When Did Temptation become so Bad?, First Congregational UCC, Rock Springs, WY 3/13/2011

When Did Temptation become So Bad?
By Rev Steven R Mitchell
First Congregational UCC, Rock Springs, WY 3/13/2011
Based on Matthew 4:1-11


Have any of you ever found yourself in a situation where a choice that would be life altering had to be made? The great poet Robert Frost wrote about such a situation in his poem, The Road Not Taken.

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;         5
 
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,         10
 
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.         15
 
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
A widely held interpretation, by critics, is that the poem is about making personal choices and rationalizing our decisions, whether with pride or with regret. With the last two lines telling us, that the speaker was a courageous nonconformist in taking a road few other people had taken.
This morning’s Gospel reading could most certainly point to the actions of Jesus as a person who chose to take the road less traveled. Yet according to Mr. Frost, the poem is intended as a gentle jab at his great friend and fellow poet Edward Thomas, with whom he used to take walks through the forest (Thomas always complained at the end that they should have taken a different path), those always thinking that the “other” path might have been the better choice. Wikipedia
On Friday, June 19, 1953, at 9:15 a.m., I embarked on a most incredible journey; it was the day that I breathed my first breath of air on this planet. It has been a journey filled with much learning; a journey filled with much emotional and physical development; a journey that has had no real road map to follow, other than by advice freely given and by advice personally sought out, as well as by examples of those who have preceded me in their own journey of life! It has been a journey filled with choices, and with all of this wonderful advice that I have received, examined, weighted and either rejected or implemented, do you know what I have discovered? I have discovered that I have managed to make a few mistakes along the way! Imagine that, with all this marvelous help, I would actually have had the audacity to have made one or two, or three, or maybe thousands of wrong choices in my journey.
Rod Roddenberry, the creator of the famed Star Trek series, managed to sum up my whole life, past, present and I’m sure future. He says of my life: Going where no man has gone before! Have any of you ever felt as if, your life has gone where no other person’s life has gone before? That the choices you have made have sometimes been the wrong decisions? I hope so, otherwise, you are probably not human, but maybe a Klingon or some other life form.
This morning’s lectionary readings are dealing with standing at a cross road and making decisions. The process that we go through in making a decision is by examining as many differing outcomes that we can think of and basing our decision on the results of this process. We call this process, discernment. Another word that could be substituted for discernment is the word, “temptation.”
Today’s scripture readings focus on Temptations and the result of choices made, due to specific temptations. The first temptation that we read in scripture occurs in the Garden of Eden. The story line tells us that if Adam and Eve ever eat the fruit from the tree in the center of the garden, they would end up dying. As the story goes, Eve has a lengthy conversation with a serpent discussing (which is one of the tools we use in the discernment process) whether what God had told them was really truth or was God just saying things in order to keep them under control. When did the word “temptation” become a negative meaning? Is not this word just another part of the process that we use as we try to go through a discernment process?
Have you ever wondered when Jesus truly realizes that He is the Son of God? Was it at his baptism or later in his journey? After Jesus was baptized, was he ready to take on the mission of His ministry or did he need time to think about how that ministry was going to look like; of how he was going to shape his ministry? We read that Jesus needs time to figure things out and goes off into the wilderness for 40 days in order to go through a discernment process. Scripture uses the word “temptation” to describe events that Jesus had during that time.
I would like to share with you a dramatization of this event that helps put some meat onto today’s reading. (You tube: The Temptation of Jesus by the Devil in the Wilderness 8:51 min
I asked at the beginning of this sermon if, anyone of you has ever had to make a decision that was “life altering.” A decision where you had to spend time by yourself, in quiet contemplation, thinking of all the implications of your next step in your journey in life? Did it look a little like what Jesus was being faced with while in the dessert for those forty days?
As we go through the next 41 days of lent, take some quiet time out for yourselves and face some temptations that might be life changing for you and in doing so, remember how Jesus dealt with His dessert voices. Amen