On power and communion in love
Lent 1C  |  Luke 4:1-13

The season of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday with an invitation: one that invites us to the observance of a holy season of fasting and discipline, of learning and preparation. During this time we are to focus more on scripture than we normally do. We are to pray more than we normally do. It is our annual reminder that there are things we need to do, acknowledging we all get a little lazy and could use the opportunity to buckle down a bit, right?

It also reminds us that our work isn’t “do more” as much as be more intentional with our focus. And two things this season is for historically: teaching and mercy. It is the season we prepare newcomers for baptism and the notorious sinners who are penitent to be restored to the community. And all of the people of the church need to adapt to the changing character of the community come Easter. Because it’s going to change whether we like it or not!

So, in that spirit, I’m going to use the sermon time during Lent for two purposes: a homily about the scripture like we normally do, but shorter — and a homily about the Eucharist — also shorter. So we will have both preaching and instruction here — and our common job is to prepare ourselves to adapt, right? To learn and embody the children of God we know we already are.

Let’s talk about power.

Jesus is driven by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness where he is tempted by Satan. So…that’s a bummer. But our boy, Jesus isn’t deterred, is he? Nope. He persists and drives that dog away and everything is great, right?

I’ve been thinking lately that I am not thrilled with calling this a story of temptation, as if the story is about the temptation itself, as if it is passive, as if Jesus is actually tempted, as if the motivations are irrelevant. Jesus isn’t tempting himself! Nor is it just happening to him!

If we approach this passively, as if Jesus is the only actor here, well, it makes this attempt to persuade seem normal, as opposed to a bad faith attempt to trick Jesus by someone trying to prevent the Missio Dei by corrupting the Messiah. 

And the reason this is important is that this corrupting influence seeps into the way we read the gospel and build our societies. If our focus is passive — on the work done to Jesus itself — we remove responsibility from the actors who create these things. So guess what happens? Bad stuff isn’t just normal — it becomes how the world works.

We now have several whole generations of students who read William Golding’s Lord of the Flies in high school, taught to be wary of the evil at the heart of humanity. Except that this is not only fiction, it teaches us the opposite of what happened in the real life event the book was based on. We were taught that people will descend into anarchy and history tells us that we will build each other up.

See the influence of normalizing the fiction — of making that passive persuasion what we all learned when none of us learned the truth?

The Tests

The adversary tests Jesus by tempting him. With what? Well…he tries to get him to magically feed himself. You must be really hungry! And he does it with a kind of reverse psychology — If you’re the Son of God, just go ahead, show us your power! 

Then the adversary says that God gave him the power to control the world and he can give that same power to Jesus. Is that true? Of course not! But it doesn’t need to be true because he’s trying to get his way.

Lastly, he quotes scripture to convince Jesus to manipulate God into saving him.

The adversary isn’t trustworthy! And Jesus doesn’t trust him — he sees through the gambit. But the temptation is all on us, isn’t it? These are things he tempts people with, and he wouldn’t try to tempt Jesus if they didn’t work.

These tests are all about power — specifically the desire to control. To control one’s environment, other people, and God. Which means that it is about the desire to have our way, to be in control, to feel powerful. It is about the things we make other people do, the control we exercise over their lives and well-being. 

We are called to resist this desire at its root because it has a way of growing when we don’t. We are called to be faithful and decent people, generous and filled with hope and mercy and love. Which means we don’t seek our way over others, but with them.

This is what separates the real story of the Lord of the Flies from the novel. The kids stranded on an island built one another up, protected each other, and in the end, every single one of them survived. This is the kind of generous grace we’re called to embody in our world.

Holy Eucharist

One of the stories we’ll read in a few weeks during Holy Week is a story we often refer to as the Last Supper. And in it, we have embedded a deeper significance. This last supper Jesus has with his disciples is a Passover feast, right? They eat bread and bitter herbs and lamb, no doubt. It is a day of deep holiness for the Hebrew people.

It’s also the Last Supper because it is the last time Jesus and the disciples eat together. So, as a name, it’s kind of on-the-nose.

In the midst of the Last Supper, Jesus suggests that they should keep getting together without him. That he’s going to be betrayed, so he’ll be unavailable to host the dinners from now on, but they should keep getting together regardless. Think about how often dinner parties die out when the host stops hosting. This is why we should never take this idea for granted. He’s telling them to keep getting together.

And when they do get together, here’s something to do: break some bread at the beginning and pass a cup of wine at the end, and when you do, remember that this is about the Jesus Mission, the Missio Dei, the Dream of God. Remember that each time.

So those first disciples did that. They got together for dinners and they passed bread at the beginning and the cup at the end. And somewhere along the line (OK, the fourth Century under Constantine who used Christianity to expand his power) it became a ritual at the end of a liturgical production, separating the Eucharist from the feast.

How do you think that affects the way we see the Eucharist today?

We maintain a ritual that is intended to feed our common soul and remind us of our mission together. And yet, from the beginning, we’ve had a hard time sharing or not controlling the experience.

A couple of decades after Jesus’s death and resurrection, one of the leaders of the church in Corinth wrote to Paul to tell him some of those proto-Christians hanging at the church are misbehaving. They aren’t being very Christlike.  Shocker, I know. And let me tell you, this is one of the reasons 1st and 2nd Corinthians are a hoot. Because it is screw up after screw up. And one of those things they’re doing is — wait for it — the wealthiest, the smartest, the most important people are hogging all of the food. You know the whole last will be first thing, they’re like nah, the first go first and if there’s anything left after we’re done, then maybe we’ll share it with them. Sound familiar? And Paul lights into them in his response. You have to love it.

Power, desire, control, having our way. It keeps going, doesn’t it? And this thing we do, gathering each week, is not to remember Jesus as if we’ve somehow forgotten he exists. It is about remembering the Event, the Mission, the Purpose of Jesus teaching us to love and give and share and be merciful. Because we struggle with that , don’t we? We struggle to keep doing the things we need to do. We think about whether or not there was enough for us, not whether the hungry got fed. Or we allow our feathers to get ruffled about the right way to behave in church rather than connecting with one another for our purpose together.

Our purpose isn’t the Eucharist. It’s to be together. To forge the blessed community — a common place, a common people, held in common together to love this neighborhood, this world together. And we share in the Eucharist to help us remember our mission involves all of us as equals. That it isn’t about me or you or the select few of us — it is about all of us working together to be a vehicle for the grace of God; the children of God, a dream fulfilled. In all of our flawed, merciful, God-given glory.