First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
February 9, 2005 - Ash Wednesday
My stepfather, who is closing hard on his 90th birthday, informed me with great glee that he had been served a jumbo, juicy, jelly donut with his breakfast yesterday morning. I explained that the occasion was sometimes known as Fat Tuesday and went on to connect it with Ash Wednesday, reminding him that people in Europe often used up their cooking fat on the day before Lent, the better to prepare for the culinary leanness of the season. Which explanation he accepted, whereupon he laughed and said: “I think we should have Fat Tuesday every Tuesday.”
Over the course of the Christian year, there are seasons that are fat and seasons that are lean. Lent is one of the leaner ones. And today….Ash Wednesday….may be the leanest of the lean. Today marks the beginning of Lent, a season of forty days plus Sundays that carries us to Easter, one of the “fattest” of all seasons. As concerns Lent, the mood is penitence and the color, purple (which explains my tie). The visual symbols of the day are the ashes, whether we use them or not.
What we do with them is smudge ourselves, in effect making ourselves dirty for all the world to see. To the uninformed, it is akin to going out with spinach between our teeth, lipstick applied crookedly, or a zipper unzipped. The ashes call attention to ourselves (as a visible measure of unkemptness), leading the casual observer to ask: “Whassup with that?”
The smudge has multiple interpretations, but clearly suggests two things. First, that we are sinful. In spite of our best efforts to clean ourselves up, we are dirt. Second, that we are mortal. In spite of our best efforts to keep ourselves going, we are dust.
From which we proceed to a pair of questions.
1. Where does Lent begin….geographically?
2. With what text does Lent begin….biblically?
Which generate a pair of answers.
1. Lent begins in the wilderness. If you came here thinking we were going to start on top of the mountain, you thought wrong.
2. Lent begins with a story of Jesus (in the wilderness) fighting temptation.
How comes the temptation, you ask? It comes as a force….a power….a yearning that is all but overwhelming. Does it come from beyond him? Yes. Does it come from within him? Yes. I mean, when it gets really down and dirty in your life….I am talking about that wrestling match that takes place between your better self and your lesser self….you tell me how temptation comes to you. Then I’ll tell you how it came to Jesus.
There are three temptations. You know them by heart. The first invites Jesus to turn stones into bread. Jesus was hungry….“famished,” the text suggests. Real hunger is not a momentary tickle in the stomach that leads one to say: “Well, it’s getting along towards supper time.” Real hunger….well, I don’t know what real hunger is, never having felt it. But having toyed with any number of diets over any number of years, I know the power that food has over me. Or as the chronically-overweight grandmother of Peter Gomes said in response to the nagging of her doctor: “I figure, better to die from havin’ it than die from wantin’ it.”
But this isn’t about diet. This is about survival. Yet Jesus, who was not willing to let survival call the tune for his life, declined the offer.
Leading to the second temptation: “Worship me and I’ll give you all the kingdoms of this world.” If the first temptation deals with a basic need (survival), the second deals with a basic desire (power). It’s a temptation that surfaces early. You sense it along about the second grade, when you sit at your desk and fantasize about how things would be different if you were the teacher (with complete control of the grade book and the ruler) and she was forced to sit in row four, seat three. But Jesus, who could have done a lot with power (living as he did in an occupied country), was not easily bought.
Temptation number three followed shortly thereafter. “If you are really who you say you are, prove it by jumping from way up here to way down there.” Surely God will suspend the laws of gravity for you….turn the ground into a giant sofa pillow for you….outfit a team of angels with catcher’s gloves for you. But Jesus, feeling no need to prove his identity heroically, said: “Thanks, but no thanks.”
But here’s the part I want you to get.
And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from Jesus until a more opportune time.
* * * * *
Oh, how wonderful it would be if we could fight it, defeat it, and be done with it….temptation, I mean. But like the tide, it keeps coming at you. Most times, it can be wrestled to a draw. And there may even be lengthy periods of total remission. But there will come “an opportune time” when you are especially vulnerable. Maybe because your pride has been injured, your ego wounded, your contributions under-appreciated, or your guard lowered.
Coming back into the house from my snow-covered driveway at 5:45 this morning, Free Press in hand, I read the story in the second section about the 45-year-old treasurer of Christ the King Lutheran Church in Grosse Pointe Woods who, over the course of the last several years, managed to embezzle over $700,000 from the church coffers. Which brought to mind November of 1991 and the day I discovered that the treasurer of the church I then served had diverted $151,000 of church monies into her own accounts.
At the time of the crime, she was 57 years old….twice a mother….three times a grandmother…. daughter of the long-time church secretary….choir singer….bell ringer….class member. She knew full well that what she did was wrong. She also knew that everything she was doing cut against the grain of everything she grew up believing. Neither by nature nor by practice was she immoral or ignorant.
So where did her temptation come from? From all appearances, both the outside and the inside. Temptation came from the outside in the form of a young gigolo lover who said: “You light up my life. Together, we could have a wonderful future. But I have this idea for a business. How’s this for a plan? You stake me and I’ll marry you.”
Temptation came from the inside in the form of a growing feeling that life had screwed her, that her first husband had dumped her, that her church had underpaid and under-loved her, and if God was really as good as they said, she would surely have done better than she did. And in her 57th year, all of that came together….as temptation found “a more opportune time.”
* * * * *
My friends, short of the resurrection, there is no permanent victory. Which is why Lent always begins in the wilderness and spotlights our struggle to fight and win another round….against both the evil around us and the evil within us. Oh, if only we could lick it and forget it, put it to flight and see it no more. But that would make us better than Jesus who, if the Bible be believed, left the wilderness, but the wilderness never completely left him. How does the Bible say it? “He was tempted….in every way….as we are.” Imagine that. As one who spends a lot of time in the wilderness, I find that most days, I am glad for the company.
