After his baptism, Jesus goes into the wilderness, a deserted place, a frightening place, and is confronted by Satan.
“If you are the son of God” – the devil’s temptation of Jesus begins with Satan questioning who Jesus really is – Three times he says it and then bases all his temptation on that fact.
“If you are the son of God.”
Such temptation exists in all of us. Do we question who we are? Who God created us to be? Do we get envious of others?
There was once a stone cutter who was dissatisfied with himself and with his position in life.
One day he passed a wealthy merchant's house. Through the open gateway, he saw many fine possessions and important visitors. "How powerful that merchant must be!" thought the stone cutter. He became very envious and wished that he could be like the merchant.
To his great surprise, he suddenly became the merchant, enjoying more luxuries and power than he had ever imagined, but envied and detested by those less wealthy than himself. Soon a high official passed by, carried in a sedan chair, accompanied by attendants and escorted by soldiers beating gongs. Everyone, no matter how wealthy, had to bow low before the procession. "How powerful that official is!" he thought. "I wish that I could be a high official!"
Then he became the high official, carried everywhere in his embroidered sedan chair, feared and hated by the people all around. It was a hot summer day, so the official felt very uncomfortable in the sticky sedan chair. He looked up at the sun. It shone proudly in the sky, unaffected by his presence. "How powerful the sun is!" he thought. "I wish that I could be the sun!"
Then he became the sun, shining fiercely down on everyone, scorching the fields, cursed by the farmers and laborers. But a huge black cloud moved between him and the earth, so that his light could no longer shine on everything below. "How powerful that storm cloud is!" he thought. "I wish that I could be a cloud!"
Then he became the cloud, flooding the fields and villages, shouted at by everyone. But soon he found that he was being pushed away by some great force, and realized that it was the wind. "How powerful it is!" he thought. "I wish that I could be the wind!"
Then he became the wind, blowing tiles off the roofs of houses, uprooting trees, feared and hated by all below him. But after a while, he ran up against something that would not move, no matter how forcefully he blew against it - a huge, towering rock. "How powerful that rock is!" he thought. "I wish that I could be a rock!"
Then he became the rock, more powerful than anything else on earth. But as he stood there, he heard the sound of a hammer pounding a chisel into the hard surface, and felt himself being changed. "What could be more powerful than I, the rock?" he thought.
He looked down and saw far below him the figure of a stone cutter…
Don’t we all fall into that same trap as the stone cutter? Wishing for us to be something different…
“We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” – TS Eliot (Little Gidding)
But Jesus doesn’t get stuck in his temptations, he turns away from them. Denies the devil his due. This is not who I am… So much about temptations is about staying centered in who we are, always arriving back and knowing for the first time who we are; whom God created us to be.
A minister was leading a Bible study group in a women’s prison. At one point, a young indigenous woman spoke up. She leaned forward with tears in her eyes and said:
“ Can I ask a question? I don’t know how to say it, but I really wanna know. How do I get ‘unstuck’? I’m so tired of making the same mistakes, going back to the same people and problems . . . I don’t know . . . I guess I just wanna know how to get ‘unstuck.’”
Her words dripped with urgency, longing, dread and pain.
The minister and volunteers leading the group bumbled toward a response, acknowledging how hard it was to break out of patterns of addiction and abuse and dysfunctional relationships and poverty, but that God is “present in the journey.” The minister leading the group later reflected:
“I suspect that even as I grieved for the specific ways in which this young woman was stuck, I was recognizing myself and many of my peers in her words. I suspect we all get to a certain point in life where the word stuck can easily creep into our vocabulary. Passion for the job seems more elusive, the sizzle of a marriage wanes, faith seems more remote and inaccessible.
In whatever domain of life, we settle into familiar and predictable rhythms. We realize that there are things about our lives, our communities, our world that are rather hard to change . . . I thought of all these things as I drove home from the jail. I thought about how it’s not just individuals who get stuck, but relationships, businesses, churches, institutions, even cultures. And I prayed. For all who feel stuck and for all the ways in which we need to get unstuck to live the lives we were created for.” [Ryan Dueck, writing on the CCblogs network, June 13, 2019.]
The season of Lent is a call to become “unstuck”: to discern those areas of our lives that have become “stuck” in self-centeredness, monotony, hopelessness and isolation, places of envy and loss. During these forty days of Lent, the Spirit of God leads us to rediscover the presence of God in our lives, to walk with Jesus in the landscape of the heart. To remember who we really are. May Jesus’ spirit of compassion and his light of wisdom enable us to get unstuck in order to truly live our lives in the fullness of God’s grace.
Amen.
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