Christ Church Oxford Sung Eucharist 21 st February 2016 Canon Tilby Genesis 15.1-12, 17-18; Philippians 3.17-4.1; Luke2 13.31-end This early part of Lent is dominated by the story of Jesus in the wilderness and the testing of his faith. For that is what the temptation stories mean. Jesus is tested by having to make choices in the presence of the devil. To turn bread into stones, to worship the devil in exchange for power, to throw himself off the pinnacle of the temple. Notice that God does not compete with Satan, he offers no alternative choices and no comfort. God is not obviously present in the wilderness at all. Jesus chooses for God in the absence of God, relying on scripture rather than on any immediate sense of presence or direction. This is strikingly like the kind of testing that we endure in the course of life and the choices that we often have to make. And it is born out in our readings for today. The Old Testament passage evokes an ancient mythic past in Hebrew memory before there was history. Here is Abram he has not yet acquired the name Abraham by which we usually know him. His name means father of a nation, but it is a name without content. Abram has no heirs because his wife is barren. The content of the promise is empty. The Lord takes him outside and shows him the stars, So shall your descendants be. And 1
Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Abram s faith is tested not only by the absence of progeny but by the absence of any possibility of progeny, and the only assurance he gets is the wheeling constellations above him. He has to decide to believe in the face of no evidence at all. And that is the model of faith which all the children of Abraham, including ourselves, follow. It is hard for us. We live in an untrusting world. It is not easy for us to believe in what cannot be seen. We would like have proof before we take the risk of faith. And there isn t any. Paul wrote to the Philippians that they were to live expectantly trusting that the Lord would return from heaven and raise them up. There was no visible proof of this, no certain sign. Yet they were to live by faith in the invisible promise that they were already citizens of heaven, owing their loyalty to an unseen Saviour and their belonging to a commonwealth that had no concrete existence on earth. Faced with the choice between earthly satisfaction and earthly dissatisfaction they were to choose the latter, trusting that the power which had raised Jesus from the dead, would transform what Paul calls the body of our humiliation to the body of his glory. Again, no proof, only the challenge to trust. And then in this morning s Gospel here is Jesus himself, harassed by the local bully, the tetrarch Herod Antipas. 2
He is warned by the Pharisees to run away and this seems to pose a dilemma; should he flee Galilee to escape Herod? He is going to leave Galilee anyway, he knows his destination lies in Jerusalem. Perhaps there is some frustration in Christ s reference to Herod as that fox, a term of contempt if there ever was one. But it also expresses the genuine dilemma Jesus faced, with Herod out to get him, where was the hand of God? Today s Gospel reminds me of some wonderful words of the Irish translator and medieval scholar Helen Waddell, who wrote in a private letter to her sister: I believe in the incarnation, but I believe it was a real incarnation that the temptations to shortcuts in the wilderness were real temptations, that he was, in a sense, walking in the world with bandaged eyes, like the rest of us, and that he had to spend those long nights praying, to feel the hand of God to guide him. Walking in the world with bandaged eyes. That is, for many of us, how things are. To trust in the invisible, gracious providence of God is an act of will, made daily, repeated often - an act of will which is not always accompanied by a warm glow of reassurance. Faith is tough, sometimes. But it is a toughness, I believe that is better and more healthy than many of the alternatives. Without God we are left trusting in our own desires, our ideals, in human rationality and perfectibility. I am not suggesting that we should not have ideals or desires or try to act rationally. But with all the intelligence and good will in the world, we cannot save ourselves. Ignore the language of demonology, if 3
you like but do not ignore what it stands for that intractable malice within the human heart which pulls us away from our true life. Jesus may be the Son of God but faced with the Devil he goes back to Sunday School, quoting the Bible, relying on the tradition, calling on the God he knows in the depths of his being. Sometimes we just need to remember our Baptism, that sign of God s love for us, that he knows us and calls us by name, that we are as precious to him as his beloved Son. When our faith is tested, Christ in the wilderness provides a template for our own resistance. I would put it like this: we make our choices within the choices he has already made. We stand up to the Satan within us and without in the power of what Christ has done for us and been for us. Sometimes we have to learn this, this passive humility before God, this dumb repetition of our faith when we find we are neither wise nor clever and cannot summon up the energy to be strong. There is a lovely example of how St Antony of Egypt learnt this in Athanasius biography of him Antony wanted to prove his holiness by imitating Elijah on Mount Horeb. He got himself locked up in an ancient tomb where he was subject to several vicious attacks by the devil and a whole of very visible and violent minidevils. He fought back with great verbal vigour, but they left him battered and bruised, at which point the Lord made a hole in the roof and light shone in and the devils 4
vanished. Then Antony cried out Where were you good Jesus, where were you? Why were you not here from the beginning to heal my wounds. And a voice came to him, Antony I was here, but I was waiting to watch your struggle. But now you have prevailed I will always be with you. Lent brings us back to the humanity of Christ and to our own humanity, to a recognition of our limitations and a reaffirmation of our basic faith. John Henry Newman put these words of affirmation into the Dream of Gerontius: the faith of a dying soul, who puts himself in the final testing of faith into the hands of God; Firmly I believe and truly God is three and God is one; And I next acknowledge duly Manhood taken by the Son. And I trust and hope most fully in that manhood crucified And each thought and deed unruly do to death as he has died. Simply to his grace and wholly light and life and strength belong, And I love supremely, solely, him the holy, him the strong. 5