TEMPTING!
INTRODUCTION
The title and theme of my homily for today is, “Tempting.”
T E M P T I N G. Tempting. Did I spell that correctly?
"Tempting."
How many times in our life have we said, “Tempting”?
“Tempting.” Haven’t we all said
that word out loud or in loud at times?
The second piece of Black Forest
Chocolate Cake. Tempting. The affair. The money is just sitting there. The
comment – especially when someone is posing or bragging and we would love to cut
them down to size. If only they knew, what I know, about them! Tempting. We
would love to throw an imaginary banana skin on the floor and see them slip and
fall so all can laugh at them. Uuum tempting.
Tempting. It’s the stuff of
comedy. It’s the stuff of tragedy.
FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT
Every year the First Sunday of
Lent has this theme of temptation. Jesus goes into the desert and he is
tempted.
This year’s gospel is from Luke.
Last year was Mark. The year before it was Matthew. Each gives their particular
theology and reflection on what it was like. Matthew and Luke spell it out a
bit more than Mark, who is always brief. Matthew and Luke each give three
temptations – but they are presented slightly different.
The key is the 40 days. All
three, Matthew, Mark and Luke, mention the 40 days. Jesus represents Israel
going into the desert for 40 years. Well, Jesus, the New Israel, goes into the
desert for 40 days and wrestles with evil and temptations.
Christianity is smart. It knows
we can’t sustain the same thing over and over again. Too much of the same thing
is often too much. The ongoing can go out of our consciousness or make us numb.
And so we need vacations and weekends. We need breaks. We need to break the
sameness. So we have holidays and holydays. So we have the Sabbath. And it’s
good for Christians to attend a retreat once and a while.
We have Lent – 40 days – a lot of
days – but it’s not all our days. The year has 365 or 366 when there is a Leap Year. To be
human is to compartmentalize and break things down into weeks, months, seasons.
The Moslems or Islam have the month of Ramadan – which is only 30 days. We have
30 + 10 days – that is 40 days of penance.
Lent is 40 Days. We all got
marked with ashes on Wednesday as a community. Now as a community we do penance
– but as Jesus said in the Ash Wednesday gospel, do the penance without tooting
one’s horn.
So Lent is a time to desert the
dessert table. It’s a time of fasting. It’s a time of turning off the TV more –
fasting from that a bit. It’s a good time with the weather getting better and
hopefully the snow disappearing to take a good walk – a lot of good walks away
from the ordinary and into the extraordinary within us. Walking is good for the
soul.
To walk down deep into the desert
of our soul – and maybe it has been deserted – and God is waiting there as the
Alone in the alone that is all of us.
So Lent is a good time to escape,
to retreat, to walk away and walk into the temple of our soul.
Now the big message – the theme
of this homily: if you go into the desert of your soul, expect temptations. They
are part of the landscape. Temptations come with the territory.
RETREATS – TEMPTATIONS
For 14 years of my life I worked
in two different retreat houses giving retreats.
Somewhere early on – on some
retreat, someone asked me a question I had never heard before, “How come when I
go on retreat, I have a lot more
temptations?”
That was the first time I heard that question. I didn’t know the answer.
Then someone else asked me the same
question again. Once more I couldn’t give an answer. Then I started making 8
day silent retreats at the Jesuit Retreat House in Wernersville, Pennsylvania.
Frank Miles, a wonderful Jesuit priest, asked me to reflect on Jesus’
temptations in the desert.
It was then I realized that’s
part of what it means to become quiet and make a good retreat. What hit Jesus
hits those who go into the desert of self: temptations.
When we go into the desert to get
closer to God, surprise, we get closer to the devil.
It’s one of life’s “Uh oh’s.” No
wonder people don’t make retreats. No wonder people don’t pray. No wonder
people fill up prayer time with words, babble, reading. No wonder people avoid
silence.
The closer we get to God, the
closer we get to the devil.
It brought me back to the great book by C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters. He says it all in there. He tells us how the
Devil works.
It’s actually obvious. “Nature
hates a vacuum,” as I’m sure you’ve heard. Benedict Spinoza said that in his Ethics, from way back in 1677. Turn off
the distractions, and we turn on to other distractions. Turn off the TV and
spend that gained time in prayer and the screen of our mind will show lots of
things to think about. We have lots of channels and programs playing on the
different stations in our mind.
So when people pray, I say,
expect distractions. You don’t have to go to confession about them. They are
part of the landscape of prayer.
So Lent is a retreat – a 40 day
retreat – into the desert of self – and expect temptations.
Jesus retreated into the desert
and had great temptations.
What are your temptations? What
are your 3 biggest temptations?
THREE POINTS
So on this first Sunday of the 40
days of Lent that started with Ash Wednesday, when Ashes, our mortality, is rubbed
in our face, the readings get us to face our temptations.
Luke talks about 3 temptations. Each
First Sunday of Lent I wrestle with how to make sense of these 3 temptations.
This year I found myself wording and working on them this way:
First Temptation:
The Easy Way Out or Laziness!
Second
Temptation: Give Me the Power and The Glory!
Third
Temptation: Taking Risks or Risky Behavior
In this homily let me spell out
these 3 a bit more. The second one, “Power” is not that difficult to
understand, but the first one, “The Easy way out” is a bit foggy and the 3rd
one, Risky Behavior” is not as clear as I would like. Sorry. It’s not you. It’s
me.
1) THE EASY WAY OUT
The first temptation to reflect
upon is, “The Easy Way Out.” To take the easy way out. To not do anything. To
sit back and be lazy.
Jesus is hungry and the devil
tempts him to change a rock, perhaps the shape of a loaf of bread, into bread.
That’s the temptation to wish we
could just snap our fingers and solve our problems – or let someone else do all
the work.
To have our daily bread, we have
to go and work and get to the store.
To have our daily bread, you have
to buy the wheat seeds. We have to dig the soil, plant the seed, and then water
it. Then wait. Then water. Then wait. Then water. Then we have to harvest the
wheat. Then we have to crush it and make meal and flour – or however bread is
made – then bake it and then slice it or break it.
Bread takes work and time.
Or okay, you’re not into baking,
you buy packaged bread at the supermarket. You still have to get out of bed
each day and get to work to earn your daily bread.
So too all the work in raising
kids.
Things don’t just happen. We have
to make things happen.
Life is the long struggle – but
the temptation is to cut corners. The temptation is to avoid work. The
temptation is laziness. To duct tape life. Sloppiness. Procrastination. To bury
our talents in the ground. To put things off. To do nothing. To waste a life.
So that’s the first temptation –
to be lazy and let things happen instead of making them happen.
2) GIVE ME POWER AND THE GLORY
The second temptation is to seek
power and glory for ourselves – instead of using our powers and gifts to serve
one another.
We have wonderful gifts and
powers:
·
the power of speech,
·
the power of listening,
·
the power of imagination,
·
the power of money,
·
the power of sex,
·
the power of being a male,
·
the power of being a female,
·
etc.
How well do I use my powers and
do I use them to build others up or to build myself up.
We’ve all heard the saying, “Give
God the Glory!”
Power is tricky.
There is a temptation to Lord it
over others – to act like God – out of laziness – or feelings of inferiority –
or knowing down deep we are not God.
The devil asks Jesus to give him
the power and the glory.
We’ve all heard the saying from
Lord Acton of England,
“Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Power is sneaky. It needs to be
watched. It can corrupt us.
Those of you who are married know
the power of sex. Do you use it well – to embrace, to help, to love one
another?
You who are well married know
that the word “intercourse” means to talk, to communicate, to use the language
of love – that it’s not just a physical moment – but it’s a 24-7 communication
– that love making needs to include working and walking with each other –
cooperating and eating and sharing and communicating with each other. You know
that using or withholding sex can be a powerful weapon – instead of a way of
serving one another.
Money is power – the so called
“God Almighty Dollar” – and it can be used to help or hurt folks.
A car has power – how well do I
drive?
Alcohol has power – it can help
folks relax in moderation – but it can also powerfully destroy human beings and
wrap people around a bottle.
Here I am in the pulpit. As
preacher I try to be wary of using the pulpit for my own glory – to let it go
to my head. I have to be careful of the bully pulpit – to try to bully you –
and you don’t have a voice back. I remember my sister saying, “It’s not fair.
Sometimes as I’m listening to a sermon, I want to scream and I can’t. He’s got
the mike and I don’t.”
I believe there are some topics
that are more for an open forum than for a pulpit – for a forum where all can
speak.
I have to be aware of the Golden
Rule: What do I need from these readings if I was sitting there listening to
these readings.
I have to be aware of the other
Golden Rule for preaching: 10 minutes.
Power is tricky.
Look at the problem of priests
who abused people. As I listened to people who have given us workshops on this,
I kept on hearing that it is an abuse of power.
As I reflected on today’s gospel
and the phase in it that we all know, “The
Power and the Glory” – I wondered about Graham Green’s book by that title.
I hadn’t read it in years. So I did a bit of research on it. It’s a powerful
story of a priest – the so called, “Whiskey Priest” and his Calvary, his cross,
his being hunted in Mexico
at a time no priests were allowed. I remember reading it slowly and so much hit
me – his dealing with redemption and pain and suffering. It’s a good read for
Lent.
Well surprise, I found out
something I didn’t know. Graham Green wrote the
book in 1940. 13 years later, 1953, a Cardinal Pizzardo in Rome condemned it. Then a
Cardinal Griffin in England,
condemns it – along with two books other
books, his so called, “Catholic Novels”. Brighten
Rock and The Heart of the Matter.
Evelyn Waugh, a friend of Graham Green said to him, “Why don’t you wait 13
years to reply?”
In reading about this I noticed
the following: Graham Green meets Paul VI who said to him on the side, “Some
aspects of your books are certain to offend some Catholics but you should pay
no attention to them.”
3) RISKY BUSINESS
The third temptation is to take
unhealthy risks.
The devil asks Jesus to jump off
the temple and let the angels catch you.
We need to exercise and eat
right. We need to get medical checkups. We need to take care of our health. Smoking
and couch potatoing are not smart.
We need to drive carefully and
wear seat belts and get our car serviced – and to check our tires.
Common sense instead of a sense of reckless risk taking is
the call of life.
We need to be aware of the danger
of having an affair – that it can be endanger our marriages and our families.
We need to be wise with our
spending – keeping without our budget.
We need to pray and have a
healthy spiritual life.
And then there is the risk of
hell. I don’t know about you, but I don’t worry about hell in the hereafter as
much as going to hell in the here and now – thru risky behavior and risk
attitudes.
It’s not smart to walk on the
edge of the cliff of danger – expecting God to rescue me – or to blame God when
we go over the edge.
I remember being stationed with a
priest who slowly drank himself to death. We intervened. We tried to get him
help – but he resisted strongly. I remember writing a poem called, “Slow
Suicide.” He did not kill himself with one shot, but many shots.
Risky behavior.
Taking risks can be a dangerous
temptation.
CONCLUSION
I didn’t practice what I preached
– one of the regular sins of preachers – because I have gone over time.
So I conclude by saying, these 3
temptations are right there in the Our Father.
The first and third are in the
regular part of the Our Father, “Give us this day our daily bread” and “Lead us
not into temptation.” The second is found in the old addition to the Our Father
which Protestants say right at the end of the Our Father and Catholics say at
Mass right after a short prayer.
“For the kingdom, the power, and
the glory are yours, now and forever. Amen.
