LENT I SMALL GROUP THE GATHERING A candle may be lit to begin the group, a reminder that God is present in our midst. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. Because you formed us from the dust, Lord God, you know well how deeply sin has scarred our human nature. Strengthen us, then, as we set out on this Lenten journey. Make us victorious with Christ over the deceptions of the tempter, so we may come at length in the joy of the Holy Spirit to the celebration of the Lord s glorious Passover. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen. A WORD OF SCRIPTURE A member of the group will read the following passage. It s best to just listen to the passage and not to read along. Be mindful of words and phrases that stand out for you as the passage is being read. Reader A reading from the gospel of Matthew Matthew 4:1-11 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. 3 The tempter came and said to him, If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread. 4 But he answered, It is written, One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. 5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6 saying to him, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, He will command his angels concerning you, and On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone. 7 Jesus said to him, Again it is written, Do not put the Lord your God to the test. 8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; 9 and he said to him, All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me. 10 Jesus said to him, Away with you, Satan! for it is written, Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him. 11 Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him. Reader The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
IMMEDIATE REACTION Take a few moments to savor a word, a phrase, a question, or a feeling that rises up in you. If you remember hearing this passage before, did anything strike you differently? Once everyone has had a chance to share his or her reactions to the passage. Another member of the small group reads the passage again. SOUND BITES What the world expects of Christians is that they should speak out, loud and clear; that they should voice their convictions in such a way that not even the slightest doubt could arise in the heart of the simplest person. And more: that they should get away from words and abstractions and confront in their deeds the bloodstained face of history. Albert Camus. Jesus' temptations did not end in the desert. Again and again he was tested. "Avoid the cross," said his close and well-meaning friend Simon. And, of course, there was Gethsemane. With the church, the story is the same; testing never ceases. This is why we gather frequently and pray: Our Father in heaven, let your name be hallowed. Your will be done. Give us bread for today. Lead us not into temptation. Deliver us from the evil one. Fred Craddock. There are three primary things that we have to let go of, in my opinion. First is the compulsion to be successful. Second is the compulsion to be right -- even, and especially, to be theologically right. (That's merely an ego trip, and because of this need, churches have split in half, with both parties prisoners of their own egos.) Finally there is the compulsion to be powerful, to have everything under control. I'm convinced these are the three demons Jesus faced in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11). Until we each look these three demons in their eyes, we should presume that they are still in charge in every life. The demons have to be called by name, clearly, concretely, and practically, spelling out just how imperious, controlling, and selfrighteous we all are. This is the first lesson in the spirituality of subtraction. (emphases added) Richard Rohr, Simplicity: The Freedom of Letting Go (Crossroad: 2003), 42-43. There was no cell phone signal out there, so it was just fantastic. It was just space and time, which is what we're getting further and further away from in our modern life. You think of a lot of things you don't normally have time to think about. You think of things you thought were buried and away and dealt with, and they bubble back up and you realize they weren't dealt with. Things from your childhood, your relationships. There was a quiet introspection about the character that was easy to achieve since I could do that myself. Ewan McGregor, in an interview about what it was like for him to play both Jesus and the devil in the film, Last Days in the Desert (2015), on the Yahoo! Movies website, January 26, 2015. yahoo.com. Retrieved September 28, 2016.
On the cruel edges of the world, writes Andy Crouch in Christianity Today (June 2004), there is no need for elaborate explanations to bring a distant biblical text closer to our lives. Rather, when we go to the cruel edges of the world, we bring our lives closer to the text. The Bible is a window into a larger world, one that is full of tragedy and hope. According to author Barbara Brown Taylor, all sinful acts share the common theme of going against God s will. Sinners are out of sync with God, and with the life God desires for them. God s judgment is not so much some kind of extra punishment as it is God s announcement that they have abandoned the way of life. Like some divine jiu-jitsu master, God does not set out to hurt them, she says in her book Speaking of Sin. God simply spins their rejection of life around so that they can feel the full force of it for themselves. DISCUSSION PRAYER That Jesus was tempted meant that he truly desired what the devil offered him. Of course he was hungry. His body desired what it needed. In what ways might the devil use your legitimate, real desires to lead you astray? What aspect of in the story of Jesus in the desert is most striking to you? Often demons are cleverly hidden. They may even appear to be virtues. What can help you recognize and name your demons? What tests your relationship with God most? What tests your relationships within your community? As the story of Matthew continues, we witness Jesus defeating evil in other people s lives, healing their ills and forgiving their sins. Why does Jesus have to confront evil so personally In what ways have you confronted the sin and temptation of racism, prejudice and injustice in your life and in your community? Why is the desert an important and a necessary place in our Christian journey? Where do you find the desert? Gracious and loving God, from the flowing waters of our Baptism you have called us to be ministers among your people. In the bread and wine of the Eucharist you have called us to become one with all your people. As we gather around this table make us mindful of our mission and of our ministry here at (insert the name of your parish). Make us deeply aware of the needs of those around us as well as the needs of our whole parish community. Send your Holy Spirit among us that we may be keen listeners of your voice and dedicated workers in your vineyard. We ask this through Christ our Lord, Amen.
WRAP UP : : Thank you for your time and for your presence. Remember, what is said here remains here! Spending a few moments in silence, let us pray for each other, for the person on your right and the person on your left. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen. Let us bless the Lord. And give God thanks. BIBLICAL COMMENTARY The account of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness is seen as a pivotal incident in the life of Christ. All three synoptic gospels tell the story, although the differences between their versions are fascinating. Even though the wilderness is the scene of the opening of Mark's gospel, he has only two verses on Jesus' temptation. Mark 1:12-13 reads, "And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him." Most of the minimalist features that Mark relates (except for the wild beasts) are also related by the other evangelists, namely: (1) that Jesus was sent to the wilderness by the Spirit, (2) that he spent 40 days there, (3) that Satan tempted him there and (4) that the angels came to minister to him. Luke leaves out only the visit by the angels. Also, both Mark and Matthew imply that it was the Spirit's intention that Jesus be tempted. While Luke just says that "he was led by the Spirit... tempted by the devil," Mark says that the Spirit drove Jesus there into the wilderness (1:12). Matthew says outright that Jesus was led to the wilderness by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil (v. 1). The idea that the devil serves some purpose, that it is within God's will that Satan test the loyalty of humanity, is not an idea begun in the NT. The OT book of Job presents God striking a type of gentleman's agreement whereby Satan is allowed to test Job (1-2).
In fact, throughout the OT, Satan is not an evil force who moves on his own initiative to maliciously toy with humanity. Rather, Satan works for God. In fact, in the OT, "satan" is more often a job description rather than a proper name (Numbers 22:22-35; Zechariah 3:1-7; Job 1-2; 1 Chronicles 21:1-22:1). The title means "adversary," or "accuser." It was the job of Satan to call humanity to account for its failure to uphold its end of God's covenant law. Using a courtroom analogy, Satan is the prosecuting attorney. It is his job to read the charges and to hold humanity accountable for them. (For more on the OT view of Satan, see Peggy Day, An Adversary in Heaven: Satan in the Hebrew Bible [Harvard Semitic Monographs 43; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988] and Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan [New York: Random House, 1995]). While the portrait of Satan is much different in the NT, still in the story of the temptation we see the same relationship between Satan and the Spirit of God. The Spirit, in a sense, sends Jesus to Satan, confident (as God is of Job), that he will resist the temptations offered him and be proved worthy of his calling. It is as if the ancients felt that without the test of temptation, loyalty was cheap and not to be trusted. What was required was steadfastness of purpose, which can only be demonstrated in the face of testing. The devil, in Greek, is the diabolos, "the one who separates" you from your purpose, who distracts you, who singles you out, either for failing in faithfulness or to tempt you into failure. Matthew and Luke both add dialogue between Jesus and Satan to Mark's account, probably from their shared source known as Q. To each temptation, Jesus responds with a verse from OT Scripture. Although Luke has the second and third temptations in the reverse order from Matthew, each of them cites the same scriptural answers. Deuteronomy 8:3, "One does not live by bread alone" is Jesus' answer to the temptation of bread (Matthew 4:4; Luke 4:4), although Matthew cites more of the passage than does Luke. Next in Matthew (v. 5), Jesus is tempted to see if God would protect him from selfdestruction (such as a fall from a great height). Here Satan seems to be showing that he can match Jesus' legal knowledge by quoting Scripture also as part of his temptation. He quotes Psalm 91:11-12 to assure Jesus that his test of God's protection would be quite safe, summoning angelic hosts to save him from harm. To this, however, Jesus responds with Deuteronomy 6:16, "Do not put the LORD your God to the test." And finally, in Matthew comes the temptation that is second in Luke, namely, the offer of endless power in exchange for worship of Satan. The answer to this, was, of course, Deuteronomy 6:13, "You shall worship YHWH only." At the end of the temptations in Luke, Satan simply departs and waits for some future "opportune time" to harass Jesus again (Luke 4:13), but in verse 10, Jesus orders Satan to leave, whereupon the angels come to minister to him. An interesting parallel to the story of the temptation is the parable of the sower (13:1-23). In both stories, a believer is faced with three threats to faithfulness. In the parable, the three threats are Satan (who is the bird that comes to snatch the newly sown Word of
God away, 13:19); trouble and persecution, like Jesus' hunger in the wilderness (which are the rocks that cause the Word's roots to fail, 13:20-21); and the cares of the world, including the lure of wealth (which are the thorns that choke the Word as it begins to grow, 13:22). By resisting this same sort of temptation in the wilderness, Jesus models for the new Christians the will to resist those things that destroy a growing faith. www.homileticsonline.com