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Anxiety Part 1: Mt: 4:8-11
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
How Jesus is Jesus is the gospel. Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad you're here and we hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Hit the commons.church for more information. Well, welcome today.
Speaker 1:My name is Jeremy. We're so glad that you're here with us to celebrate today on this World Refugee Day and National Indigenous Peoples Day. Now, of course, both of those happened during the week earlier, but this is a Sunday where we have a chance to acknowledge both of them. And I love the way that Bobby weaved that into our celebration of the Eucharist earlier that God welcomes all peoples to his table together regardless of the walls that we may seem to create between ourselves. Of course, this is a focused point in the year where we intentionally remind ourselves about these issues in particular.
Speaker 1:However, we do also want to know that we are engaged in these conversations beyond just this day. We are working with a number of refugee families here in Calgary throughout the year, and we are looking forward to a second family that we have sponsored coming to Canada to share in the safety and privilege that we experience. And that acknowledgment of our place here on the traditional territory of the many nations of treaty seven, that is on our website year round. We acknowledge that, and we continue to look for opportunities to lean into those relationships and to learn from our indigenous neighbors and friends. Now that said, we are also continuing and finishing this short series on the temptations of Christ today.
Speaker 1:We have called this series anxiety, and that might seem like a strange title for a series working with these texts, but we think that when we boil these down and we reach into the core at the heart of these stories, we find that these are very human experiences. The need for security and the temptation to think that more will soothe our anxiety of learning how to trust. The need for esteem and the temptation to think that being celebrated will eliminate the anxiety of figuring out who we are for ourselves without external validation. Today, we face the need for control and that old temptation to think that getting our way regardless of the means that we use to get there can free us from the anxiety of wanting power over every situation and circumstance we encounter. However, before we dive into that, we do want to acknowledge once again that this is a conversation about general human anxieties.
Speaker 1:That is not the extent of the experience in this room, however. And so if you need to speak with someone in a more professional setting about a more acute experience of anxiety, perhaps extraordinary pressures you're facing or an anxiety disorder, then we have professionals in this community whom we trust deeply and whose scope of competency includes situations like that. And so we can make referrals and connections in order to make sure that you are able to access the support you need. And if that's you, then please just come and talk to us, anyone on staff or the connection team. We would love to make those connections because that's part of how we serve this community well as well.
Speaker 1:Now in the last two weeks, we have explored two temptations and two sources of related anxieties. Now Bobby started us by looking at the temptation to turn stones into bread. And the thing here is that turning stones into bread doesn't really seem like such a bad thing. Jesus is hungry. He's completed his fast anyway.
Speaker 1:As I said last week, why not tuck in for a bit of previously igneous snack? And that was a geology joke, and I did say it last week, but nobody laughed. And so I'm saying it again just to spite you because igneous is a type of rock. Alright. Now here's the thing.
Speaker 1:Turning stones into bread is not a bad idea. The problem here is not the bread. The problem is that Jesus knows that if he begins to think, he can look after himself, that he can meet all of his own needs, that he can conjure up his desires on demand. He knows that eventually that temptation will lead him to think that he has no need for trust in his life. And every day, I am tempted to think that what I need to live comes from my ability to generate it, to work hard, and to earn a living, to create for myself using my intellect and my talents, and to a certain extent that is true.
Speaker 1:But there is more to life than bread. And the sooner I can make peace with the fact that I will just never simply escape the need for trust, then the less anxious I will be as I walk through life. And then last week, we encountered this really interesting temptation where Jesus is told to throw himself off the roof of the temple. And this is kind of a strange one because without any context, you're kind of left thinking, well, why would that be a temptation for anyone? I mean, if I took you to the roof of the church and I just started shouting, jump off, like Shia LaBeouf style, do it.
Speaker 1:Do it. Do it. It probably wouldn't matter how many times I said it or how much energy I put into it. It just likely wouldn't be all that tempting to try. However, what we talked about last week was the fact that leading up to the time of Jesus, a time we call the intertestamental period, there had developed a myth in popular Jewish culture that when the Messiah arrived, he would appear miraculously in the temple courts.
Speaker 1:That came from language in the prophet Malachi that said the Lord's Messiah would return to his temple suddenly. The tempter says to Jesus, throw yourself off. Descend unharmed. Land in front of those worshiping there. If you are the son of God, prove to them you are who you say you are.
Speaker 1:And so when Jesus responds, do not put the Lord your God to the test, the test that Jesus is talking about isn't just whether God will catch him. The test is, do you want to be the Messiah the way God wants or the way the crowd expects? Because here's the thing. If the son of God could be content to turn his back on that moment and walk back into town hungry and thirsty and still completely unknown by the crowd, then maybe being celebrated isn't the answer we think that it is. You see, the real question here is, are you tempted to think that being known and celebrated and the center of everyone's attention can replace the honest sense of self identity that comes through our relationship to God?
Speaker 1:And so if you are anxious about your place in the world, you need to come to learn to trust in your identity as a loved child. So that was temptations one and two. Today, we have one more temptation and one more related anxiety to explore. Before next week, we move our focus and we head back to the Old Testament to work our way through some of the life and stories of David. That series is gonna take us through the summer, and I think that will be a lot of fun as well.
Speaker 1:But let's pray, and then we'll dive in today. Holy father, who welcomes us with open arms, who turns stones into bread for us, and who catches us when we fall. May we come to rest in your embrace, knowing that each of our deepest anxieties are met and dissolved in you. Would you teach us through your love that you never intended to be the source of all that we wanted, but that you have always been the source of all we need, that we can rest in you, that we can trust in you, that we can find our source and our identity in and through you. As we speak today of our desire for power and control, and the fact that we often sometimes wish to dominate our world with our perspective regardless of the damage our shortsightedness might cause, would you forgive us?
Speaker 1:When our worst and sometimes even our best intentions have led to the suffering of others, the displacement of indigenous peoples, and the migration of refugees away from our violence. Would you forgive us For the ways that we have imposed ourselves on others unintentionally perhaps in the pursuit of what we thought was good, would you help us to realize that the means to the end are just as important as the goal, and that to follow you means to walk your path even when it is slow and long, refusing to get sidetracked by shortcuts. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen. Okay.
Speaker 1:Last week, we ended in Matthew chapter four verse seven. Today, we're gonna pick up in verse eight where we read, again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. Now last week, we talked about that word paralambano, that the devil took him or snatched him or grabbed him and moved him somewhere he did not want to go. Well, it's the same word here again. So the spirit leads Jesus into this story.
Speaker 1:The spirit stoops down and walks ahead and beside of Jesus into the wilderness. This devil grabs and grasps and tries to manipulate Jesus. So be aware of those different voices in your life. But once again, they get to this high mountain, and the devil says, all this I will give you if you will bow down and worship me. Now it's interesting here because in the first two temptations, the devil has started each time with this line.
Speaker 1:If you are the son of the god, then why don't you try this? This time he skips that intro, and it's been posited that maybe he's just given up on this line of reasoning. So he's tried it twice. It didn't work. Jesus didn't take the bait.
Speaker 1:Let's try a new angle here. There might be something to that. I know that when I really want to do something that I know I shouldn't do, I have this incredible profound ability to come up with all kinds of new reasons and explanations and arguments for why I should do that thing. You can ask my wife. But whenever Apple comes out with any new product, by the time she gets home, I have studied the keynote, and I have memorized all of the talking points, and I have 15 perfectly reasonable reasons why it would be ridiculous for me not to upgrade my perfectly working practically brand new Mac.
Speaker 1:It's important. But on a more serious note, there may be times where you have come to the realization that a certain path is just not healthy for you. And yet, oftentimes, in that moment, right when you've decided or as soon as you believe you've set your course, one new idea or one new objection, some new voice pops into your mind. What about this? And did you think about that?
Speaker 1:Suddenly, one more question that makes you think about what you thought you had decided. Now call this a devil. Call it your subconscious. Sometimes what this is is your worst self trying desperately to hang on. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't be open to new ideas and thoughts and opportunities.
Speaker 1:But when you know in your heart that a path is unhealthy for you, don't let yourself be talked back onto it. And so perhaps that's what happens here. The devil tries a new trick. But there's something else to notice here as well because Luke actually records these temptations in a different order. And even though this one is the second one in Luke, the language is the same as here.
Speaker 1:And that's because the setup, if you are the son of God, is fundamentally incompatible with the challenge to bow down before this devil. You see, the whole point of this temptation is to forget about the means and be focused on the ends. The whole world will be yours. But if Jesus' relationship to God is the means through which the world will be changed, And perhaps bringing up his identity as the son of God defeats that purpose. And so he drops it.
Speaker 1:We'll come back to that idea. But first, Jesus responds. He says, away from me, Satan, for it is written, worship the Lord your God and serve him only. So once again, Jesus quotes from scripture, this time from Deuteronomy six. And then the writer of Matthew concludes the story by saying, then the devil left him and the angels came and attended him.
Speaker 1:So it's verses eight through 11. That is our third and final temptation, and it wraps up this sort of story here in the book of Matthew. But let's go back to the beginning and work our way through. So in verse seven, we read the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. So this is, again, one of those moments where we're reminded that we're reading something metaphorical here.
Speaker 1:There is, of course, no mountain from which you can see all the kingdoms of the world. And so either what we have here is the use of hyperbole. Jesus is taken to a very high mountain where he sees some of the kingdoms of the world, and that serves as a representative experience to let him know that this temptation has a grand universal scale behind it, all the kingdoms. Or this is less a physical experience and more a spiritual encounter that Jesus has. So perhaps he's not actually literally standing on top of a high mountain.
Speaker 1:He's having a vision or an ecstatic encounter where he imagines himself seeing all the kingdoms of the world. And the language here in Greek is or exceedingly high mountain, which could also be read as exceedingly proud mountain. And I'm not sure that's just a coincidence given the content of this temptation. Point is, the bible is more complex than just the words on the page. And these writers who, yes, are certainly ancient, have far more literary dexterity than we often give them credit for.
Speaker 1:These are incredibly good storyteller. Example, considering that Jesus is going to respond from Deuteronomy six, it's likely that the mountain language here used by the writer of Matthew is meant to call back to another passage from Deuteronomy as well. This time where Moses climbs a mountain in Deuteronomy 34. There, the Lord showed him the whole land from Gilead to Dan, all of Naphtali, the territory of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Mediterranean Sea, the Negev and the whole region from the Valley Of Jericho, the city of palms as far as Zoar. Then the Lord said to him, this is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Speaker 1:When I said, will give it to your descendants. I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it. Now, if Jesus is, as we talked about in the first week of this series, in some sense, the new Moses, and if Jesus is here to expand the story of the Hebrew people to all peoples, And if Jesus does do that through his identity as the son of God, then it does seem that this writer is intentionally hinting at this grand expanded story here in this imagery. Moses ascended a mountain to see the promised land. Jesus stands on a mountain to see the entire world laid before him.
Speaker 1:Moses gets a glimpse of a story he won't live to see complete. Jesus gives his life to usher in a new story completed. These are incredibly beautifully constructed stories that we read with callbacks to deep memory within the Hebrew scriptures. And the writer of Matthew here is reminding us of everything that we talked about in our Roman series earlier this spring that Jesus is the long awaited culmination of a story that began long, long ago. But what's important here as this story unfolds just as it was in Romans is the unexpected way in which Jesus fulfills that role.
Speaker 1:And so Jesus responds, away from me, Satan, for it is written, worship the Lord your God and serve him only. Now couple of things are important here. First, away from me, Satan. This is interesting because this is the first time we've seen this word Satan in this story. Up until now, the writer has used the Greek diabolos.
Speaker 1:Here, this is a transliteration of a Hebrew word satan or hasatan. And it reads satanas in the Greek, but that's just sort of like the writer trying to say Satan but with a Greek accent. And so it's true that these words were used largely interchangeably by the time of Jesus. But Hasatan actually has a much more complicated and frankly more interesting backstory to it. Satan in Hebrew is literally the word for adversary.
Speaker 1:And if you look it up in the Old Testament, you'll see that it's actually primarily used in that more generic sense. There's even a passage in the book of Numbers where the angel of the Lord and some people think that this is an ancient Hebrew way of talking about the Lord Yahweh himself showing up in the story, but this angel of the Lord opposes a man named Balaam because his path is reckless, and it's taking him away from God and his goodness. And the Hebrew says that the Lord Satans him or opposes him. God actually becomes his adversary in that moment. And so it seems that while the writer of Matthew prefers this more tangible image of devil, Jesus wants to, in some sense, add to the scope of this more expansive Hebrew image of all that opposes the divine.
Speaker 1:You could think of it this way, that Jesus lumps the devil in front of him in with all that opposes God, all the Satans of the world. As I said last week, this is not about denying the devil or saying it hasn't real. It's about expanding our consciousness to realize there's more going on in this story. That there are various ways to approach this language as you come across it in your faith journey. Now that said, the really interesting thing here is about what Jesus says when he quotes scripture.
Speaker 1:And this phrase, worship the Lord your God and serve him only, comes from Deuteronomy chapter six, but it's actually an intentional misquote. Because if you go back to Deuteronomy and you look it up, it actually says, fear the lord your god and serve him. And Jesus seems to say that language isn't helpful anymore. I have come and your imagination of god will never be the same again. Things are different now.
Speaker 1:But this quote actually comes from a passage in Deuteronomy that is looking back on a passage from Exodus. Now the passage Jesus quotes from in Deuteronomy is all about how to worship Yahweh. If you read it, it references something that happened at a place called Massah. And then if you go to the book of Exodus and you look for what happened at Massah, you find a story where the people grumble because they don't have water, and god gives them miraculous water. And then they grumble because they don't have food, and god gives them miraculous food.
Speaker 1:And then they grumble because they don't have meat, and god gives them miraculous meat. And then Moses and god go up on the mountain to have a little chat, and the people grumble because they can't see god anymore. And so Moses' right hand man, Aaron, decides to take matters into his own hand. And he gathers up all the gold from all the people, and he builds them a golden calf. You may have heard this story before.
Speaker 1:A golden cow that they can worship in front of. But what's really interesting about this story, is found in Exodus 32, is that we generally tend to assume that the problem with the golden calf was that the Israelites had abandoned the true god to worship some newfangled fancy shiny calf god. That's not actually what we read there in Exodus. In fact, when Aaron unveils this golden statue, he says, sometimes in English, here are your gods. But in Hebrew, the plural is ambiguous at best, and so it could easily be read, here is your god who led you out of Egypt.
Speaker 1:And then to confirm that he is indeed talking about the one true God, he actually says, tomorrow we will hold a festival to the Lord Yahweh. That's the personal name for the God of Israel. So bottom line, the problem isn't that they've abandoned the true God to worship a new God. The problem is they're worshiping God the wrong way. You see, Yahweh already has images in the world to remind us of him.
Speaker 1:Images he created. His image embedded in humanity. That's Genesis one twenty seven. God created mankind in his own image. In the image of God, he created them.
Speaker 1:Male and female, he created them. You see, this god, Yahweh, already has very specifically created icons of himself all throughout the world. You can't go anywhere without seeing an image of god. I mean, maybe if you're out in the mountains camping, but still eventually you're going to need to interact with someone somewhere sometime. That's by design.
Speaker 1:And what God doesn't want is for his people to stop seeing the divine in each other and to start projecting that onto a specific image or idol or statue so that slowly over time it diminishes the sacredness of each human person. This story about the golden calf is a story about the consequences of doing the right thing worshiping God in the wrong way in front of a statue. Now when Jesus, who is in some sense the new Moses, quotes Moses in reference to a story about worshiping God in the wrong way, what does that mean for our story here, especially when the setup is specifically about worshiping the devil? And some of that comes down to our definition of worship. You see, the devil asked Jesus to bow down before him.
Speaker 1:That's what that word actually means. But I think I could make a pretty good argument that for God, worship means something far, far deeper than that. Worship is how we live and breathe. Worship is how we move in and through the world to create change. It's not burnt offerings and sacrifices.
Speaker 1:It's mercy and justice as the prophet Hosea says. It's not calling out lord, lord. It's caring for the hungry and the thirsty and the naked and the stranger as Jesus said. But if true worship is really about creating more of heaven here on earth, then what better way for Jesus to do that than to take control of all the kingdoms of the world? I mean, that seems like the right thing to do, doesn't it?
Speaker 1:Given everything that's happening in the world today, violence in Syria and natural disasters and racism, given everything that has happened in human history since Jesus, the Holocaust and crusades and two world wars and global pollution. Wouldn't it have been better if Jesus had just taken this chance right here to set all things right? And I understand that there are people whose faith is predicated on the idea that one day, god will finally take away our ability to choose poorly. But here's the thing. Over and over and over again in the scriptures, god seems to me to be very concerned with the how.
Speaker 1:How we worship him and how we serve him and how we go about creating this kind of change in the world, how his son steps into the story to become the salvation of the world. Because if Jesus had taken this path toward his kingdom, it's true. Maybe things would have been easier. And maybe they would have been quicker and perhaps there could have been less heartache, but yet it would have been opposed to the grace of God's character and his plan to love creation into his kingdom. You see the story of God is long and slow and complex, but that's okay.
Speaker 1:Because the story of God was never meant to be efficient. It was meant to be beautiful. And so the image of a messiah who serves others first, And the image of a king who turns his authority and splendor upside down so that it looks more like invitation and friendship. These are not incidental to the story. Because how Jesus is Jesus is the gospel.
Speaker 1:Gospel isn't just that God saves us. Gospel is how God saves us with love and grace and peace by offering himself to us rather than forcing us to bow in fear. And so the temptation that Jesus faces in this moment is somehow the same anxiety we find ourselves struggling with at some point in almost every relationship that we get into. Will we learn what it means to come alongside someone and journey with them and walk with them and support and correct them and care for those around us even when they choose poorly? Or will we be tempted to do the right things in the wrong way?
Speaker 1:And even with the best of intentions to start to coerce and manipulate and shame and intimidate people into what we think is best for them. Because the issue here is that we often fall into the trap of thinking that we can bow down before all kinds of things that are opposed to God if it leads to the right end. And Jesus knows it doesn't work that way. When you manipulate a friend into a good choice, it's still wrong. And when you legislate morality that imposes on someone else's freedoms, it's still wrong.
Speaker 1:And when religion becomes a tool to shame people into the choices that we think they should make, we have lost the plot. Because Jesus could have bowed his knee and then bent the world to his imagination. But instead, he chose to invite us to follow him into a life of humble service even when it seemed like there was an easier way forward. And so my prayer is that when you begin to think that a little bit more power or a touch more ability to control the people around you will somehow soothe your anxiety and get you to the place that god wants you to be. In those moments, you would remember that the way of Jesus is sometimes long and slow, and it bypasses the chance to control even when the path is winding and long.
Speaker 1:Because God is just as concerned with how you do as what you do. And so may you do well. Let's pray. God, would you be with us in those moments where we are tempted to think that if we could just seize control of a situation or we could access power over someone else that we could do the right thing. When we're tempted to think that we could manipulate or coerce or bully someone into doing the right thing that this would somehow please you, that we could use our might or our political power or violence even at times to move towards your kingdom.
Speaker 1:God, would you show us that this is a false promise And a temptation that only leads to more heartache and suffering and hurt. God, by your spirit, would you be present to each of us reminding us that your story is not simply your kingdom and where the story goes. Your story is how we get there and how we embrace not just the end, but the path of Jesus, the way of Jesus, the life of service and love and grace and peace that he showed us. So, God, may we serve well those in our lives even when it's hard. May we humbly submit ourselves to those around us, showing them what the path is rather than forcing them onto the one we think they should take.
Speaker 1:God, may we, like your son, become examples of grace and peace in the world. And would that become magnetic as people are drawn into that story to understand that path so that as we walk it together, your kingdom would be built step by step. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen.