Matthew 4:1-11
March 23, 2011
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
Recently, our almost 5-year granddaughter was going around saying, “It’s complicated!” I wonder if she really knows what she’s saying except that that she gets a strong reinforcing response back from us that keeps her saying it!
Going on an overseas mission trip is complicated. Thanks for keeping the church going while I along with four others from our church went to Thailand. When I came home last Sunday after traveling for an entire day, it was grueling. I’m not sure if my old body can take this kind of traveling again! While our purpose for this trip was simple enough—to better understand the Lanna Coffee ministry and how we can continue to stop human trafficking, what we discovered was that it’s complicated.
Getting the village farmers to grow coffee trees instead of opium sounds like a no-brainer but it would take 3 to 4 years before there’s coffee fruits to pick. What will they do with no money to buy rice in the meantime? After a village is growing coffee, there’s a need to build a health clinic, fresh water source, and eventually a school for future generations to learn how to survive in the village in an increasingly global reality.
We all like to think about missions as simply to add a few dollars to the annual offering like the America for Christ that we are receiving currently. But the reality is that it’s complicated. Many of you have asked how was this mission trip different from the one we took in 2006. We learned that to do effective and faithful missions that will sustain village economies and to stop human prostitution, we would need to become even more involved than we are doing right now. Can we find in our already busy agendas, enough energy and human resources to strengthen our ability to become more active in missions in Thailand? Complicated and complex situations require focused attention to make a difference.
Complicated Scriptures
On this First Sunday in Lent, our passage is about the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness. If it weren’t for Jesus, our definition of God would be much simpler and not so complicated. God can be all loving and vague. Can’t we just say, “I believe in God” and let it go at that? Isn’t that really at the heart of the matter? But our Christian theology claims that we just don’t believe in God, but we also believe that God is the Trinity—God is not simply God, but God is Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. Why does it have to be so complicated and difficult?
When I talk with people about what Christians believe, there is always someone in the room who will say, “All this theology stuff is unnecessary. As far as I’m concerned, the main thing that Jesus taught was “love your neighbor as yourself.” “The Golden Rule is all I need.” And I suppose that would be enough—if that were truly all that Jesus said.
In all the Gospels, the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness is when we first see Jesus in action. Matthew, Mark and Luke introduce Jesus in action, Jesus under assault by Satan, Jesus being tempted in the wilderness.
In the wilderness, Satan does not offer Jesus just any old temptation. Satan’s temptation is related to the identity of Jesus. The heavenly voice at his baptism said that Jesus was the “Son of God.” Jesus is intimately related to God, as intimately related as a parent to a child. If Jesus is God in the flesh, God standing before us, then what does that tell us about the nature of God?
If God stayed just as God without the Trinity, it would be a lot simpler. God can then be whatever we consider to be large, powerful, and in control. God is the one who brings order, or the one who can do anything God wants, or whatever vague characteristics we might happen to want God to have.
But now, here in the wilderness, we find ourselves face to face with God as Jesus Christ. And it is right there that God gets complicated. It’s like if we just put something in the offering plate for missions, it’s simple. But when we travel to a place like Thailand, it gets complicated and we know that much more is asked of us.
When we really look at Jesus, things get complicated, not because I as a preacher want them to get complicated, but because God is that way.
Jesus’ Temptations
The temptations of Jesus is more about learning who Jesus is instead of thinking that this story is about our temptations. By understanding who Jesus is, we come to a better understanding of who God is.
All the temptations that Jesus refused are the things that we would consider to be good, worthwhile and desirable. The first temptation is bread. Bread surely stands for all the material things in life. Jesus has been fasting for 40 days. He is very hungry. Satan says, “If you are the Son of God, turn these stones into bread.” What is more basic to life than the need for food? Isn’t this the reason for us to promote Lanna Coffee so that the hill tribes of Thailand can put rice in their bowls? If one wanted to do some real good for humanity, wouldn’t it be wonderful if one can turn stones into bread and feed the earth’s hungry people?
But Jesus refuses. He said that he does not live by bread alone. Whatever he is about, Jesus is about more than elevating human physical need.
The second temptation takes Jesus to the Holy City of Jerusalem—the center of national pride and religious meaning. Satan takes Jesus to the temple where all the religious people are gathered. Satan proposes a spectacular spiritual demonstration—jump off the pinnacle of the temple and remain unscathed.
Jesus refuses. What sort of God is this who refuses spectacular spiritual feats? What sort of God is this? Wouldn’t it be wonderful, for us poor struggling believers, if Jesus had agreed to do such a spectacular feat? It would certainly make believing in Jesus easier because who is God if not complete power to do anything God wants? But Jesus refuses.
Satan proposes a third temptation. If Jesus was not into spiritual power, how about a show of political power? Satan offers Jesus a view of all the kingdoms of the world and says that he will give him complete power over all these kingdoms. There are few powers that we modern people recognize more strongly than political power. Look at all the candidates running to be mayor of San Francisco. Wouldn’t this be wonderful power for Jesus to have?
Jesus refuses. He will not be a political Messiah, at least not in the way that people expected.
So who is Jesus? As early as in the beginning of the Gospels, out here in the wilderness, Jesus is not the God whom we expected. He refuses to do and to be the very things by which we define deity. He doesn’t act like we expect God to act. Who is this God?
Complicated Jesus Christ
Most church members believe that the Christian faith is complicated and difficult to understand because preachers like me know how to make what is simple into something that is incomprehensible and complex. It’s not the preacher but it’s Jesus, the one whom we meet out here in the wilderness, the one whom we meet in the scriptures, tends to disrupt and make complicated our simple views of God.
We expect a God who meets our needs, who is in complete power over the things that cause us pain in life, a God who orders the world out of chaos, and sets things right. And yet, here comes God in the flesh, as Jesus, who seems to believe that this sort of God is not really, truly God but rather a temptation from Satan.
When I was in seminary, I was taught that a good preacher is the one who begins with some complicated, complex biblical passage and then, in about 20 minutes with three points and a good story, makes the complicated simple in the sermon. A good preacher is one who can explain God in such a way that everyone can “get” God, right then and there, as the result of a clear, accessible, simple explanation.
But maybe they should have taught me in seminary that a preacher ought to make the Christian faith as complicated as it is intended to be. A sermon should do its best to depict the true and living God, not the God that we assumed was there, but rather the God who meets us in Jesus Christ.
Perhaps preachers like me make a big mistake in trying to simplify the faith. Maybe this is the reason you come to church, to have your simple faith made as complex as it ought to be, if it is to be truthfully faithful to the living God. In my experience, a too-simple faith collapses in the face of the complications that come our way from simply living life in the world.
If we just kept our Lanna Coffee ministry the same as it has been for the past 5 years, it would be simple. We can keep on doing what we have been doing. But God is helping us see that to be truthfully faithful to the living God in San Francisco is the same living God in Thailand, we can’t avoid seeing how complicated and complex missions is to stop human trafficking and to help others.
Fortunately, scripture will not leave us with a too-simple faith. We keep being assaulted with these stories that often jolt us, sometimes confuse us, and thereby push us into new areas of understanding and faithfulness.
In today’s scripture, Jesus is revealed as the majestic, sovereign One who rejects Satan’s temptations to be the sort of God we thought we just have to have and instead is the God who is truly God for us, God as God is, not as we would have God to be.
We all know of someone whose faith was overly simple and immature that when life complications came along, this person lost his faith. A childish mix of some vague, simplistic, commonly held views about God just collapses under the weight of the trials and tribulations of life.
Our Christian faith is complicated because God is complicated. A God who loves us enough to die for us, to be crucified for us, to become weak and powerless for us, is more of a God than we thought we needed. No wonder that many looked at Jesus and said, “He doesn’t look like the Messiah we were expecting.”
Matthew doesn’t tell us why Jesus rejected Satan’s offers. We’ll have to wait for the rest of the stories of Jesus to figure that out. You’ll just have to sit through more of my sermons to find out. You will have to risk having some of your ideas about a simple and vague God challenged by the God you meet in Jesus. But in that adventure we Christians believe that we are growing closer to meeting, understanding, and loving the God who in Jesus Christ has grown so close to us.
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, protect us from the temptation to reduce you down to our size, to simplify your demands upon us, to attempt to rework you so that you are no longer a challenge to us. As, in you temptation in the wilderness, you resisted the temptation to be the God we thought we wanted, give us the courage to receive you as the true God that we got. Walk with us during these 40 days of Lent, Lord Jesus. Amen.