“You Gotta Serve Somebody” Pr. David Hewitt, Feb. 20/21, 2009
I guess there was this little boy who went next door to his house to play, even though his mom had warned him against doing so. This worried his mom so much that she asked him why he was so disobedient. He replied that Satan tempted him so bad that he did not know what to do.
Remembering then from the Bible the phrase “Get behind me, Satan,” the mom then advised her son to say “Get behind me, Satan” whenever he was tempted. She then built a fence around their house.
This worked for a week. Then one sunny summer afternoon the mom looked out the window and there was her son playing in the neighbors lawn having cut a hole in the fence. “Jeremiah,” she yelled, “come here!” He reluctantly returned home, where Mom said, “Did I not tell you to say ‘get behind me, Satan,’ whenever the devil tempted you?” “Yes,” the boy replied, “I said, ‘Get behind me, Satan,’ then he went and got behind me and pushed me through the hole in the fence!”
It seems that The Great Tempter always finds SOME way to tempt us to fail at some time or other every day. He always finds some hole in the fence, or hole in our DEfence, or some loophole in the laws we set down for ourselves. But you know some of our biggest problems when it comes to temptation have to do with not realizing what defeating temptation is really all about, and how tricky the devil can be. After all, take the joke I just told, and the phrase the mom used, “Get behind me, Satan.” As you may know, Jesus wasn’t even talking to Satan when He said that – He was talking to the head disciple, Peter. And THAT was when Peter said something that seemed – not just to Peter, but to the other disciples, as well – eminently reasonable and foresighted. Peter was telling Jesus that it was foolish of Him to go down to Jerusalem if, as Jesus had just said, He was going down there to get Himself rejected, and whipped, and crucified, and killed. Then Jesus turned his back on Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan, for you are not setting your mind on divine things, but on human things.” (Mark 8:31-33)
That is why we need to explore, at least once a year, the narrative in the wilderness desert, where Jesus, having fasted for forty long days, is tempted by Satan there in the middle of nowhere. For here Jesus, who is both fully human and fully divine, is not so much the Divine Savior as He is the Perfectly Human Brother to you and me – perfect in His devotion to God, pointing out the pathway for us and our discipleship devotion as well.
You see, every day we make the same mistake as Peter. We try to be good and smart, as Peter was trying to be good and smart, and we – and he – keep getting into trouble. Like Peter, we miss the point. We keep focusing on human things, and not divine things. We keep thinking – even in a religious way – that it’s all about us. We keep justifying and rationalizing our actions, just as the Pharisees did in the days of Jesus. And the devil is there, just egging us on.
Let’s look at these three temptations in order and you can see what I mean. In the Gospel according to St. Luke, the first temptation is when Jesus, very hungry after 40 days of no food, is confronted by Satan, who says to Him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Satan is saying, “Prove to me how wonderful you really are. How can a person such as yourself – a person with all the power in the world at your fingertips – be like anybody else and go hungry. You’re not very special if you allow that to happen. Show me how special you are.”
Now I have to tell you it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to find, in these days, an example of how a human being can fall for this temptation. Just Friday Tiger Woods spoke to millions on TV, apologizing for his sins. I don’t wish to pick on him. As a matter of fact, there were a few places where his description of falling for sin was downright eloquent. At one point he said, “I knew my actions were wrong, but I convinced myself that normal rules didn’t apply….I thought only about myself….I felt I had worked hard my entire life and deserved to enjoy all the temptations around me. I felt I was entitled.”
Notice the rationalizations, the justifications Mr. Woods admits he used? We humans love to do the same thing, just in our own way, for our own sins. We sometimes, for various reasons, feel as entitled to sin as Tiger felt. And it’s exactly at that juncture where Satan pounces on us, and on Jesus. Jesus had just worked so hard – 40 days of fasting, of starving. Jesus, as Son of God, could have felt entitled, special. But He refused to fall for it. One could say he followed this principle:
“Don’t assume that because it feels good, that it’s a blessing.”
Jesus basically moved beyond the first temptation because He saw the bigger picture; He was on a mission. So Satan counters by focusing on that very mission. “Okay, Jesus,” he says. “You want to save the world. That means you need to get power and glory and authority over the world, to rule it. I can give that authority in a heartbeat. Admit that I’m the one who can help you. This is your shortcut to power. Take it.”
Of course Jesus didn’t take the shortcut – for that would shortly cut Him off from His union with the father. But the same isn’t true for us. Sometimes we cut corners. Sometimes specialize not just in the lie, the cheat, or the steal. I’m reminded of the child who came home with a report card in which the teacher wanted to talk to the parents about how Johnny “was very adept in the creative use of visual aids for learning,” and so the parents went to the teacher and asked what she meant by “creative use of visual aids,” and she said, “That means Johnny is very good at copying for from the kids’ next to him!” But we not only can lie and cheat, but we can be especially good at the white lie or the half-truth, all accompanied by the rationalization deep inside that “Once I get to where I want to go, then I’ll do things right.” Get successful, then get right with God. But, to quote Jesus, how does it help us to gain the whole world if we lose our souls? Jesus knew what was truly at stake at that moment. One could say He followed this principle:
“Don’t assume that because it’s successful, that it’s a blessing.”
Finally, Satan decides to pull out all the stops. He starts quoting the Bible – Psalm 91, as a matter of fact, which is full of references to God the Father taking care of us in all situations. And that’s where Satan hopes Jesus is most vulnerable. It’s certainly where WE are most vulnerable, for isn’t it when we have lost someone or something valuable to us – when we’ve been very hurt – that we begin to doubt and turn away from God? Satan knows that we can easily treat our faith as just another “product” in our lives that we buy, and use, and, if it doesn’t work, we throw it away. It’s like if I buy a mosquito repellent, and I spray it all over me, but the mosquitoes still bite. And so you throw away the repellent, because it failed to protect us.
Well, Satan wants Jesus to treat His faith in God the Father like consumer product. “Come on, Jesus, you haven’t really relied upon God’s power and love yet. Let’s see what God will do! Will He come through or not? And the implication is, if Jesus IS hurt, there’s a problem there. Either Jesus is NOT the Son of God, or God the Father doesn’t love Him, or isn’t there to protect Him. Well, Jesus refuses to play along. He refuses to treat His Father like His servant, when He knows it should be the other way around. The principle Jesus follows, we can explain in this way:
“Don’t assume that what is painful is NOT a blessing.”
Now, listen up. Every time Satan tempted Jesus, the devil was trying to denigrate God. You see, we lose track of the grace of God when we lose track of who God really is, who we are, and the true nature of our relationship. We are sinners; He is not. We don’t use Him. His love and grace persuade us to be of use to Him.
In the first temptation – the one about not being hungry, about fulfilling your desires, we learn that God isn’t our enabler, He’s our mentor. He tells you which desires are holy and which are not. He tells you when and where to take care of yourself, and how it fits into His overall plan.
In the second temptation – the one about being powerful, about wanting to be successful, we learn that God isn’t our pushover, He’s our Lord. The end never justifies the means. It’s not about you. When we’re trying to be something, we’re nothing, and when we don’t care if some think we’re nothing, we really have the potential to be something, to be a great and humble tool in God’s righteous hands.
In the third and final temptation – the one about defining faith as whether God will come through for you, we learn that God is not our slave, He’s our Savior. Our Christian life is not whether God will come through for us – it’s whether we, guided by His Spirit, will be found to have been helpful in His mission – how we can come through for Him, knowing that He has already taken care of our eternal needs.
The disciples knew this when, after the resurrection of Lord Jesus, they became His apostles. The eleven of them, plus Paul, preached the gospel all around the known world of their day – many, many different countries – and all except one of them (John, who certainly was no shirker), were executed for the faith. They, using the metaphor of the third temptation, were willing to fall from the height of the Temple – but without any expectation that God would have to “save” them in this life – because their focus was not on them but on the mission and ministry of God.
You remember that old story about true faith, the one about the man who was stranded by a flood on the very top of his house, sitting only on only the last gable, just hours from drowning? He told people that he had faith that God would save him. And of course the story goes that a boat of men came to save him, and he refused to get in the boat, because God, not these fellows, would save him. Then a helicopter hovered over him with a rope ladder, but he refused to get on, saying God, not these people, would save him. Finally a sea plane landed in the water as the man was up to his neck, but he refused to cooperate with the frogman who jumped in, saying God, not this man, would rescue him. And then he drowned, and, confronted by God, demanded to know why God hadn’t rescued him like he had believed and had such strong faith that He would. And God said, “Well, I sent you to boat, and a helicopter, and a plane…!”
Many of you have recounted that story to me after you’ve heard it; it’s a great story. But let me push you a little bit further about this. What if the man had finally, reluctantly, gotten into the sea plane, at the end? What if he ended up thanking the frogman, and the pilot, as being “the outstretched arms of God?” What if the man then went back to his old way of life as if nothing had happened – built and purchased a new home, went back to living the life of a hermit, never helping anyone, never witnessing to anyone, never giving to the church’s mission in time, talent, or money, yet having, so he then said, a “renewed faith”? Had this man really learned anything? Had he really matured in his discipleship? No. For, even rescued, even saying thanks, it was still all about…what? Him. Him.
Luther said it best. We are always active. Even when we think we are doing nothing, we are doing something. He said we are either active for God, or active against. Him. Jesus said, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only Him.” Every day we are either worshiping and serving God, or not – worshiping and serving something else. No in-the-middle. No lukewarm. Bob Dylan once sang it best: “You can serve the devil, or you can serve the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody.”
How do I resist temptation? Jesus knows – remove, as much as possible, the “I.” “Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Him.” Removing the “I,” there’s nothing to resist. “Worship the Lord your God, and serve ONLY Him.” As St. Paul once said, “It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me” – and when He lives in us, we begin to realize, we have heaven – heaven on earth. Amen.
