[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome to the collective table where we celebrate the intersections of Jesus, justice and joy.
This podcast is brought to you by Oceanside Sanctuary Church. Each week we bring our listeners a recording of our weekly Sunday teaching at Oceanside Sanctuary, which ties scripture into the larger conversations happening in our community, congregation and even the podcast. So we're glad your here and thanks for listening.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: Hi everybody.
How are y'? All?
I'm impressed you're here.
Did this morning come early for you?
Yeah, me too.
Well, you're here. I think we're in third, the third week of Lent, and Jason and I have been going through some stories and practices of Jesus life.
And last week he spoke about baptism and how Jesus found himself in this place with people on the margins and John the Baptist baptizing people in the river Jordan where then Jesus himself was baptized into a a form of solidarity with those who were on the margins.
And today we're going to continue in a story that is exactly right after Christ's baptism. So we are going to be reading together Matthew 4:1 11. They'll be on your screen here.
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the devil.
He fasted 40 days and 40 nights, and afterwards he was famished.
The tempter came and said to him, if you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.
But he answered, it is written, one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, if you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, he will command his angels concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.
Jesus said to him, again it is written, do not put the Lord your God to the test again. The devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him the kingdom of the world and their glory and said to him, all these I will give you if you will fall down and worship me.
Then Jesus said to him, away with you, Satan, for it is written, worship the Lord your God and serve only him.
Then the devil left, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.
That's a lot. Can we pray together so that we can maybe take a little bit of this in God? We thank you for these ancient words, for this account of Christ.
Help us to build some understanding.
Help us to understand the ministry and authority that you hold as Christ in this moment in this place.
Thank you for all the good and all the difficulty in Jesus name, Amen.
Recently I heard a really kind of one of those stories that I say to. I know we talk about our grandson a lot, but, like I'll often say, does that take your breath away? And this took my breath away a little bit. And it was a story about two women who went to the hospital on their birthdays. They didn't know each other. Same day it's their birthday. They go to the hospital because they are delivering their own child. So they're in labor, and they're at the same hospital on their birthdays, and they have very different labors.
But as the hospital staff takes a look, they find that the babies that were born were born not just in the same hour, not just on the same minute, but on the very same second of each other.
Okay. So I am like, oh, like, that takes my breath away. That is. I'm thinking, God has something to do with that. There is something amazing happening here.
So I want to know, truthfully, hearing that story, do you think it's a coincidence or something incredible? Some kind of magical thing? So if you're a magical thinker, like I am.
Okay.
And if you're more of a. That's an interesting coincidence.
Okay.
Well, I think that both are valid.
I do. I do.
And I can't help but read this story and get right to the four e. D days and the 40 nights. And if you have been spending any time in the Bible, you will notice that there is some. That is an interesting little amount of time. In fact, the. The word 40 has.
Is in the Bible, kind of depending on how you read the references, between 146 and 159 times.
Wow. So all these people did things for 40 days and 40 nights or for 40 years?
I mean, maybe you guys can think right now. The great flood, Noah's ark.
How long did it rain?
40 days and 40 nights.
And Moses on Mount Sinai getting the law.
How many days was he up there?
40 days and 40 nights. Elijah traveling for how long?
40 days and 40 nights through the wilderness.
We're in Lent. How long is lent? 40 days.
I'm feeling like there's some cosmic thing here.
Well, I'm sorry to tell you, but biblical scholars, or most biblical scholars, nobody totally agrees on any of this, including all of us here. But most biblical scholars will say that it really was just a turn of phrase.
It was this way of kind of describing something that happened that was really hard.
But. And a trial oftentimes, like A liminal period, but also something that wouldn't break you.
So it'd be like, you know, when I'm going through traffic and I finally get to my daughter's all the way down in San Diego, and I was like, that was forever and a day.
It's a turn of phrase. It's not an actual exact period. So unfortunately, not that it's. There's not lots of mystical and magical, but maybe this isn't it.
And then when I read this story, I also want to get to that word. Devil artists have depicted the devil with a red suit and little horns.
We don't actually really know what the devil is.
If anyone tells you they do, I don't.
I don't agree with them. I think they're wrong.
We can. We know in Genesis the devil's talked about as a snake.
We know in John the devil is talked about as the father of lies.
But what we do know is that the tempter, the devil, Satan, these are all words that are often used to describe something that's happening that is pulling a person or a group of people away from the will of God.
Is it an anthropomorphized red devil? The Bible does not say that.
So we don't really completely know.
So when we read this story, I think that it is often easy because of art and the themes of evil and good, or if you are like me and have to put up with a husband that makes you watch every Marvel film, every Star Wars, Star Trek, it's all evil and good. So we could read this story and imagine Jesus with his cape and his Bible shield fighting against Satan, the enemy carrying all the dark forces.
And there's this great battle in the desert, and then Jesus survives to fight another day.
Amen.
It's kind of a fun story. And in fact, I'm sure they've made a movie about it.
And I think it's a fine way to read that text. We all have the delight of reading through scripture and being able to read text and have a midrash, which is something that. That a Jewish community would call a discussion about. What does this mean? What is this saying for me today?
So reading it that way is great.
But today, in the midst of Lent, I would like us to read it in a different way, if you don't mind.
Oftentimes when we look at Jesus as a superhero, we forget that Jesus was human.
Many people much smarter than myself use a term that Jesus was all God and all man all at the same time.
And I'll share with you. I don't totally understand what that means.
I just. I don't. I believe it, I think most of the time.
But if we were to read this scripture as Jesus, on what we might call a vision quest, willingly refraining from food, from community, from comfort, and seeking understanding for his ministry ahead and the fight that he is having with the tempter as an internal one, I find it more interesting.
Throughout history and in ancient Judaism, there was a practice that is well known and documented where people went out into the desert to find God.
There are still many communities that do this today.
Those that do, it's been studied well that oftentimes they find themselves after a long period of time of not eating, of being alone, as being bit in a dreamlike state, having altered moods, and then in the end describing a peak experience after following an internal struggle, they report feeling at peace, empowerment, oftentimes spiritual connection to all things around them.
And while most of you probably I don't know all of you well, but haven't been in the desert for a long enough period of time that it is hard, but not so long that it broke you, I believe that many of you have done all kinds of things to test yourselves. I have heard things like really long bike rides across multiple states.
I have heard things like, I'm not eating meat.
I'm not eating.
I'm only eating meat.
We won't go there.
Pilgrimages, really long races.
We often believe that doing something hard, that testing ourselves, testing our own abilities. This is, I think, why people sport we do these things, because we believe we will come out on the other side stronger.
And I think this is where we find Jesus having just been baptized with, with those that were marginalized and going away for 40 days, void of community, void of maybe his own godhood and wondering what it would be like to be fully human, to be able to love and understand the humans he would be ministering to after this period.
And so we see Jesus first tempted with a power to fill his belly.
While I was reading about this scripture and commentary, I was looking and I almost shared a few pictures with you, but I was looking at all kinds of rocks that look like bread.
I would imagine sourdough.
But I. I did find one man who was in Joshua Tree and found a rock that looked like it had been cut up into a loaf of bread. And he thought it looked like a crusty wheat.
Can you imagine Jesus after 40 days, being fully human and famished and looking at bread and just being hungry?
My daughter Judah decided To be vegetarian for about three weeks.
And just the smell of bacon, it took her away. She said, forget it.
Can you imagine Jesus fully human?
But for whatever reason, after this long period of time, it wasn't yet time for him to eat.
It wasn't time for him to use his powers. We know that he turned loaves and fishes and multiplied those things, but it wasn't to gratify himself.
This first temptation was to use his gifts and his powers, his abilities for self satisfaction.
And that would have been wrong for him at that moment.
In his second temptation, we see Jesus being taken to the top of the temple.
Was this somehow a teleportation?
Was this a vision?
We don't know.
We do know that this, this word of being at the very top of the temple, it kind of meant the wing off at the very, very end, looking down, throw yourself down.
The tempter says, Anybody who has lived the human experience, I believe, has those dark thoughts.
Who are you?
Is your life worth living?
Does God love me enough to rescue me?
So many commentary about Jesus in this moment. When they see Jesus as this superhero figure, it's a moment of never thinking, of desperation. It's a moment of throwing themselves, throwing Jesus down so that Jesus can be saved by God and all could see God's glory.
But I disagree with that idea of this passage.
How could Christ understand the human experience if Christ doesn't know what it feels like to wonder, do I have importance?
I think this was a moment of desperation.
And then finally we see Jesus shown all the kingdoms, the world in splendor. This vision that all of this could be had by Christ, if only Christ would bow down to evil.
I think after 40 days that Jesus probably about to walk into the fullness of his ministry. Already had his Sermon on the Mount talking points.
He was already imagining what the start of his ministry would look like.
I think he was already probably counting the costs of his ministry.
The ministry that he had in his mind as the one that he would walk, would leave him as a scapegoat, would leave him gleaning the corners of the fields with all the other hungry people.
He would have no place to rest his head.
Jesus, I believe, was coming to terms with this.
When he has this vision of what many wanted him to do, which was take over a kingdom by force.
But the path ahead of him would lie not in the throne, but in a cross.
Not over a rulership through power, but a willingness to suffer and to love.
So thank God Jesus decided to remain human in this period of testing And I think that leaves us with a really interesting place. Because when we see Jesus as the superhero and Satan as the external power with an epic battle, we can watch from the sidelines, never feeling it has that much to do with us.
But if we see that Jesus is experiencing humanity, experiencing the kind of testing that we experience every day when we see this 40 days and 40 nights, not as an exact time. So when we're looking at our own testing or suffering, we're going, oh, well, that's 32. So it's not exactly the same.
We enter into this place.
So it's Lent.
And maybe some of you are observing Lent and some of you aren't.
Maybe your Lenten experience is a little bit like Noah's. The rain is falling down on you and it feels like there is no end in sight.
You didn't choose for the rain on this long period.
Perhaps you are like Moses and you're in a space where you're getting a lot of downloaded information. You're feeling very close to God. If people could really see what's happening on the inside.
And your face is glowing because God is so close to you right now. And that is your Lenten experience.
Perhaps, like Jesus, you are choosing to enter into a 40 day period of questioning, of being willing to be tested.
Should my gifts only edify myself or do I have gifts that I should be giving to others?
Am I loved by God?
Are there times where I'll do unscrupulous things to gain power?
Because I believe the only way to make it in this world is to dominate instead of germinate.
So today, while I totally believe in magical thinking, in imagination, in finding God in our imagination, I would like to strip ourselves of that and say that sometimes walking into testing can be a really great thing.
And I am not asking you to give 40 days of non eating in the desert. Please do not leave your family and say I'm going camping. I mean, maybe you should, but get permission from whoever is watching the kids.
But in this time of Lent, before we get to Easter, where we start to talk about renewal and spring, if you are not by force in the midst of something hard, consider putting yourself into the place of doing something difficult.
I don't know what that is for you. For some of you, as difficult as it gets might be taking for five minutes to drink a cup of tea before you go running like a crazy person into your life.
Perhaps doing something hard is really taking a look at your own internal thought process and giving yourself to Easter to do that.
Maybe it isn't eating chocolate.
I don't know what it is for you, but I suggest that you do not let this Lenten period pass you by before you allow yourself a bit of testing.
Not to see if God loves you or if you're worthy, but because it is good to enter back into the pain, the struggle, the back breaking work of being human and therefore when we meet somebody else who is in the midst of that, we can be there just as Jesus is for us.
Amen.
I'm going to pray while the band comes up.
God, thank you, thank you Jesus for this passage, for your humanity.
I don't totally understand how it all works, but there are times in my spirit when where I feel it closely.
Help us God to be one with you in the testing.
And Lord, we ask that you do not abandon us into temptation, but you deliver us from evil.
In Jesus name. Amen.
[00:27:38] Speaker A: Thank you for joining us for this Sunday teaching, no matter when or where you're tuning in.
To learn more about our community or to support the work we do, Visit
[email protected] We hope to see you again soon.
