PUT TO THE TEST
a sermon based on Luke 4:1-13
by Rev. Rick Thompson 

     An overweight pastor decided it was time to shed some excess pounds.  He took his new diet seriously, even changing his route to work to avoid going past his favorite bakery.  One morning, though, he showed up at work with a gigantic coffee cake.  Everyone in the office scolded him, but his smile remained nonetheless.  “This is a special coffee cake,” he explained.

     “What makes it so special?” asked a co-worker.  “Is it someone’s birthday?”

     “No,” the pastor reported.  “I forgot my intention this morning, and drove by the bakery without thinking.  The items in the window looked so good, and this looked best of all!  I was beginning to feel it was no accident I was there, so I prayed, ‘Lord, if you want me to have this delicious coffee cake, let there be a parking spot open right in front of the bakery.’”

     “So your prayer was answered?” asked the co-worker.

     “It certainly was!” replied the pastor.  “On my 8^th time around the block, a spot opened up right in front of the bakery!”

     Would you call that temptation?  That’s often how we think about it, isn’t it—temptation is giving in to the cravings and weaknesses we experience, indulging ourselves in things we enjoy, even when we know they are harmful to us.

     But I think the Bible would have us go deeper in our understanding of temptation.  Temptation, at its heart, is really testing—testing of whether we will remain true to our identity and mission as children of God.

     Abraham, for one, was tested.  He and Sarah had gone long years without a son, an heir.  They were old and fresh out of hope when God made them an incredible promise: “You will have a son!”  Finally, they had that son, named Isaac.  And the next thing we hear is God saying Abraham, “Now, I’m going to test you.  If you are who you say you are, if you trust me, you will do what I say: take Isaac, the promised son, up a mountain, and sacrifice him to me.” 

     Abraham was blessed with a son—and immediately put to the test!

     That’s kind of how Alex was tested—not by a bakery, but by a difficult dilemma in his own life.

     Alex had studied hard and worked hard to advance in his career, and now was in the job he had dreamed about for a long, long time.  He was earning more money than he had ever imagined possible.  He enjoyed his work and the people he worked with.  He was growing and learning every day.  It was a great job—until…

     Until his boss came to him and said, “Alex, the company is losing money.  I don’t want to lose the company, and you don’t want to lose your job, do you?  So, for a while, until things get turned around, we're gonna have to cut some corners—you know, skimp a little on quality without lowering prices, promise deliveries we know we can’t make, cut some service staff but continue to promise prompt service.  Whadya say, Alex?  Can you help me out on this one?  If you do, I’ll see to it you’re handsomely rewarded when the money starts coming in again.  Sleep on it overnight, and we’ll talk again in the morning.”

     Alex didn’t sleep much that night.  He wrestled with his decision.  He was a Christian.  He felt like his boss was asking him to do something unethical, to cheat their customers.  He knew that was wrong, but he did love the job, and the money, and the prestige it bought him.  So what would he do?  What should he do?

     Alex was being put to the test.  Much more deeply than the pastor with the coffee cake, Alex was being put to the test.

     That’s what was happening to Jesus in the story we just read.

     It was not long after he’d been baptized.  It had been a high moment in his life!  After years of growing up in a devout Jewish family, learning the stories of his people, and growing in his awareness of his unique and saving mission from the heavenly Father, he had come to the River Jordan and requested that John baptize him.  Reluctantly, John agreed, and as Jesus emerged from the water, that heavenly voice had proclaimed him God’s own beloved Son and declared how deeply pleased God was with Jesus.

     Yes, it was a high moment—but it was only a moment! 

     Soon after, we read, Jesus is in the wilderness—the hot, barren, dry, threatening wilderness.  He’s out there for 40 days. He’s weary and he’s hungry. And there, Jesus is tested.  He is confronted by Satan, and tested.  Will he remain true to his identity?  Will he remain true to his mission?  Will he succumb to the powerful desires for comfort and power and the acclaim of the people, even if he has to, just this one time—turn away from his heavenly Father?

     It was a difficult, gut-wrenching test.  And it wouldn’t be the last time Jesus was tested.  It would happen again—in fact, I suspect it happened throughout his earthly life and ministry.  “Who are you, Jesus?  Don’t you have any power, Jesus?  Did God really say that, Jesus?”  I can hear that voice—that seductive, satanic voice—assaulting the consciousness of Jesus again and again—can’t you?  And then there would be that final test—when Judas allowed Satan to take control of him, and betrayed Jesus into the hands of his captors, and Jesus had to decide—yet again—whether he would fight or flee or allow them to have their way with him—for a time—for the sake of the mission God had given him. 

     Jesus was put to the test.  Out in the wilderness, and again and again as he went about doing God’s will and God’s work, Jesus was put to the test.

     And he passed.  He didn’t give in.  It wasn’t easy for Jesus, just as it’s awfully hard for us to resist temptation when we’re tested.  But Jesus passed the test.

     What made that possible?  Was it because he was God’s own Son, endowed with a power, endowed with divinity not available to the rest of us humans?  No!

     Jesus was able to resist Satan as the fully human One, who knew his heavenly Father intimately, who trusted that Father with his life—yes, indeed, with his very life—and who was willing to go anywhere to fulfill his mission.  Jesus was willing to follow his Father’s leading into a wilderness, and into the face of terrible evil and opposition, into the places where the untouchables lived, into the places where demons dwelled.  Jesus was even willing to follow his Father if following led him to a cross and a horrible, humiliating death! 

     Jesus resisted evil and the seductions of Satan because he knew his tradition, knew his mission, knew his heavenly Father, and nothing—nothing!—would deter him from remaining true to his identity and his mission. 

     Jesus was DETERMINED to follow God to the end, DETERMINED to get to his cross and resurrection because that was the way God had decided he would fulfill his mission.  And what was that mission?  To redeem all humanity and all creation, and to empower US to live lives faithfully, as JESUS HIMSELF lived faithfully!

     And it’s in Jesus that we discover who we are and whose we are and what our purpose is in life—to follow and glorify God, to live abundantly in God, now and for all eternity—even when it feels like we’re living in a harsh, unforgiving wilderness!

     And, in Jesus, we receive the potential and the power to remain faithful when we are tested by life’s challenges, tested by those tough decisions, tested by Satan. Jesus givens us the power to remain faithful to our heavenly Father!

     We have no reason to feel like the character in the book and movie, Ordinary People.  Stricken by grief and emptiness, in the midst of a mid-life crisis, he would hear people saying of themselves as they rode the elevator together, “I’m the kind of man who….”  And all this character can say, when he hears those others who are so certain of who they are is, “I’m the kind of man who hasn’t got the foggiest idea what kind of man I am.”

     In Jesus Christ, we have no reason to say that!  Instead, we have every reason to declare, “I belong to the God who has saved me and redeemed me and calls me his own!”  And, knowing that, we can go boldly and confidently—in Christ—to face every test that comes our way in life.  In Christ—and ONLY in Christ—only as we know the church’s Scriptures, and are diligent in prayer, and live life in God’s community of faith, will we be able to pass the test!

     Martin Luther was once asked by some younger colleagues, “We are harassed by many temptations which appeal to us so often and so strongly that they give us no rest.  You don’t seem to be troubled in this way.  What’s your secret, Dr. Luther?  Are you somehow immune to sin?”

     Luther replied, “I, too, know something of temptation.  But when temptation comes knocking at the door of my heart, I always answer, “Go away, Satan!  This place is occupied.  Go back to where you came from, for Christ lives here!”

     Remember that.  We are able to pass the test of faithfulness when we are able to shake our finger at Satan and say, “Go away!  For Jesus Christ lives here!”

     May God give us such faith!

AMEN.