"On Trial"
February 25, 2007
Luke 4:1-13

I really don’t mean to be Kathy Lee Gifford and talk about my child all the time and I promise not to talk about anything that is personal unless I think it has universal significance.  But it’s been no secret that I thought Abby was Pentecostal.  For the longest time as she has tried to form English words she has instead resorted to speaking in tongues.  Which is all well and good, but she was baptized in the Episcopal Church and has spent her entire life in the Episcopal Church and I know she’ll try to rebel, but she will be an Episcopalian.

But now I don’t know what she is, because she is praying more than most Episcopalians I know.  Every time we sit down to eat, she wants to say the blessing, holding hands and the whole bit.  Now there is nothing in the world wrong with that, nothing at all.  But one blessing isn’t good enough.  She wants to say the blessing three or four times before we can eat.  I’ve found myself saying, “Dear God, yet again, we give you thanks for this food.  Amen.”

The other night we were all laying in he bed watching American Idol and she wanted to pray.  So she spoke in tongues with a prayer and then Cherilyn said a prayer and I wanted to watch American Idol so I said, “Dear, God, yet again, we give you thanks.  Amen.”

Do you remember your first prayers?  I know mine.  “God is good, God is great, let us thank him for our food, Amen.”  I heard Cherilyn teach Abby, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”  Another version of bedtime prayers is “Matthew, Mark, Luke & John, Bless the bed I lay on.

Four corners around my bed.  Four angels around my head. 1 to watch.  1 to pray. 2 to take my soul away.  Amen.”

No matter how old we get or how sophisticated our spirituality becomes, those old prayers are the ones that really stay with us and really come to us when we are spiritually at our wits end.

I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this but we use all contemporary language during worship.  In other words, we don’t use the thee’s and thou’s and thy’s.  It’s pretty and I like it, but it’s not how we talk.  The one exception, however, is in the Lord’s Prayer.  There has long been a version of the Lord’s Prayer in modern language, but we use and we will perhaps always use, the one we all know, the Our Father, who art in heaven.

That’s the prayer we learned as children.  That may be, after Now I lay me down to sleep, the first prayer we ever learned.  And in a world where everything changes so dramatically and so quickly, it’s nice to come to a place where there is some consistency, some stability.

Terrorists strike the United States, but we still pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven.”

Gunmen go into schools and kill innocent children and we pray “Our Father, who art in heaven.”

Our children grow older and have children and grandchildren of their own, yet we still pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven.”

But you know, the new version isn’t that bad either.  It may be different, but it’s still good.  In fact, there may be times, there may be places, when this new prayer is even better.

Thursday, Dee McKinney invited me to hear Bruce Feiler, an author, speak at East Georgia College.  We didn’t really understand how big of an author he is, but he has written six books, traveled to 60 countries, has his own PBS television series and just last week the President of the United States was endorsing his book.

Ten years ago, Bruce did a novel thing.  As he was rereading the Bible, something he hadn’t done seriously since a child, he decided the best way to learn the stories was to travel to the places were they took place.  And you know something, he’s right.

8 years ago, I remember riding in a Mercedes Benz tour bus six inches from a canyon that was just waiting for the best driving to drive into.  Looking out the window I could see for miles and there was nothing to see.  It was essentially a desert.  Every so often I could see a Bedouin village, but beyond that, nothing.  And then the bus stopped and we all got out and the sand was stinging us the face and the tour guide said, “This is the wilderness.”

After his baptism, the Holy Spirit moved Jesus to the wilderness where for 40 days he fasted and was tempted by the devil.  I was standing in the region where he was tempted.  And I’ve gotta tell you, after walking where Jesus walked and seeing the place where he was tempted, I was jealous.

And to be honest, I’m not sure I was very impressed by Jesus, either.  I don’t mean to skirt on the edges of blasphemy, but think about it.  If we were in a place for 40 days and there was nothing else around us, no villages, no cities, and certainly no large groups of people and the devil walks up, don’t you think we’d recognize him?

If we were in the middle of nowhere trying prepare ourselves spiritually and all of a sudden a man with a smug grin walks up trying to get us to worship him and serve him, don’t you think we’d be tipped off that standing before was Lucifer himself?  Don’t you think we’d know not to listen to him?  Don’t you think we’d know he’s trying to tempt us?

It just seems like a spiritual no brainer.  There you are, all by yourself, and the devil walks up.  Chances are he’s going to tempt you.  Just do what everyone does at restaurants when Abby starts crawling on the floor, ignore him.

I would feel better if Jesus was sitting at home with his family when the temptation came.  I’d like to see him get out of that one without royally making his family life more complicated.  How does he say no to his family when temptation uses them as its vehicle.

I’d like to see Jesus at work and see temptation come along.  I’d like to see what he would have done if he’s job is on the line.  Which way would he go then?

I’d like to see Jesus standing with a group of men as they are talking and laughing and rejoicing in things that have temptation wrapped all around it.  How would he deal with that?

Because to be honest, temptation comes to us disguised in so many clever ways.  Temptation has a way of being subtle and quiet.  It even has a way of being rational.  You know if we sit down and work at it, we can rationalize just about anything.

The devil asked Jesus to turn stones into bread and to worship him and to throw himself down from the Temple to impress all of his potential followers.  But I’d like to see the devil start small, just a little white temptation.  The devil asked Jesus to turn the stones into bread, but what if the devil turned those stones into bread, would Jesus have taken a bite?

So many of our big sins started out as just itty-bitty tiny temptations.  Most of the time, no one is asking us to throw ourselves down from the Temple, but when most people find themselves standing out on a ledge, they know the ledge wasn’t their temptation. 

If I were to tell God how to present temptation in the Bible, I would have chosen a different storyline.  Instead, I would do what Hollywood has done.  Instead of Jesus standing in the desert talking to the devil, I would put Jesus in any one of the millions of situations we find ourselves in and I’d like to see tiny little demon and a tiny little angel pop up on his shoulders.  I’d like to see the debate.  Let’s hear the demon’s arguments and then lets hear the angel’s arguments.  Let’s make it a courtroom drama.

When we say the Lord’s Prayer in a little bit, we will ask God to “lead us not into temptation.”  But the newer version asks God to “save us from the time of trial.”  I like that image, because it makes me think of defense attorneys and prosecutors and the defendant.  I know the word “trial” means a period of hardship, but I like the image of a courtroom trial, too.  I like it even more when I remember that the name Satan means, “the accuser” like a prosecutor.

Temptation is complex.  It is hard to see, sometimes.  It is rational, and many times it makes perfect sense.  And when we deal with temptation, we mentally and spiritually hold court weighing the arguments of the prosecution and defense.  It’s not as simple as being out all by ourselves in the desert dealing with the devil as he holds some grandiose carrot in front of our faces.

But maybe that’s the point.  Maybe God and Jesus and St Luke are, in fact, smarter than I am.  Maybe they understand the complexity and difficulty with temptation.  In fact, maybe they understand it so well, that the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness is actually saying this:

Temptation is so strong, so powerful, so complex, that even if it appears to the Son of God in the form of Satan himself all by himself in the desert, he still has to rely on the Father to escape it. 

And if it is that strong there, imagine its power here.

“Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”

“Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil.”

For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, for ever and ever.  Amen.