The Devil in Our Desert

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days He was tempted by the devil. (Luke 4.1-2)

No Arguments, No Equivocation

I’d always been “the skinny kid” until middle age kicked me in the gut. And it was some kick. The men on both sides of my family bear their excess weight around the middle. So that’s where mine collected. Gradually, my 30-inch waist rounded up to 36. A six-inch expansion over two decades may not seem like much to a lot of folks. But it was shameful to me, as it signified lack of discipline. I wasn’t fighting temptation’s power over me. Worse yet, when I considered the only alternative—diet and exercise—I consciously surrendered to temptation. Even though I knew my behavior wasn’t healthy, I had all kinds of rationale for attitudes and behaviors that masked unwillingness to resist temptation as defiance.

First, there was the notion that monitoring my diet and working out wasn’t “me.” I’d never had to do either one. How dare changes in body chemistry force me to change! Second, I abhorred the gay stereotype of the calorie-counting gym rat. I’ve always viewed that as an indicator of vanity in some, insecurity in others. Yet it grew increasingly obvious that “defiance” of the aging process and cultural stereotypes was harming me. My corkscrew logic didn’t work. I knew that. And I had to stop pretending I didn’t.

In January, Walt announced, “We’re getting you back in shape.” Because I know he loves me—will always love me—regardless of my physique, I knew his motives were pure. What’s more, he sealed the deal by saying, “We’re going to do this together.” Now Walt has never battled his weight. So volunteering to take this journey with me moved me to act. He threw out all the junk food and assumed the onerous task of ensuring we get to the gym every day. Then we had a long talk about my behavior when he’s not around—when I’m traveling, for instance, and he’s not there to monitor what I do. “You have to commit to making right choices on your own,” he said. “When that little voice tells you it’s okay because I’m not there, you have to shut it down. No arguments. No equivocation. Just, ‘No!’” So far, things are going well. It’s not always easy or pleasant. But now that I’ve fixed my attitude, I’ve discovered overcoming temptation is its own act of defiance—the kind of defiance that chooses health over harm, strength of mind over weakness of body. If all goes well, in a few months’ time, I should be back to my old self again. Except for one big difference: getting the “real me” back will require the “current me” to change. That’s what I’m learning with each new day.

Right Choices

When we open Sunday’s Gospel (Luke 4.1-13) to read of Jesus’s wilderness temptation, we take stock of what’s actually happening. He’s just left the Jordan, where God has audibly claimed Him as God’s chosen Son. He’s never been more sure of Who He is. The stories of His miraculous conception and birth, His adolescent curiosity about godly things—all of it suddenly makes sense. And when the Spirit steers Him into the desert, He brings more than certainty of Self with Him. Based on His future encounters with the Pharisees, we know Jesus is deeply suspicious of religious stereotypes. Before He begins His ministry, He will need to reconcile the singularity of His calling with the context of His culture. It is essential that He present the “real” Jesus to the world, rather than merely defy the appearance and trappings of religious norms.

Jesus knows that God loves Him without measure. He knows God will stay with Him during this struggle. (If He doubts any of this, why go into the desert at all?) Yet, as the story advances, it’s obvious that Jesus is led into the wilderness to test His ability to make the right choices on His own. In the temptations put before Him one hears the tempter say, “You’re out here by Yourself. No one need ever know You’ve had a few momentary lapses. Why put Yourself through this?” The devil is very crafty in designing specific challenges for Jesus—three in all, each targeting a potential weakness: confidence of Self that suggests He can eat anything He pleases; the promise of commanding worldly respect by defying stereotype; and the opportunity to prove His faith in God by forcing God to rescue Him. The nature of these temptations may not reflect those we normally face. But they’re transparent in their attempts to destroy Jesus. He sees through the scam. He knows what’s promised can never be delivered. Once the devil is convinced Jesus’s faith is secure, he leaves—although Luke ends story on an ominous note, saying the struggle will resume at a more “opportune time.”

Our Responsibility

What does this story say about our lives, the tests we undergo, and the Lenten journey we undertake? First, there will be times when the Spirit leads into wildernesses where we’re tempted, intentionally to teach us the importance of making right choices. God goes with us, but leaves the decisions solely to us. Simply knowing we’re God’s beloved children doesn’t exempt us from tests. And when we’re tested, we’re wise not to dismiss it lightly. Because we’ve been immune to temptation’s harms in the past doesn’t guarantee immunity. Because we’ve never had problems with certain attitudes and behaviors doesn’t mean they will never be problematic. And we must be very conscious that we’re every bit as vulnerable as anyone else to vanities and insecurities we want to defy. We have to make right choices. It doesn’t matter who is or isn’t watching. Every decision carries real consequences that can reshape us into people we were never meant to be.

The devil in our desert knows us all too well. It knows the games we play to justify unhealthy thoughts and actions. It knows that God’s protection stops short of preventing us from harming ourselves. That’s our responsibility. Yet while decisions we make are ours alone, we are not alone. We combat the diabolical voice that says, “It’s okay—nobody’s looking,” with our Maker’s voice. Not only during Lent, but always, we hear God say, “Let’s get you into shape.” When we’re tested, we follow Jesus’s example. No arguments. No equivocation. Just, ‘No!’” Too often yielding to temptation masks itself as a better choice than doing the hard of work of self-denial and spiritual exercise. But in the end, it’s a lousy decision and we eventually discover that getting back to the “real us” will require the “current us” to change. We choose health over harm, strength of mind over weakness of body. It’s a lesson we learn and relearn with each new day.

The devil in our desert knows us all too well and targets our potential weaknesses. What we do in response to temptation is a choice we must make on our own.

Prophetic Living

Then He began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4.21)

In Touch with God

The words “prophecy” and “prophetic” get kicked around a lot—so often that we assume we know what they mean without pausing to contemplate their true definitions. In secular terms, they’re synonymous with foresight. A prophecy is a prediction, plain and simple. In scriptural and spiritual terms, however, it’s something far more complex and urgent. When the Bible introduces prophecy—that is, words delivered by prophets—it wants us to understand God is speaking. Often it’s very specific about this. Dozens of passages are prefaced with phrases like, “The word of the Lord came to the prophet,” and what follows is framed in quotation marks. But more often the prophets speak directly, using their own words to express insight they received while communing with their Maker. And we should be very clear here. They’re not speaking for God, putting words in God’s mouth to serve their agendas. Indeed, it’s the opposite: God puts words in their mouths to serve God’s purpose. Sometimes prophecy comes in promissory form, as God makes covenants or tells the people what’s in store for them. But just as many, if not more, prophecies focus on the here and now: This is what’s happening. This is what led up to it. This is the right response. This is what you should avoid to prevent its recurrence.

So there’s a lot more to prophecy than forecasting the future. Prophecy in its truest, purest sense is God’s revealed word. We can even go so far as saying that prophecy is God’s active presence revealed to us, and in us, through Scripture. As with prophets of old, our communion with God—made possible by prayer, meditation, fellowship, and Bible study—puts us in touch with God. In return, God uses these same tools to stay in touch with the world through us. The closer we get to God, the better we see what God wants us to see, the better we hear what God wants us to hear, and the better we activate God’s presence in our lives. We are all equipped to live prophetically—to think, behave, and speak in keeping with the vision and principles first conveyed in Scripture. Thus, when we speak of “prophecy,” we’re not talking about crystal balls and psychic intuition. Prophetic living happens in the now. And constant awareness of our prophetic ability is vital to the work God calls us to do.

The Way It Always Goes

In Sunday’s Gospel (Luke 4.14-21), we watch Jesus model prophetic living. The scene is decidedly electric. After being away from Nazareth for some time to start His ministry, Jesus returns. Reports of His success precede Him. So the home crowd’s expectations are high. The synagogue is packed. Everybody’s eager to see what Jesus will do. But they’ve not been around Jesus lately and don’t understand that He doesn’t play into the star thing. It’s not about Him. It’s about the God Who sent Him and the work He’s been given. In fact, Luke is very clear that Jesus attends Sabbath services because it’s “His custom” to participate in weekly worship. (v16) There’s no mention of the disciples or an entourage of fans. Jesus enters His local synagogue as He’s always done: alone, unceremoniously, like any other worshiper. Apparently the congregation has invited Him to read a passage of Scripture and He's respectfully consented.

The big moment arrives. Jesus opens Isaiah and reads the first two verses of Chapter 61:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

Then He sits down. He’s done. Show’s over—until Jesus notices everyone staring at Him. This is great theater. The tension is sliceable. He responds with a straightforward comment: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” (v21) Unfortunately, Sunday’s reading truncates the story and dilutes its point. If we read on, we get a clearer sense of what Jesus means by how He behaves. The initial reaction is what one expects from people feeling proud of a local kid who’s done well. “How nice!” they say. Then the gravity of His words sinks in. Did He just declare Himself a prophet—and not any prophet, but one on par with Isaiah? The murmuring begins and the most readily outraged in the crowd ask, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son? He’s no prophet!” In what will become a signature strategy, Jesus uses their skepticism to His advantage. He answers, “It’s not enough that I tell you this? Do I really have to work wonders here, like elsewhere, to convince you? That’s the way it always goes: no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.” He cites two examples of prophets who were obliged to minister to strangers because their own people rejected them. Chaos breaks out. No one realizes that their reaction ratifies His prophetic bona fides. Instead, they decide to throw Him off a cliff and be done with Him. In the ensuing uproar, Jesus simply walks away, leaving them to their hostility and doubt. Now the show’s really over. As far as we know, Jesus never returns to Nazareth again.

Alive in Us

In John 14.12, Jesus tells the disciples, “The one who believes in Me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these.” Jesus’s ability to live prophetically—to know God’s vision, to accept God’s calling, and to make God’s presence known in the here and now—is also available to us. The Spirit of the Lord is upon our lives, too. The same words from Isaiah that define Jesus’s role and responsibilities also define what we must do. We too are spiritually equipped to declare God’s favor to the poor, the captive, the blind, and the oppressed. We too are qualified vessels through which God’s love, truth, and justice flow into a world of hatred, deception, and inequality. This great gift of prophetic living isn’t given to launch us to stardom. It’s not designed to exalt us above those who’ve not yet figured out that it’s possible. Prophetic living is simply allowing God’s Word to come alive in us so that all we think, say, and do activates God’s presence wherever we may be.

One final observation: When we honor our prophetic calling, those who know us best will be the least likely to accept us. They’re too focused on who we are—on our weaknesses and vanities—to believe we can become what God invites us to be. They may even question the legitimacy of our faith with such virulence they’d rather we were dead than doing the work God calls us to do. That’s the way it always goes. But the Word of God tells us differently. The Spirit of the Lord is upon us. God has anointed us to proclaim the good news of God’s love, acceptance, and freedom. Knowing that is enough to drown out the naysayers. Do God’s work. Speak God’s Word. Activate God’s presence. Leave the skeptics to their outrage. Live prophetically.

To live prophetically is to become vessels through which God’s love, truth, and justice flow into a world of hatred, deception, and inequality.

Certainty and Its Dangers

How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge? (Proverbs 1.22)

Black-and-White

What makes certainty dangerous is that we seek—and find—it in all the wrong places. Wherever we encounter a patch of gray, our hard-wired survival instinct immediately compels us to transpose it into black-and-white. We formulate an opinion and block out any possibilities there might be another answer, or many answers, to help us decipher what we’re looking at. We crave certainty, because certainty makes complexity simple and simplicity aids decisiveness. And after we distill complex challenges and situations down to a chosen response, we underscore our certainty by claiming it’s “the right thing.” Put that way, craving the reliability and comfort of certainty sounds foolish. Laughing at other possibilities seems reckless and unwise. And in Proverbs 1.20-33 (Sunday’s Old Testament reading), we’re explicitly told such stratagems are indeed foolish, reckless, and unwise. 

In my own life, the tension between craving certainty and living with uncertainty has been most strongly felt in my faith. I come from a tradition that prides itself on iron-clad certainty based on a literal reading of sacred texts and a definitive theology that orders everything in life, from the workings of the cosmos down to minute moral dilemmas. When the need to find community among accepting, supportive believers drew me to the Reformed tradition, I experienced genuine culture shock. I’d never heard ministers and theologians confess they didn’t have all the answers. I wasn’t accustomed to people questioning the validity of Iron Age concepts and customs. Where I came from, one didn’t complicate matters by asking questions. You accepted everything the Bible says as written (based on your reading of it) and you called that “the truth”. Such an approach raises a really big question, however, and introduces an elephant to the room that one must choose to ignore.

When we rely on certainty that reduces everything to black-and-white, we remove faith from the equation entirely and settle for human religion. It’s taken me years to detect the inherent contradiction in professions like, “I know without a shadow of a doubt.” Removing doubt’s shadows—or refusing to acknowledge them—erases any need for faith’s light, a dangerous proposition by any measure, as it diminishes the Holy Spirit’s power to speak to us in new and relevant ways through God’s Word. We must be unwavering in what we believe, but we must never confuse faith for certainty. That’s when we find ourselves reflected in Proverbs 1.22: “How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?”

A Cautionary Tale

Sunday’s Gospel (Mark 8.27-38) spins a cautionary tale about certainty’s pitfalls. Jesus and the disciples are in the region of Caesarea Philippi, a Roman outpost not far from Galilee. Everywhere they look they see temples and altars erected to pagan deities, and the sight of such religious diversity may be what prompts Jesus to raise a question out of the blue: “Who do people say that I am?” The disciples rattle off a list of names they’ve heard associated with Jesus: John the Baptist, Elijah, and other famous prophets. Then Jesus asks, “Who do you say that I am?” All of them, save one, don’t know what to say. Only Peter replies, “You are the Messiah.” (v30) In Matthew’s version, his certainty is rewarded. Jesus ordains Peter as the founder of His Church. But we see something very different in Mark. There is no praise for Peter’s certainty. Jesus tells the disciples not to tell anyone about Him. And in short order, we see why this is.

Jesus explains what being the Messiah will entail—and it’s nothing like the picture Jewish teachers have conjured up based on literal reading of the Prophets. There is no divinely ordered coronation in Jesus’s version, no overthrow of oppressive regimes, no end to violence and political strife. In fact, what Jesus describes is the exact opposite of what the disciples expect. Verse 31 says, “He began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” This rocks Peter’s world. His black-and-white certainty is suddenly blanketed in shades of gray. He pulls Jesus aside and rebukes Him! Jesus turns and looks at His followers, as if to say, “Watch this,” and blasts Peter in return. “Get behind me, Satan!” He hisses. “For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” (v33) In a mere three verses, certainty downgrades Peter from a divinely inspired confessor of Christ to a foolish simpleton. He scoffs at the idea of Jesus’s death at the hands of the very people who, according to his understanding of Scripture, should hail Him as the Messiah. He rejects the knowledge Jesus lays before him, that death is not the end of the story. Christ’s power will be revealed in bodily resurrection—a concept so alien to Peter that he finds it intolerable.

Nothing’s as Simple as We’d Like

After this decidedly uncomfortable exchange, Jesus calls the crowd around Him and issues a startling edict: “If you want to become My followers, you must deny yourselves and take up your cross and follow Me.” The context is plain. Self-denial in pursuit of discipleship begins by letting certainty go and following Christ by faith. It’s simply not essential that we know the workings of our faith without a doubt. Indeed, from Peter’s example, we learn that certainty is faith’s enemy. It can only entertain possibilities that agree with its limited understanding. It wants to simplify everything so that every detail in life is predictable and clear-cut. And that’s not how God works in the world or our lives. Peter is right to proclaim Jesus as Christ. Where he goes wrong is to confuse faith for certainty, to embrace a set of human expectations of how things should be at the expense of trusting God’s supreme knowledge of how things are.

We can’t know everything for certain and we won’t. All we need to know is that nothing’s as simple as we’d like it to be. What seems laughably absurd to us is serious business to God. And, as Proverbs says, we hate knowing that, because it jettisons us into gray patches that resist black-and-white reasoning. Not having answers is the cross that we, as followers of Christ, must bear. But thanks be to God for all of life’s gray areas and the myriad questions we can’t definitively resolve. Without them, we’d have no need for faith and the wisdom to accept what we can’t possibly understand or explain.

Without questions and doubts, faith cannot exist. 

What Makes Faith Miraculous

Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” (Matthew 14.31)

In her sermon “The Problem with Miracles”, Barbara Brown Taylor offers a canny observation about harms we inflict on ourselves by assuming God’s intervention directly corresponds to the quantity—or quality—of our faith. “If you are sick and getting sicker, it must be your own fault,” she writes. “Pump up your faith and ring the bell. Impress God with the power of your belief and claim your miracle as a reward.” To be sure, the miracle stories appear to support this notion. Time and again, Jesus tells people He heals, “Your faith has made you well.” Not My power. Your faith. And we see this dynamic in reverse in Peter’s famous water-walking experience. He and the other disciples are in a storm-tossed boat. They see someone walking across the waves. They think it’s a ghost until Jesus calls to them, telling them not to fear. But Peter’s not so sure. He says, “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.” (Matthew 14.28) Jesus beckons and Peter obeys. He does fine until a big wind frightens him. When he loses his footing and starts to sink, he cries, “Lord, save me!” Jesus catches him. “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” He says.

I wish Matthew described Jesus’s tone, because it would tell us how to read His question. Is it a scold? A flat-out rebuke? Or is it delivered gently, with compassion? Since we don’t know, we assume Jesus is somehow blaming Peter for his failure. We make the same leap that mars our reading of other miracle stories: no faith, no miracle, case closed. But we should be very cautious about trusting this presumption, as it exposes our lack of faith in God’s wisdom and judgment. If the working of miracles relies on how much faith we have, we reduce divine intervention into a bartering game—removing God’s mercy and grace from the equation. If healing and provision depend solely on our belief, what does that say about a God Who withholds them from us when we don’t meet “the faith standard”? Isn’t the time when faith runs low also when we need God most?

When we look past the miracle-winners to all of the miracle-losers (and they are legion, both in the Bible and daily life), we see this faith equation we’ve concocted for what it truly is: a twisted blame-game designed to let God off the hook. Surely God wants to heal everyone. Surely God wants to calm all of our storms. Surely God wants us all walking on water. If we’re not healed and at peace and trotting atop the surf, it’s must be our fault. And the danger in this cockeyed logic is revealed in our presumption that God’s decisions require explanation—which puts us exactly where Peter is, weighted down by what we see and feel, sinking fast in the soup of our misguided understanding of what faith is for and how it works.

Random interventions and spectacular turnarounds are not what make faith miraculous. Faith’s miracle is constantly displayed in its power to sustain us. The whole point of Peter’s venture isn’t that he doesn’t have enough faith to walk on water. It’s found in the hand that catches him when he starts to sink. “Lord, save me!” he cries, and Jesus reaches for him. I like to think the relieved and grateful expression on Peter’s face triggers Jesus’s question, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”—as if to say, “You knew I was here all the time. Didn’t you realize I would never let you drown?” Faith that God is with us, that God reaches us in our time of need, that God never stands by when life’s storms threaten to pull us under is a miracle all its own.

God-Wrestlers

Your name is no longer Jacob. From now on it’s Israel (God-Wrestler); you’ve wrestled with God and you’ve come through. (Genesis 32.28; The Message)

Christian tradition cites God’s promise to raise a chosen people from Abraham’s heirs as the birth of God’s redemptive plan. So crucial is this idea that both Matthew and Luke make a point of tracing Jesus’s lineage back to Abraham. Yet for two generations the nation born of this promise has no name. The first time we hear the word “Israel” occurs in Genesis 32, after Abraham’s grandson, Jacob, wrestles with a mysterious Figure that turns out to be none other than God. And it’s vital that we recognize when this name-changing struggle occurs. Up to this point, Jacob’s spent his life devising various schemes to get ahead. Indeed, he’s the Bible’s great wheeler-dealer. He tricks his older brother into surrendering his birthright. When his plans go awry and he ends up married to a less desirable woman, he makes a deal with her father so he can marry her more attractive sister as well. Then he cons his father-in-law out of a fortune in prime livestock. By the time Jacob meets God, all of the trouble he’s caused is coming home to roost.

God doesn’t offer to help Jacob fix things. God doesn’t command Jacob to repent and mend his ways. God asks for no sacrificial offering. God shows up and wants to wrestle. As far as we can tell, the match ends in a draw. Genesis says the struggle lasts all night and when the Figure sees Jacob won’t be bested, he throws his hip out of joint. Still, Jacob won’t let go until the Figure blesses him. At dawn, the two sit side-by-side, panting and sweaty. God asks Jacob his name. Jacob tells him. God says, “From now on you’ll be called Israel”—which means, “he wrestles with God.” In so doing, God not only changes Jacob’s name and names the nation. God gives us a name. We too are God-Wrestlers. We too struggle with God through long nights of grappling with faith’s imponderable questions. We too wind up with parts of us out of joint. And as a rule, our bouts with God end in a draw. From Jacob we learn two things we should never forget: God is unafraid of our questions, and our faith is made real in struggle, not outcome. Before we get to the “holy” stuff—the repentance, reform, and rituals—we must own the name God gives us. We must accept that wrestling with God is who we are, that struggling with faith is our way of life. We are hardly passive players in redemption’s drama. We are wrestlers. That is God’s blessing to us.