Loading...As I was studying commentaries and contemplating the Gospel reading this week, I found myself uninspired. Nothing I was reading gave me direction and sometimes it was more confusing for me. Maybe because this has been a very busy week and I’ve been out of my routine.
I’m not complaining. I’m sure many of us get out of our routines and might feel a bit out of sorts or find ourselves struggling to stay focused. It’s really nothing new. I just need to remember to use the tools in my toolbox to get back on track or accept the circumstances and do what needs to be done.
When I was in seminary, I felt I was living two very different lives. One, the life I had known as a wife and mother, with all the freedoms and responsibilities that had been developed over the years. Two, I was a three-quarter time Master of Divinity Student. I graduated from my undergraduate college about 25 years before and I consider myself to be a life-long learner, but these four years meant some lifestyle changes I was not completely prepared to make. I didn’t know when I started how much being in seminary would impact the rest of my life. It was definitely a “you don’t know what you don’t know” time in my life.
I had to learn how to be present where I was, emotionally, physically, and intentionally. It became clear that I had to put these two roles into separate silos to continue to be successful in both of them. And let’s be honest, nothing is that simple. It took deliberate intention to stay focused on what I was doing to not be distracted by writing a grocery list in class or reading from a text when I was making dinner.
To help me, I took a line from a song that became a type of mantra to help me stay where I was: “Love the one you’re with.” I needed that line to remind me to not allow myself to be tempted to make something else more important than what I was doing. And to not feel guilty when I was doing what I was doing, either. For example, I had to purposefully set my mind on being with friends or family and not be distracted by homework or visa verse.
It was about prioritizing and staying focused to be “successful” at both. It wasn’t easy, but this act of dividing my attention helped me to stand firm when I was tempted to do something else.
This may be something that comes easy for some. Work stays at work, and home at home, but many of the choices I made, particularly choosing to have work that required a home office, meant that my work and home lives co-existed and bled into one another. It takes discipline to separate them, especially when the work is often internal processing or, especially when I was selling Tupperware, when the phone would ring, I’d answer it because it “could be business.”
Temptation is insidious. It sneaks in and pits two priorities against one another and makes it nearly impossible to make a choice that won’t cause some form of regret or disappointment in ourselves or in someone else.
Most temptations are rather benign distractions or choices that don’t really cause irreparable harm, until they do. If they negatively impact our health or safety, or create division in our relationships or communities, it is time to evaluate choices or deny distractions to refocus our attention on what is right and good and recognizes how our behaviors and decisions reflect all the ways we love God and love our neighbors.
It is when temptations test our faith or distract us from our walk with Jesus that the most harm can occur.
Those four years of seminary for me did a lot to help me understand how the choices I had made in the previous years of my life might have looked and felt like I was prepared for ordained ministry. I regularly attended and participated in the life of the church. I was an active participant in bible study. I sang in the choir. We raised our kids in the church community, sharing our parenting. I thought I understood God’s presence in the world.
And all those things were very good. But during seminary I realized that I might not have been reading the red letters, the words of Jesus, with a desire to be transformed. I simply loved being loved by God.
What I didn’t realize was that feeling loved by God, finding comfort in my friendship with Jesus, was only a part of what it means to be a Christian.
As much as I thought I was doing what was expected, it took going to a seminary focused on justice, kindness, and mercy to recognize that throughout his ministry Jesus was telling me what it takes to show God that I love God. That love is actively expressing compassion and acting to repair and restore our communities. Not with shame or blame towards victims of poverty or illness or hunger or because they are different than I am for any number of reasons. To love God means, I came to understand, that I am required to love others. To see them as God’s beloved children and to treat them with dignity and respect.
It is tempting to dismiss what is uncomfortable to see or to decide who is worthy of God’s love. Yet we are called, as Jesus followers to see what is uncomfortable and to embrace those we or others have deemed unlovable.
There is a real desire to put others in boxes, labeling everyone in them without seeing them as individuals. A desire to lump people into broad categories to more easily create an “us and them” so that we do not have to recognize their humanity, their struggles, or whatever has created an identity others may vilify.
We are often tempted by media to decide what is “right” or “wrong” and to not place ourselves in situations to understand that sometimes people don’t get to choose their circumstances. They don’t decide if their baby dies from SIDS or their child dies from an incurable disease, or that their medical bills drive them into poverty and sometimes to living on the streets. They don’t choose to be victims of oppression or abuse. They don’t escape violence and injustice, risking everything for safety for themselves and their families without good reason.
Many people are unwilling to understand the situations of others, recognizing their humanity and beloved-ness because doing so might change them. We don’t know how to imagine how our own lives might be impacted if these things happened to us. It is tempting to never think about.
Jesus went into the wilderness immediately following his baptism. Scripture tells us he went for 40 days. Each of the Gospels tells this story, albeit in their own unique ways. In Luke, Jesus chose to go into the wilderness alone, to face the temptations of the devil. In Mark, he is hurled, thrown by the Spirit without a choice. In today’s Gospel in Matthew, the Spirit leads him into the wilderness.
In these 40 days, Jesus is tempted with power, security, and glory. The devil tries to make him independent—to not rely on anyone but himself, but Jesus resists that temptation and chooses to trust that God will supply his every need, like when manna and quail were supplied to Moses and the Israelites. Jesus relies on the way God protected the Israelites and showed them they must worship God first—not golden calves.
Jesus refuses the devil’s temptation when he gives all power to God with his decision to trust that God will supply all that is necessary. He chooses to glorify God, to humble himself and he would go on to teach his followers how to do the same. He chose to show humanity what it means to fight the temptation to only think of themselves and not see others as God’s beloved children.
And Jesus gave us a prayer that includes the phrase, “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
We are to believe that “God is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever.”
As people of God, as followers of Jesus, our task has always been to do as Jesus did. To welcome and love others simply because they ARE. To respect the dignity of every human. To seek justice for everyone—not to condemn—rather to respect them by treating them equitably and honorably because they are God’s child.
We might choose to follow this path into the wilderness, or we might be hurled into it, uncertain of what it is all about, or we can allow the Spirit to show us the way.
Each of these have the same result: we are to fight any temptation that keeps us from being people of God, trusting in God’s righteousness, guiding our footsteps into creating a more loving creation, welcoming and inviting one another into the abundant love of God.
Amen.
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