Baptism of the Lord

Let us pray. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight,

Have you noticed the recent ads and commercials put out by Staples, the office-supply chain? They feature individuals confronting difficult situations, who are then presented with a simple solution: all they have to do is reach over and push a giant, red, glowing button that reads “easy.”

? Agonizing over how to pick up three kids, make dinner, finish that report due at work, and be supportive to your spouse? No problem, just push the big, red easy button.

? Need to have a risky surgery never performed before? Not to worry – just push the big, red easy button.

? Faced with the need to balance your plant’s profit with environmental safety and world ecology? Nothing to it – just push the big, red easy button.[1]

Oh, that it were true! We all know it’s not true, of course. Easy buttons just don’t exist in life; or if they do, they are only the fake stage props like those used in the commercials. And yet, we so often succumb to the temptation to look for and use an “easy button” anyway.

Our two Scripture lessons this morning are both about that same kind of thing. In our first lesson, Adam and Eve are given immense blessing, when they are put into the Garden of Eden, and are called to share in the work of the Creator. All that is needed for human life is provided and permitted. There is only one catch: they must observe one single prohibition – not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. “Somehow, though, Adam and Eve manage to construe all that as “hardship” and “imposition”, and imagine they lead a difficult life. So when they are tempted by the serpent, they push the “easy button,” to evade it all and gain all kinds of imagined betterment for their lives.” But things don’t work out as they no doubt hoped; and instead of making things easy, they find they have made things immensely harder than they had ever dreamed – harder both for themselves and for all their progeny – including you and me.[2]

Then we turn to the New Testament and encounter Jesus – whom the church has seen over the centuries as a “New Adam.” Jesus, too, is confronted with life’s “easy button.” Significantly, it happens immediately after he has been baptized by John in the Jordan – the day on which he committed himself wholly to God’s will in his life, on the one hand, and the day, on the other hand, when God’s voice boomed down out of heaven, saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” It was as if every demon in human existence had been watching him, and now were determined to make him prove the truth of the faith he was claiming in his baptism.

As so often happens in our own lives, isn’t it true? Like Jesus, don’t we too find the temptation to press life’s “easy button” – and so often just after we have made some firm commitment to do just the opposite?

In the case of Jesus, so we read in our lesson, it occurred first in a temptation to seek his daily bread from a source other than God. Following a forty day fast, when he was utterly famished, the devil came to him and said, in tempting tones, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”

And surely Jesus could have done so, had he wished. He could have supplied his own bread, for his own benefit, by using his powers magically and selfishly. Instead of trusting and obeying God, he could have twisted natural law and provided for himself. Instead of seeking only the “daily bread” for which he would teach his disciples to pray in the Lord’s Prayer, he could have taken the millions of stones that lie all over the ground in the Israeli desert and changed them into virtual mountains of bread – enough for a lifetime and more. He could have pushed the “easy button” and his immense pangs of hunger would have been taken care of instantaneously.

But he didn’t. Instead, we read how he reflected on Scripture, and then responded in words from Deuteronomy: “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” It wasn’t the “easy button” the he pushed, but the “right and responsible button” – the button that may have resulted in a few more hours of hunger, but that kept him loyal to, and dependent on, God’s own provision for his life.

Not only Jesus, but we all are given special gifts by God. God asks us only to use those gifts for him and for the good of others. But how tempting to take care of our own needs alone – without a thought about God or others!

And the church itself is so often the “proving ground” for it all. How often, over the years, does any minister see church members who have amazing gifts and talents. Maybe they are gifts of music, or gifts of financial insight, or the gift of money, or the gift of teaching, or the gift of youth leadership, or athletics, or the gift of skilled trades, or any other such gift. Thank God that many Christians will share those gifts with God, and for others, in and through the church! But what is so distressing is to see others who go for a lifetime gaining sustenance for themselves through their gifts, but never being willing to share those gifts in their church. “That’s what I do all week!” someone may protest; “I don’t want to do it on Sunday too!” It’s the “easy button” of church membership: take care of self with my gifts, but let others take care of me with their gifts in the church.

Turn these stones into bread and feed myself? For Jesus, the answer was “no.” No, he would not use his gifts to serve himself alone. But later, you remember, he would use those gifts to provide bread for the multitudes – to those who were seeking the “bread of life” on the shores of the Lake of Galilee.

Pushing the “easy button” of life’s sustenance – using our powers to provide for self alone – was the first temptation Jesus faced in the wilderness; and one that we too may face, even daily.

Or a close second temptation may be to gain influence by making ourselves the spectacle and center of all life’s attention. Winning friends and influencing people, I mean, may become an all-consuming goal that pushes out any dedication to principle or to ethics or to faith.

“Throw yourself down [from this pinnacle],” the devil said to Jesus; “[And God] will command his angels concerning you, and on their hands they shall bear you up….” It was the temptation to win a following “on the cheap,” by giving the crowds a circus.

But, again, Jesus looks to God and God’s Word and responds, “No.” In particular, he says, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” It wasn’t the “easy button” that he pushed, but the “right and responsible button” – a button that would mean months and years of trudging through the countryside, preaching and healing, and convincing people one by one; but a button that would not abuse the perfect relationship Jesus had with the Father, for the sake of a short-cut to influencing and gathering people.

One commentator on this text says that clergy should look at themselves here, before we preach to anyone else. Here’s what he means. Clergy in our day, he contends, have too often exchanged their original calling to study, pray, and share God’s Word for the role of manager, CEO, or even Master of Ceremonies – in churches that increasingly seem much more akin to three-ring circuses than to houses of prayer.

But I would imagine clergy aren’t alone in this temptation. American business and politics seem increasingly dominated by showmen these days too people who pour themselves into an enterprise of influence that thrives because of the spectacle they produce.

In my home state of Oklahoma, that used to be exemplified by the suddenly-rich oilmen in thousand dollar suits and five hundred dollar boots, in their luxury-equipped pickups. In boom times, they would become suddenly prominent, on the front pages every day, making a splash in every venue they could find. Until the bubble burst once more, and they were reduced to ruin.

Or I think too of some of the gaudy financiers and businessmen of the past few decades – from Michael Milken to Charles Keating to Ken Lay to the so-far-unnamed leaders at the center of the current sub-prime mortgage meltdown. Press the easy button, create a show, make yourself the center, get influence at the wholesale level, and watch the millions roll in.

I don’t know what our answer might be. But, for Jesus, the answer to the temptation to gain influence by creating a spectacle – throwing himself down from the pinnacle of the Temple – was once again a “no.” No, that was not the way he would do things. No, he would press the “right and faithful button” instead. Yes, it would mean more work and less glory. But God’s will would be done.

Or the greatest of all temptations may be the temptation to power – to gain control over people, over institutions, over lives.

Following his failure to tempt Jesus with influence via spectacle, the devil now took Jesus up a very high mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of the world, and promised it all to him, if Jesus would only bow down and worship him.

But yet a final time, Jesus looks to God and God’s Word and responds, “No.” No, “for it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”

How often you and I see that temptation to power! We see it in politics; we see it in business; we see it in churches; we see it in marriage and families.

Now power by itself is just a fact of life. There is nothing right or wrong about it. And someone has to wield it. It’s the nature of the world. Power can be used to do good, as well as to do wrong.

But what makes power dangerous is when it is wielded by people who seek power for the sake of power – instead of seeking power for the sake of loving and caring.

What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life. Jesus asks, “Do you love me?” We ask, “Can we sit at your right hand and your left hand in your Kingdom?” … We have been tempted to replace love with power.[3]

How horrible when a prime example of that can be seen in the Church! I can’t keep from remembering the prior general election year, when, as you remember, large churches here in Ohio were blatantly manipulating parishioners to vote for particular candidates. What a travesty when the word “evangelical” no longer means someone dedicated to spreading the good news of Jesus Christ, but now equates to a biased voting bloc!

Again, I don’t know what the answer might be for you and me. But, for Jesus, the answer to the temptation to power was again a firm “no.” The only power he sought was the power of a Savior who would die to redeem you and me. He wasn’t pressing the “easy button;” but surely he pressed the “right button” for the sake of you and me and all the world.

Again, the first Adam – with his wife Eve – pressed the “easy button” as his response to God’s grace and God’s requirements for human life.

But, unlike the first Adam, Jesus depends on the strength of God’s Word, and finds grace to refuse life’s “easy button.” Jesus, that is, undoes the mess that Adam (and Eve) created. And, as the first Adam brought death into the world, this new Adam brings life – life now and eternally.

And the good news of the Gospel is this: that it’s a life you and I can have, too, as we unite ourselves to Christ by faith – so that his obedience to God becomes ours.

That life God is no “easy button life”. But it is a life we can lead by the example of Christ, and by the grace of God. On this first Sunday of Lent, may it be the focal point of our prayers to do so.

[1] Leonard Sweet, Collected Sermons, ChristianGlobe Networks.

[2] Richard Eslinger in New Proclamation, Yr A – Advent Through Holy Week, p. 142.

[3] Quoted in Christianity Today, February 8, 1999, p. 72.