Passing the Test - 1st Sunday of Lent 2019

10 March 2019 – 1^st Sunday of Lent

Deuteronomy 13:1-4; Luke 4:1-13

Speaking recently to a member of a church I used to serve and hearing about the challenges they are currently facing, Jesus’ statement to His disciples after His encounter with the rich man asking what he must do to gain eternal life came to mind.  Recall the Commandments Jesus affirmed, to which the man said he had been faithful.  Jesus, however, raised the bar of faithfulness – and apparently raised the stakes as well. 

In addition to faithfulness to the Law, our Lord told the rich man he must sell all he has and give the money to the poor.  Then, Jesus said, “You will have treasure in heaven”.  Of course the man walked away grieving because that level of faithfulness was more than he could bear, he having many possessions (Matthew 19:16-26).  He was incapable of imagining a life without these possessions because his life was defined by this wealth.

Though the disciples didn’t have that measure of wealth between them, they were nevertheless perplexed and maybe more than a little disturbed with Jesus’ “camel through the eye of a needle” statement.  They asked Him, “Then who can be saved?”  Our Teacher’s response?  “With mortals, it is impossible; but for the The Father, all things are possible”.

Though I’ve heard this passage preached dozens of times in different ways, it occurs to me Jesus is talking about much more than a rich person’s possessions.  It is not material wealth in itself that stands in our way because the value of material wealth is relative to what we choose to do with it and how it affects our decision-making.  Even a poor person can make wrong choices based on his or her possessions.

Some have suggested Jesus was downplaying the importance of the Commandments and works of mercy in favor of “salvation by faith alone”, but I think that’s quite a stretch.  Jesus affirms the importance of the Commandments while, at the same time, He is raising the bar of faithfulness.  In addition to “thou shalt not”, our Teacher has added, “You must”.

Yet, “for mortals, this is impossible”.  No truer words were ever spoken.  Faithfulness and due diligence toward a life of faith are not impossible, but they ask more of us than many are willing to give.  In that I also cannot help but to think the current climate in the Church universal – all denominations to one extent or another – is one big, cosmic “test”; the kind of test Israel had to endure in the wilderness on their Journey and the kind of test our Shepherd had to endure in His own wilderness before He could begin His public ministry.

So the question is, “How’re we doin’ so far??”

Church membership is in decline.  Worship attendance is in decline.  Bible study and Sunday school are in decline or have all but flat-lined, having been deemed unimportant.  But what is in abundance?  Political activism in all forms.  Hatefulness.  Contempt.  Slander.  Idolatry.  Scorn.

But what makes all these increases so shocking are the latest polls which still indicate a vague “belief” in God by some 90% of the American population.  Yet there is a profound difference between a belief in the existence of a “god” and a full trust in The Almighty God whose Word is paramount to living the kind of life He ordains for His people.  It isn’t about being “chosen”; it is about making choices.

It is the choice Israel faced in the wilderness, it is the choice Jesus faced after His baptism, and it is no less the choice we face as well; that test to determine whether we “love The Lord our God with all our heart and soul” (Dt 13:3).  In each of the biblical instances, that choice was not about a mere profession of faith.  It is not about baptism or circumcision as the mark of the Covenant; it was about the direction each would go.  That choice is no less for us than it was for Israel or for Jesus.

The season of Lent is an invitation to enter into the “wilderness”, to remove ourselves from the corruption and the temptations of what we only think is “civilization”, to remove ourselves from the deafening noise of a culture wandering aimlessly in darkness to discover for ourselves who we really are.

These tests were not about potential failure as if the tests themselves are the end.  Rather, these tests are means to a greater end.  These tests, as much for Israel and Jesus as well as for us, are about what comes next.  They are about preparedness; and, like it or not, they are as much about Divine Love as about anything else.

Our parents, and we as parents ourselves, understand the need for and importance of discipline for children.  Discipline – not “punishment” – is about order; to “train them in the way they should go” (Proverbs 22:6).  It is about teaching our children about the life we all must face, the “tests” we must endure, and which way we must go. 

None of this is easy.  In today’s “easy discipleship” climate of “cheap grace” that asks nothing of us and yet gives us everything, it has become virtually impossible to imagine our God and Father deliberately putting us to a test we may be unable to endure.  Yet He subjected Israel, Job, Jesus, and the rich man to such a test - not to spite them but to guide them, to direct them, to strengthen them.

I assure you a child who is not disciplined and corrected by his or her parents as they grow will one day face a judge who will tell them where they went wrong and where they will go from that moment!  And it is no less so for any one of us who is too heavily invested in this world; we will also live and die according to where we are most invested.  We will live and die according to which “god” we choose to follow.  And let’s be clear: our God, THE God of gods, is not following us anywhere; for He alone is The Way.

Lent is also about preparedness, for the challenges we face are enormous.  The temptations we face are overwhelming.  Yet our Lord Jesus, our Good Shepherd, “bids us come and die” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer) to a world under the sentence of death so we may live.  So we must “work out our salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12) in the wilderness, enduring these “tests”, and finding Life at the end.  For it is The Way of our Father, His Son, His Holy Spirit.  Amen.