you are, too.
One
of the things about despair is that sometimes it’s quite obvious – think of the
drunk passed out on the sidewalk – but more often we’re pretty good at hiding
it.
We
go about our business looking like everything’s normal and fine.
Our
government goes through the motions – legislation proposed, press conferences
held, the flag fluttering over the White House at half-staff after the latest
massacre – and the media cover most of it as if it’s all perfectly normal.
The
North Korean cheerleaders show up at the Olympics in their pretty red outfits
and with their frozen smiles, going through their choreography perfectly, and
yet we know there is despair behind those masks.
Whenever
North Korea is in the news, I’m often reminded of the one totalitarian country
I’ve ever visited.
Back
in the 1980s, I was able to go to East Germany, the German Democratic Republic,
which, as I used to tell my students, was neither “democratic” nor a
“republic.”
You
may remember that it was the communist part of Germany, the part occupied by
the Soviet Union after World War II.
Germany
itself was occupied and divided into west and east, and so was its capital
city, Berlin.
Life
was so bad in the communist part of the country that over three million people
fled to the West – the drain of people became so huge and destabilizing that in
1961 the Russians and the East Germans took the desperate step of building a
wall around West Berlin – a wall that officially was explained as a defense of
the Wast but of course was really just meant to keep people from fleeing the eastern,
communist side.
The people in the East were quite literally penned
in by the wall – or, actually, a couple of walls, as well as a no-man’s land protected
by landmines and towers manned by guards with orders to shoot to kill anyone
trying to escape.
I
remember being so nervous the first time I crossed from the free West to the
communist East – shaking a little bit as I showed my passport and visa and
handed over the money that was the cost of entering.
I
remember wondering what it would look like and feel like to be on the other
side.
Finally,
my friend and I were waived through and entered the East – and, and, it all
looked and felt perfectly…normal.
People
were going about their business. Stores were open. Cars and streetcars made
their way up the avenues.
But
it didn’t take too long for us to be recognized as Americans – maybe our jeans
or our sneakers gave us away – and some brave East Berliners approached us,
trying to make a deal to get valuable US Dollars or West German Marks so they
could buy things not available in the official, legal stores.
Over
the course of my brief time in the East, I could almost forget that in fact I
was in fact in a giant prison – that at the end of the day with my US passport
I could cross back into the West and freedom but all of the people around me
were trapped – and behind the seeming normalcy there must have been such deep
despair.
And,
because my ability to see the future is very poor, it looked to me like this
was the way it was going to be for a very long time – it looked like that wall
and all that despair could not and would not be broken.
But,
not too long after I was there, that wall did come down – and I’m sure many of
you remember those amazing pictures from 1989 - pictures of people partying on the
wall, dancing and drinking – cars passing freely through the once fortified
checkpoints.
The
Berlin Wall came down for lots of reasons but one of them is that there were
people in the East – people who were jailed in a giant prison – there were men
and women, including Christian pastors and lay people, who never gave in to the
temptation to despair – people who, despite the apparent hopelessness of their
situation, never lost hope - people who believed that no wall is strong enough
to hold back the power of love and goodness.
And,
it’s hard for me to believe, but by now, that wall has been down longer than it
stood – and, if you go to Berlin today, you have to look pretty hard to find
any sign of that once seemingly immovable wall.
No wall is strong
enough to hold back the power of God.
Long ago, Jesus
was tempted in the wilderness.
And, today, you
and I are in a wilderness, too – an often frightening and bewildering and
discouraging wilderness – a wilderness where hatred, meanness, fear, and
violence are on the loose, and seem to have the upper hand.
But, Jesus
resisted the temptations he faced, including the temptation to despair.
And, with God’s
help, you and I, together, we can resist the temptation to despair, too.
Just
look at the incredibly impressive kids from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High
School who witnessed and experienced so much horror, but instead of giving into
despair are speaking out with such fire and eloquence, calling our leaders to
account, and saying no more of this.
Like Jesus, we can
return from the wilderness and do the work God has given us to do – trusting,
knowing, that nothing, nothing can separate us from God’s love – and that no
leader, no ideology, no political party, no special interest group, no amount
of money, and no wall is strong enough to hold back the power of God.
Amen.
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