I am told that one of the hottest shows on Television these days is called "Temptation Island." It is a ’reality’ show like "Survivor". Four unmarried couples, who are in long-term relationships, are taken to a Caribbean island for two weeks to test and explore the strength of their commitment. Upon their arrival, they are separated from their partners and sent to thirteen hunks with whom they will mix and date during their stay. The four men go to the other end of the island where thirteen gorgeous single women are waiting for them. The purpose of these thirteen men and women is to be the "temptation" for the couples … who are not allowed to communicate with each other for the duration of their time on the island. They do see each other, though, in person and on video dating the singles.
The whole process forces the individuals into situations where they are tempted, and their emotions manipulated. At the end of the two-week period, the couples decide whether they still want to be together or with one of the people they met on the Island.
It is really unfortunate that the producers did not consult me ahead of time. Because I know of a surefire test that will help couples decide whether they want to be together or not...if that is really what they wanted to accomplish. I could’ve spared them all the expenses, yet produced “reality” television. This is how it works. Set up cameras in every house where these couples live. And follow their every move from the time they begin to talk about it, do their planning, shopping, prepping, until the final moment in the privacy of their bedrooms when they consummate the messy business of hanging wallpaper on at least 2 walls! The couples that are still talking to each other and show no symptoms of verbal, mental or physical abuse will be together for life!
But, of course, sex sells better than wallpaper. And, let’s face it, we all have this fascination with temptation. Because, each and everyone of us is tempted each and every day of our lives in one way or another in the choices we make about how we spend our money, our time, our life. Over the next few weeks, many people will give in to the temptation of withholding vital information about certain sources of income from Revenue Canada! Many who made wonderful resolutions about giving up something for Lent will find themselves getting back what they gave and more!
Recognizing that temptation is a fact of life, the good folks who put together the lection-ary insist that we read the narrative about the Temptation of Jesus at least once a year, on the first Sunday of Lent. We can analyze them one by one and try to classify them under different categories as scholars have already done. However, I would like to show you how, in every one of those three instances, the Tempter was attempting to get Jesus to take A SHORT CUT. Let me explain what I mean.
Jesus had just emerged from the shadows to publicly begin the mission that God had set before him. He has been baptized, declared by a voice from heaven as the Son of God, the one in whom God is well pleased, the one to whom all should listen. Jesus knows that God had sent him to be the Messiah, but not a military Messiah who would use excessive force to liberate the Jews from their oppression under the Romans. Instead he would be the Suffering Servant who was foretold by the prophet Isaiah. As a matter of fact, within a very short period, Jesus would tell his disciples that accomplishing his mission would include suffering, rejection, persecution and ultimately lead to his death.
But the Tempter offers him an alternative. He advises Jesus to follow Plan B, that would help him accomplish the mission of drawing people to God’s cause...without all the pain and suffering of Plan A. Watch how he operates.
The devil offers Jesus temptations which seem, on the surface, harmless enough. They are certainly not temptations to do evil. The devil is just encouraging Jesus to take the easy road in order to show the world that he really is the Son of God. Look, again, at these "harmless" temptations. "Command this stone to become a loaf of bread." Temptation number one. Not a bad idea, really. Think about it. A lot of good could come from such a move. It would remind the Jewish people of how God fed their ancestors in the desert with manna and help them see Jesus as the Messiah! And, hey, what’s inherently wrong with feeding the hungry anyway? Isn’t it a good thing to do? Isn’t God concerned with the hungry people of this world? Jesus, you’ve got the gift, baby! Put your miraculous powers to good use here and transform this barren tract of land into a booming bakery. Take A SHORT CUT.
Or what about that second temptation? "Worship me," says the devil, "and to you I will give all authority over all earthly kingdoms." In other words, if you do it God’s way, you’re not in charge. I will be dogging you every step of the way, making life miserable for you. Instead, why not make a compromise? Sign right here on the dotted line. And I’ll leave you alone. No one else needs to know that you are in cahoots with me. I’ll make life easy for you. Whaddyasay Jesus?
Then the devil comes up with a wonderful plan as he takes Jesus to the top of the Jerusalem Temple. Yes, the Jerusalem Temple, that was the focal point of the Jewish faith. It was a crowded place, where people would not miss the action. "Jesus, throw yourself down from here" and let God perform a dramatic rescue. After all, didn’t God promise to break your fall by sending angels to provide you with a safety net? Imagine the publicity this stunt would generate. You can accelerate the process of accomplishing your mission incredibly by pulling off a big one right off the bat, Jesus. Go for it!
Do you see the point of these three examples? These "harmless" temptations could lead to Jesus being King of the World immediately and easily -- no more preaching to crowds on hillsides or by lakes, no more healing all those sick bodies, no more teaching to those who seem not to understand, and, most important of all, no cross to bear. It would have been the easy way out and it would have led away from Calvary and death. The temptation of Jesus was to choose another way, one that bypassed the cross.
Just like Adam and Eve: all they had to do was to eat of the fruit and they’d be like God, knowing good and evil. They could avoid all those years of learning and growing before reaching maturity. Imagine if someone came to you when you were about to enter Grade 11 and said, I can get you straight into University if you want. All you have to do is pay me a small fee and you’ll be there next year. It’d save you all the stress of assignments and exams. What a bonus! But the trouble is, you’d have missed out on all that basic teaching that you need to understand what you hear in your university course. Well, that’s what it was like for Adam and Eve. They jumped to graduate level before they’d even done the preliminaries. God wanted them to take one step at a time, to obey God in this little thing and trust him. What Jesus had to do was to learn obedience, first in this small way, but later on the cross. That was a much harder route to follow, but it was the only route that would truly achieve what he’d come to do.
Guys, ever tried to take a short cut when you’re traveling in totally unfamiliar territory? Your wife and children keep saying: “Are you sure you know where you’’re going?” You answer confidently “Oh, yes! Trust me, family, I know this is shorter. Imagine all the money we save on gas when we shave of 100 miles!” Now you’re hoping and praying that a gas station would show up around the bend so you can not only fill the tank, but also find out how to get out of this short cut.
Temptation proposes a short-cut, an easier way to reach our goals with a lower price tag, with less pain and self-sacrifice. Temptation always seems to offer a big prize for a small price, a kingdom for a mere bowing of the knee, but there is always a higher, hidden cost. Temptation offers future rewards now; it trades the future for the present, pleasure for pain, and the seen for the unseen.
How about you and I? Do we not also face temptations to take SHORT CUTS?
“No money down. Easy monthly payments.” (They don’t tell you that the payments go on past your lifetime and to your grandchildren’s. Try breaking a lease and you’ll find out!)
“It’s just a buck. Buy a ticket. Play the slots. You could win the big one this time. The next time you could get lucky.” (They don’t tell you that you could get addicted big time and blow a fortune, not to mention wreck your marriage and even face criminal charges!)
“Just try our fat-cell eliminating elixir, our corpulence-killing capsules. You don’t need the pain of exercise. Why waste your money on health club memberships? Just take a pill, lay on the couch and watch calories burn as you feast your eyes on Temptation Island.” (They don’t tell you about the possible side effects which could mess up your life worse than you could ever imagine!)
“Has the heaviness of you old fashioned church got you weighted down? Try us! We are the New and Improved Lite Church of the Valley. Studies have shown we have 24% fewer commitments than other churches. We guarantee to trim off guilt, because we are Low-Cal... low Calvin, that is. We are the home of the 7.5% tithe. We promise 35 minute worship services, with 7 minute sermons. Next Sunday’s exciting text is the story of the Feeding of the 500. We have only 6 Commandments-- Your choice!! We use just 3 gospels in our contemporary New Testament *Good Sound Bites for Modern Human Beings*. We take the offering every other week, all major credit cards accepted, of course. We are looking forward with great anticipation to our 800 year Millennium. Yes, the New and Improved Lite Church of the Valley could be just what you are looking for. We are everything you want in a church... and less!!”
As one of my colleagues puts it: It’s the temptation to just be normal. Just be nice, get on with quietly doing the right things, just like they’ve always been done. At the personal level it the temptation to just have a good job, get married, have kids, go to church on Sundays, join the Rotary Club, go for walks in the park, write a few cheques for World Vision. Just be comfortably anonymous. If we all did it the world would be a nice quiet peaceful place. At the church level, it is the temptation to run nice worship services, have morning tea after the service, have a Sunday school for the church kids, have ladies guild and a men’s prayer breakfast, and perhaps a young adults social group, put on an annual fete, and all be very nice to each other. It doesn’t sound too bad because it isn’t. There is nothing much wrong with it.
It’s just that there isn’t much right with it either. A church like that might even grow, if it’s in the right place. But it won’t really have any impact on the world. It won’t be helping to ensure that God’s will is done on earth as in heaven. It won’t be following Jesus on the road that involves lots of tough decisions and costly choices. It won’t be following Jesus in the sort of radical confronting liberating love that got him in trouble with religious and political leaders. Jesus could not take that comfortable option without turning his back on us, and abandoning us to our own demise. We can’t take that option without turning our backs on him and abandoning the rest of the world to its demise. We have to decide how to avoid the temptations and be the sort of church that is faithful to the Jesus who turned down the crown of popularity, the crown of power, and the crown of comfort, and took instead the crown of thorns."
You may have heard about a book as well as a movie entitled "The Last Temptation of Christ". The movie generated a lot of controversy when it was first released. I wrote a review for the Leader-Post and was swamped with angry phone calls and nasty letters from other Christian folk. Here is where the controversy arose. In the movie, as in the book, Jesus imagines what life would have been like had he chosen another way. In his coma-like dream, Jesus gets married, fathers many children, enjoys the company of friends and works as a kindly carpenter until he is a white bearded old man. The dream concludes as Jesus is confronted by his disciples. They were decrepit old men. Peter degenerated from a rock to a "sponge full of holes, and the others were spiritless men with "bloated bellies, dangling backsides, and double chins." Long ago they had given up the fight. and their destiny shriveled into meaningless. In their company was an angry Judas who bellowed the truth about the uncrucified Jesus:
"Traitor! Deserter! Your place was on the cross. That’s where the God of Israel put you to fight. But you got cold feet; and the moment death lifted its head, you couldn’t get away fast enough." The rest of the disciples joined in the horrible nightmare. His life had been wasted, for he fell to temptation and avoided the cross. He chose an easier way and it proved to be the way of failure.
But we know Jesus didn’t take the easy way, he took the way of the cross, so the closing pages of Kazantzakis’ book finds Jesus awaken from his nightmare to find himself on the cross. He is relieved to discover that his crucified state was only a miserable dream. The closing words of the "The Last Temptation" lifts high the central feature of our faith:
“Temptation had captured Jesus for a split second and led him astray. The joys, marriages and children were lies, the decrepit degraded old men who shouted coward, deserter, traitor at him were lies. All were illusions sent by the Devil. His disciples were alive and thriving. They had gone over sea and land and were proclaiming the Good News. Everything had turned out as it should glory be to God!! He uttered a triumphant cry: "It is finished" And it was as though he had said "Everything has begun.!"
Temptation is all around us—we don’t have to go on Temptation Island in order to find it. It is everywhere. We shop at Temptation-Mart and go to Temptation University. We do our banking at Temptation Dominion, work at Temptation Inc., worship at the First Church of Temptation, surf Temptation Online and live on Temptation Avenue. Temptation is everywhere and as much as anything, it is found within our own hearts. It can be subtle, so subtle we don’t even realize it is temptation. But it can be resisted as Jesus did, by simply refusing to take SHORT CUTS.
Thanks be to God. AMEN.
