01 Lent 08

February 10, 2008

Psalms 32:1-11
Matt 4:1-11


Spring Training

OK, everybody up. Stretch. Lean to the left, lean to the right. Drop and do fifty.

Just kidding.

I think we could probably be sued for asking some of you to do fifty push-ups. But I do want to welcome you to this year’s Spring Training.

About twenty of us began Lent this last Wednesday. Pastor McPherren did a marvelous sermon based mostly on the teaching of Jesus in the sermon on the Mount. And then we received the mark of the ashes, a sign that we are made by God, that we don’t make ourselves.

And so we are now on day five of our forty day journey. In our story this morning from Matthew, Jesus fasts in the wilderness for forty days.

It is really important to remember what just happened. Jesus had just been baptized by John in the Jordan. The voice from heaven had just told him, “You are my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.” The Holy Spirit had just descended upon him, filling him with the real power of God.

His status had changed.

Have you ever changed status or class in the course of your life?

I was a pastor in the Northeast for most of my career. But then I gave that up and fled down here to Middlesex.

Many of you know I spent the first three years living in Deltaville working at Little Sue. Then I went to work in a few retail establishments, and even dug ditches and worked on boats here and there. Then through a strange series of events, I became the pastor of Philippi.

A funny thing happened. People who had at one time barked at me and ordered me around and shown nothing but contempt for me were now greeting me by name and shaking my hand. Most of them didn’t even remember I had ever been that other person, the person in the silly blue apron that took their money and gave them change, or that guy by the side of the road in dirty clothes digging a hole.

Jesus’ status had changed. He was now imbued with some very real power. This attracts attention.

Therefore, before Jesus embarks on his public ministry, God must train him.

Most scholars believe that Jesus received a good bit of training from John the Baptist. When John recognized that Jesus was surpassing him, we think he announced to his disciples his belief that Jesus was the Messiah. We think Jesus then embarked on a solitary training period in which he engaged in serious spiritual discipline. These events have come to us in greatly condensed form in the scriptures.

Jesus had to be trained to become the Son of God.

In Lent we who follow him return to the theme of our training to become like him, children of God. Many of us forget, I think, perhaps because we never knew or had never been told, that being a Christian is a skill requiring ongoing practice and great discipline. And I’m not talking about the “no pain, no gain” thing here. This is a different kind of skill, a different kind of discipline.

The reason it requires skill is not because it takes skill to avoid temptation. There are all kinds of good reasons not to engage in the usual human offenses. Most of them come with their own price tag, and most of us don’t want to pay it.

No, the skill is in using the tremendous power that comes with being open to God’s Spirit. The way of life Jesus is leading us toward is a way of real power, power to really change the world. This kind of power is very difficult to manage, because when the other powers in the world notice that you have it and are willing to use it, they will do everything they can do to shut you down. And the things they do can be very, very subtle.

The story is told of the turtle that wanted to go from Massachusetts to Florida. The weather was getting cold and he thought the sun would be nice. But he quickly realized that he moved too slowly to get there in any reasonable time, so he asked a couple of geese for a ride. He suggested the geese tie a line between their feet. He clamped on to the line with his powerful jaws and so, between their wings and his jaws, he was able to be carried on their flight. This all worked beautifully until one day someone on the ground looked up and said, “Why, that’s brilliant. Who thought of it?” And the turtle said, “I did.”

Now, we’re not accustomed to thinking about the faith this way. There’s a reason for that. Long ago, when the Roman Empire made our religion the official state religion, they changed it dramatically. They took out all the stuff about the power of God for the weak and the poor and made it about being a good citizen of the Roman Empire. What basically happened was that the devil came to the church and said, “If you bow down to me, I’ll give you the world.” And the church said, “well, that’s a small price to pay to get the message out.”

But it wasn’t a small price to pay at all. The empire twisted the church’s message so much that now most Christians have a lot of difficulty reading the bible, because the bible is so different from what they’ve always heard our faith was about.

Here’s another story. A guy named Smith, a Baptist, moved into a Catholic community. During Lent, all the Catholics in the community had fish on Friday. But every Friday night, Smith would be out at the grill cooking up a big juicy steak. The smell of that steak would waft through the neighborhood and get everyone’s mouth watering. Well, the Catholics got into an uproar. “This guy is tempting us to break our Lenten fast!” they said. But then they came up with a great idea. A bunch of them went over to Smith’s and persuaded him to become a Catholic. They took him to the priest and the priest sprinkled water on him and said, “You were born a Baptist, raised a Baptist, but now you are a Catholic!” So everyone thought the problem was solved until the next year when Lent came around again. Everyone was just sitting down to their skimpy fish dinners when that smell of steak wafted through the neighborhood. They all rushed over to Smith’s and there he was over his grill, sprinkling water on the steak and saying “You were born a cow, you were raised a cow, but now you are a fish!”

I tell this story not only to amuse you but to point out the faultiness of the idea that you become a Christian independent of any change in direction in your life. Being a Christian requires training.

The New Testament tells the story of God opening the floodgates of his power and offering it to human beings, so that his kingdom might flow into the world. The news I have for you is that you can be changed, you can be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, so that God can work through you in very palpable ways in the world. Some of you already have changed, and God is already at work in you.

New people are coming to Philippi, some of them new or newly returned to the Christian faith. Our elders have been talking about what this means. Nan Parker said at our last meeting, “You know, we really have to be able to tell people what we believe and how we live.” People are coming to learn how to be Christians.

In this particular story, we are called to reflect on this great power that is being offered to us. What are we to do with it? Are we to use it to improve our material well-being? Are we to use it to assure our ongoing health? Are we to use it to rule over others? There are many congregations, big successful congregations, who tell us that these are precisely the uses to which we put the power of God.

But Jesus himself rejects all three.

Here’s the first bit of Spring training, friends. To become a Christian, to be filled with the power of God’s Spirit, is not a promotion, but a demotion. You are transformed from the served, to the serving. You are called to submerge your allegiance to any other force in your life to your obedience to God, and your service is to the least of God’s creation. You are under the lowest of the low.

God’s will for you may not be for you. God’s will for you may not even be for those you love. God’s will for you might be for someone you have never met or never know. Next week, we’ll hear more about the Spirit’s mysterious power.

To become a child of God is a skill. How are you training this Spring?

Amen.