Sunday, February 21, 2010

First Sunday in Lent Year C 2010

Revised Common Lectionary
Scripture Texts for Year C, First Sunday in Lent
http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts.php?id=118
Deuteronomy 26:1-11 * Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16 * Romans 10:8b-13 * Luke 4:1-13


Deuteronomy 26:1-11 ------------
26:1 When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it,

26:2 you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name.

26:3 You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, "Today I declare to the LORD your God that I have come into the land that the LORD swore to our ancestors to give us."

26:4 When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the LORD your God,

26:5 you shall make this response before the LORD your God: "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous.

26:6 When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us,

26:7 we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors; the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression.

26:8 The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders;

26:9 and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

26:10 So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O LORD, have given me." You shall set it down before the LORD your God and bow down before the LORD your God.

26:11 Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the LORD your God has given to you and to your house.


Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16 ------------
91:1 You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty,

91:2 will say to the LORD, "My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust."

91:9 Because you have made the LORD your refuge, the Most High your dwelling place,

91:10 no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent.

91:11 For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.

91:12 On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.

91:13 You will tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot.

91:14 Those who love me, I will deliver; I will protect those who know my name.

91:15 When they call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble, I will rescue them and honor them.

91:16 With long life I will satisfy them, and show them my salvation.


Romans 10:8b-13 ------------
10:8b "The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim);

10:9 because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

10:10 For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved.

10:11 The scripture says, "No one who believes in him will be put to shame."

10:12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him.

10:13 For, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved."


Luke 4:1-13 ------------
4:1 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness,

4:2 where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished.

4:3 The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread."

4:4 Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone.'"

4:5 Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world.

4:6 And the devil said to him, "To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please.

4:7 If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours."

4:8 Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'"

4:9 Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here,

4:10 for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,'

4:11 and 'On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'"

4:12 Jesus answered him, "It is said, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'"

4:13 When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

What Will You Do With Your Gifts?

We're doing a "spiritual gifts" inventory with our elders these days, and I have to say that I'm having a hard time with some of the assumptions this particular resource makes.

First off, it seems to imply that various talents we might have been born with are "spiritual gifts." Now I know this seems nitpicky, but it doesn't seem to me that Peter was born with the ability to preach or heal the sick or raise the dead. We might even argue that Jesus wasn't born with such gifts. Only two of the gospels even mention his childhood or infancy and apart from his precocious interview with some temple teachers he is not reported to have done or said anything very remarkable.

But there does seem to be, in Acts as well as in three of the four gospels, some very dramatic changes that come with the gift of the Holy Spirit. Peter, who couldn't get anything right prior to Pentecost, comes piling out of the house on Pentecost morning preaching a bold gospel in foreign languages he'd apparently never studied. Jesus, who apparently didn't do much of anything worth reporting before the dove descended on him and God said "This is my Son," would soon thereafter heal thousands and do various miraculous things that looked very much like things God does.

When spiritual gifts are discussed in Paul's letters they are never things like being good at fixing the plumbing, or being an entertaining public speaker, or playing well with others, or anything like that. All the Spirit's gifts seem to be oriented to the mission of God, to bring his kingdom bursting into the fallen world.

It might at first seem a little freaky that Jesus would be led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit to be tempted by the devil. But if we keep in mind this notion of the gifts of the Spirit, it might begin to make more sense.

"If you are the Son of God," says the devil. In other words, the devil is saying, "Now that you have received the gift of the Holy Spirit, along with the mighty power of God, what are you going to do with it? What are you going to do with this gift?"

The devil quotes psalm 91, the prooftext of every health-and-wealth evangelist. A fast-growing pentecostal church near here has Psalm 91 listed right on its sign, and I happen to know that they use the psalm as the basis of their new member class. They see the whole message as the remarkable and outrageous proposition that God just wants to bless you with all kinds of bounty as his way of letting the world know he's a loving God. He wants to give you everything you want, protect you from every threat, heal you from every illness. Period.

Now, given what we know about the biblical role of the devil, I think we can be reasonably sure that the devil knows how to interpret the bible rightly. It interests me that few biblical scholars would identify psalm 91 as a coronation psalm, that is, a psalm meant to address a king of Israel. But it seems to me that's how the devil understands it, and strange as it may seem, I'd believe the devil's interpretation before I'd believe a biblical scholar's. The devil is quoting scripture that relates to the Messiah. It's the Messiah that will be protected and lifted up and provided for and so on. This psalm, in other words, is not addressed to every believer in God, or even to every member of the Jewish people, but specifically to the Messiah, the king, the Son of God.

And so the devil is trying to get Jesus to use this amazing title and gift wrongly. This is what this temptation story is all about. It's the devil's job to trip us up, to prove that we are unworthy of God's love and blessing, that we are worthy only of his punishment. God has named Jesus his Son, the Messiah, the one like the son of man, the savior. It's essential that before Jesus begins his ministry that the Spirit allow, in fact insist, that Jesus get the full temptation treatment.

You and I enter this picture as Jesus' followers. As we saw with the apostles and those who heard them and believed, this same gift, this Spirit, this "sonship" or "offspring-ship" in relation to God, is offered to everyone who hears the call of Jesus and accepts that call to be his disciple. And it is highly likely, though not necessarily inevitable, that if we receive such a powerful gift, we will also have to go through the wringer before we're set free to do mission.

Jesus preaches a parable about this, I believe, about the sower and the seed, that teaches that we must be well-prepared if we are to receive the word, allow it to take real root in us and then bear abundant and faithful missional fruit. But most of us will not be well-prepared. We will be poorly prepared, and when we get driven out into the wilderness, we will not be able to resist the devil's temptations. We will want to use the gift we have been given wrongly. And we will lose it, just like that.

We all have talents and skills and gifts, but none of these necessarily serve us in the real work of the kingdom. In fact, most of them will get in our way, and should probably be set aside. We need to come to a place of real emptiness and powerlessness in order to receive the gift of the Spirit. We need to have that clear sense of being nothing much more than a wandering Aramean who would be an unknown slave if it it weren't for God, who makes us everything we are, if we are anything at all.

This is the place of baptism, of dying to the false and incomplete and fragmented life most of us have been tricked into living, of just letting it all sink into the waters and wash away forever.

When the Spirit comes, it comes with new life, new identity, new gifts. And the big test that must be given before we can be trusted with such an amazing new life is really whether we own these gifts or God owns them. If we own them, we do what we want with them, good or bad. If God owns them, we do only what God wants done with them.

Strangely enough God will keep all the promises of Psalm 91 for Jesus, but not in any way that Jesus or anyone else could possibly have expected. So it is I think for us. Psalm 91 is a trustworthy psalm for the children of God. But a child of God who becomes his or her own parent is no longer God's. The person who takes the gifts of God as their own possession, and not as a stewardship of gifts belonging to another, gives up all the promises of psalm 91. The moment we say, "God is going to make my business successful, God is going to heal me of my heart attack, God is going to bring my child home from the war," both the gift of God's power and the promises of God are withdrawn.

Have you received God's Holy Spirit? Have you been rescued from the half-lives most people live? Have you entered the threshold of abundant and eternal life in the kingdom? Have you been gifted with the equipment of mission?

What are you going to do with that equipment? What are you going to do with the world-changing power of God?

Are you ready to have such a thing?

Amen.

No comments: