Sunday, March 10, 2019 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Scene 1: The Wilderness

Lenten Sermon Series: Following Jesus through the Gospel of Matthew

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 91:1–2, 9–16
Matthew 4:1–11

Winter returns a thousand times. But so does spring. . . . It’s possible to live through winter. And when we do, we’re glad, for there are lessons learned in the winter that not only cannot be learned in the spring but must be mastered in order to appreciate the spring.

Renita J. Weems

The Jesus we meet today in this text from Matthew might not be the one we usually imagine. He is no longer the baby, born into poverty and a time of threat yet already adored and worshiped by strangers. And he is not yet the leader, calling people he meets along the way, challenging and inviting them to follow. Jesus is not yet the preacher, entering the faith communities of his Jewish tradition, boldly reinterpreting holy words for that time and that place. Jesus is not yet the rabbi, sitting on the mountain or in a boat, teaching discipleship with world-shifting parables. Finally, he is not yet the healer, with life-surging power flowing even from the hem of his cloak, setting people free from captivity or illness with just a touch. No, though he will be all those things and more, Jesus is none of them today.

Today, as we meet him on this First Sunday in Lent, Jesus is around thirty years old, a carpenter’s son, who perhaps is just beginning to get a taste of what it means to be who he is. Though his soul is still damp from the waters of his baptism, today his mouth is dry and he feels weary due to the forty days and nights he has spent fasting in the wilderness. Though Jesus surely grew up surrounded by the love of family and friends, today he stands alone on an austere wilderness landscape. Though he might hear still ringing in his imagination echoes of God’s voice proclaiming his belovedness, today he is also probably beginning to struggle just to remember it as the glow of that baptismal moment “recedes into a hazy, pre-wilderness past” (Debbie Thomas, www.journeywithjesus.net). Today, on this First Sunday in Lent, we meet a Jesus who is the epitome of vulnerable.

The root word of vulnerable is the Latin word vulnerare, which itself means “to wound.” Therefore, to be vulnerable means that you are “capable of being wounded and open to attack or damage” (Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, p. 39). That is Jesus in our scripture today. While he is one who is indeed God with us, God for us, here in the wilderness, he is also one open for attack and quite capable of being wounded. The tempter knew it. “If you are the Son of God . . .” the tempter began, as he slithered stealthily around Jesus, shrewdly testing Jesus’ wilderness faithfulness, just as the tempter had done all those generations earlier with Eve and Adam in the garden.

Actually, it might be more accurate to translate the tempter’s words as “Since you are the Son of God,” rather than “if.” The late Dr. Paul Achtemeier claimed the translation “since” is the correct one, grammatically speaking. Plus, “since” highlights what is actually at stake in this story. “What is at issue in this wilderness is not if Jesus is really God’s Son; even the [tempter] is willing to concede that,” Achtemeir wrote (Paul Achtemeier, qtd by Mark Davis “Will This Be on the Test,” March 2014, leftbehindandlovingit.blogspot.com). Rather, the issue at hand has to do with how Jesus will be the Son of God. That is the question with which Jesus wrestles in the wilderness that day. It is the question of identity. How will Jesus choose to live out his calling, his birth and baptismal identity of being Messiah, God-for-us; Emmanuel, God-with-us?

For me, this whole episode comes down to Jesus’ posture—not literally, but figuratively. Will he choose to live out his vocation of being Messiah with a symbolically closed posture, one with arms crossed in front, protective of self? Will he choose to go about the next three years of his life and ministry constantly watching his back, trying to play it safe? Will he choose to be primarily concerned with how what he is doing is affecting his own safety, effectiveness, or power, regardless of anyone else? Bottom line: Will Jesus choose that it is more important for him to be vulnerare, one capable of wounding others, rather than vulnerable, one capable of being wounded? Will Jesus choose a closed posture as the primary way he goes about being Savior of the world?

This picturing of a closed posture always reminds me of a pastor friend. This friend went through a time when he would host sermon feedback sessions immediately after worship had concluded. He wanted to give people a chance to respond to the proclamation so that folks would invest more of their own voices in the story. At least, that was his plan. Yet each Sunday, after he sat down in the front of the room and opened up the session for conversation, he would immediately cross his arms in front of himself, cross his legs underneath, and sort of look like he was curling up into a ball. He was the only one who did not realize what he was doing. Everyone else saw immediately that my friend was trying to protect himself from being wounded by their reactions. Needless to say, his closed posture did not do much to encourage honest conversation.

I understand his tendency to go about ministry that way. Many times in my ministry, especially in times of conflict or when someone has disagreed with something I have said or done, I have had to go through an internal dialogue with myself: “Uncross your arms. Relax your shoulders. Don’t get defensive. Just listen. You are OK.” I also have to say those things to myself when I am in a brand-new situation or with people whom I assume are very different from me or in a place that I do not know. I have to consciously fight against the closed posture of self-protection/self-preservation. While it may make me feel safer in the moment, no one ever hears or learns anything new or different with arms crossed. No one can learn to love more deeply with arms crossed. No one can be honestly open to the movement of the Spirit with arms crossed. Frankly, I think it is very hard to follow Jesus with arms crossed.

Have you ever found yourself doing something similar? How many of us go through our lives with a closed posture, trying to do whatever we can to protect ourselves from being wounded? Actually, let’s make that question even bigger: Do you think that we, as a congregation, ever display more of a closed posture than an open one? Do we, as a congregation, ever symbolically cross our arms and close ourselves off to people who might have different perspectives or new dreams for this historic congregation, ones that could challenge our status quo? Do we, as a congregation, ever find ourselves acting primarily out of a desire for self-protection, just hoping to survive in a rapidly changing world, crossing our arms in front of us, crossing our legs underneath us, internally repeating, “Things are going fine as is. No need to change. No need to try something new. People are still joining. The budget is good. Babies are still getting baptized. Things are just fine right now. Don’t mess with it.” Do we tend to avoid being vulnerable as a church—choosing to protect who we are and what we have, closing ourselves off as a measure of self-preservation?

The tempter discerned Jesus would wrestle with that temptation. It must have been why he showed up in the wilderness on that day. Remember, this was a time in which Jesus was completely vulnerable, famished and alone, though none of it was by his own choosing. Nothing less than God’s own Spirit had driven him into the wilderness, so perhaps Jesus was already feeling twinges of Godforsakenness even here in the very beginning. If there were ever a moment to claim a closed, self-protective posture, this was it. Thus the tempter approached.

Now, as we heard, the content of each temptation was different. The first one concerned the capacity to turn stones to bread to take care of his hunger; the second one was to call on angels for safety and test God’s willingness to do as God promised; the third one contained the seduction of total power and dominion starting right then and there. If you are a churchgoer, then I imagine you have heard sermons on each one. But as we’ve already said, let’s focus on the underlying purpose of them all, which was to answer the question, since Jesus is the Son of God, how will he do it? How will Jesus go about his work of being the Savior of the world?

At the core of each temptation was—still is for us—the question of identity. It was the temptation for Jesus to let the baptismal dampness of his soul dry out completely. It was the temptation for Jesus to fill his head with other loud voices dictating who he is, until the holy voice bestowing belovedness became too faint to be heard. The temptation in the wilderness that day, way back in his very beginning, was for Jesus to deny and eventually forget who he was and why he had come.

“Since you are the Son of God,” the tempter kept asking in one form or another, “just modify your ministry ever so slightly so that the purpose of your life becomes your purpose, instead of God’s purpose. So you can watch out for yourself over and above anyone else. So you can make sure to get whatever you want, whenever you want it. So you can be the kind of Messiah, the kind of Savior, the kind of God’s Son that the people can understand and get behind, might even follow with ease since it will demand so little of them.” As I say those temptations out loud, I have to pause and ask if they sound familiar. Jesus was not the last one tempted to forsake his God-given identity and purpose. Right?

Yet even though Jesus was famished, lonely, maybe even already feeling Godforsaken, Jesus said no. All three times, with scripture as his voice, Jesus said no. No to the stones into bread. No to the calling for an angel rescue. No to the promise of power and dominion in the tempter’s way and in the tempter’s time. No to a closed, crossed-arms posture whose primary purpose is only self-preservation and safety. No. No. No.

In my mind’s eye, each time Jesus responds with a no, I see Jesus growing stronger, not in body but in spirit. With each temptation offered and each no given in response, I imagine him opening his arms more and more and more, until finally there he stands—thirty years old, in the wilderness, famished, lonely, already feeling Godforsaken, but completely wide open for whatever God is going to do through him and in him; heart completely bared in order to absorb the pain of his people and the world; as vulnerable—as capable of being wounded—as one can be. That completely open posture was how Jesus answered the tempter’s question of identity: How will you be the Savior of the world, Jesus? What will you show us about who God is and about how God feels towards us? Like this, Jesus responds.

But not only did he begin his ministry with that completely open posture, he held it throughout his entire ministry, even unto his death. Remember the tempter’s voice in the voice of the thief on the cross? “If you are the Son of God, save yourself and us.” Even then, no. Even then, as he hung actively dying, his arms were wide open.

This completely open posture is the way God in Jesus has decided to be with us and for us. God in Jesus is the very definition of vulnerability, one who would choose again and again not to wound but rather to be the one capable of being wounded; one who would decide again and again not to attack but to be the one to withstand the attack; one who would say no again and again to the temptation of self-preservation and instead empty himself fully for the sake of showing us God’s love, a love that saves us and calls us to follow.

As theologian Bill Placher wrote, that is the point of all this, of Jesus, after all, isn’t it? “God suffers,” he wrote,” “because God is vulnerable, and God is vulnerable because God loves—and it is love, not suffering or even vulnerability, that is finally the point. God can help [us] because God acts out of love and love risks suffering” (William Placher, Narratives of a Vulnerable God, p. 18). As we see so clearly on this day, this First Sunday in Lent, Love looks like a completely open posture, ready to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things, as Love asks us to follow, with our own arms as open as possible—both as disciples and as a congregation.

The truth is that no one ever hears or learns anything new or different with arms crossed. No one can learn to love more deeply with arms crossed. No one can be honestly open to the movement of the Spirit with arms crossed. Frankly, it is really difficult, if not impossible, to follow Jesus with arms crossed. But with arms wide open—wide open to God, wide open to each other, wide open to our world—while we certainly risk being wounded due to our vulnerability, and while following in Jesus’ way is often difficult and can be quite risky, the promise is that when we are open to it, God’s Spirit of love will work in us and through us and on us in ways we simply cannot imagine on our own. So as we begin this Lenten journey together, may we have the courage to live like this. Amen.