Broadway Christian Church ·Columbia, Missouri

Morning Worship ·February 13, 2005

Prayer of the Day

God in all places and times, help us look into the places of our lives in which we are hungry, lonely, or afraid.  Remind us of your passionate love for us and your waiting presence and power within us.  Amen.

Scripture

Matthew 4:1-11

Next Jesus was taken into the wild by the Spirit for the Test.  The Devil was ready to give it.  Jesus prepared for the Test by fasting forty days and forty nights.  That left him, of course, in a state of extreme hunger, which the Devil took advantage of in the first test: “Since you are God’s Son, speak the word that will turn these stones into loaves of bread.”

Jesus answered by quoting Deuteronomy: “It takes more than bread to stay alive.  It takes a steady stream of words from God’s mouth.”

For the second test the Devil took him to the Holy City.  He sat him on top of the Templeand said, “Since you are God’s Son, jump.”  The Devil goaded him by quoting Psalm 91: “He has placed you in the care of angels.  They will catch you so that you won’t so much as stub your toe on a stone.”

Jesus countered with another citation from Deuteronomy: “Don’t you dare test the Lord your God.”

For the third test, the Devil took him on the peak of a huge mountain.  He gestured expansively, pointing out all the earth’s kingdoms, how glorious they all were.  Then he said, “They’re yours – lock, stock, and barrel.  Just go down on your knees and worship me, and they’re yours.”

Jesus’ refusal was curt: “Beat it, Satan!”  He backed his rebuke with a third quotation from Deuteronomy: “Worship the Lord your God, and only God.  Serve God with absolute single-heartedness.”

The Test was over.   The Devil left.  And in his place, angels!  Angels came and took care of Jesus’ needs.

Message

 Beginnings

Kim Ryan

Jill Conner Brown tells this story in her most recent book.  It is in the last chapter of her book. 

“The finest example I know,” she says, “of love at its best happened when I was in a courtyard of a hotel in New Orleans.  I was alone having coffee.  Across the way a large group of folks, probably gathered for a family reunion, were laughing and talking.  After a bit, they all left except a little-bitty girl in a stroller about a year old and a very old man, probably her great-grandfather.  He was standing behind her leaning over looking at her face reflected in the glass doors of the patio.  He was stroking her little head, gently lifting the wisps of her pale gold silky hair.  His touch was so light it wouldn’t have disturbed a dandelion puff.  She was perfectly still, gazing back at the reflection of his wrinkled old face and faded eyes, which were so completely filled with the overwhelming love he felt for this precious child.  Neither of them made a sound.  Both were completely unaware of anything but each other. 

“It was a moment of perfect holiness.  I was struck dumb by the power of it.  So much was spoken in that silent space.  The very old man lovingly touching the perfect head of this tiny child was remembering, I suspect, the silky hair of his own baby daughter, and her daughter after that.  And now to be granted the great gift of loving yet another baby girl in his long life, he was obviously overcome with love and gratitude.  Perhaps in the far reaches of his memory was the sweet recollection of his own father touching his own little baby head with such love and reverence.

“She, the precious infant, was simply alive in the moment, loving it, receiving it, completely unconscious of life and the pain it brings to us on occasion.  I wondered, and I wondered if the old man wondered if she would have any real memory of this moment as she grew up.  Would she be able in times of fear or sorrow to call up the image I saw before me that day in the sweet warm air of the courtyard?  The little baby.  The very old man.  Loving and being loved in perfect harmony and completeness.  Would she know, regardless of what fate would bring her way in life?  Would she know that at least one time in her life she was utterly loved by another human being?  You know, sometimes just that little bit of knowledge is all we have to carry us through – all we have to cling to.  And it can be all we need.

“When the others in the family reappeared in the courtyard, I was sitting there with tears streaming down my face.  I went over to the group, and I took the women aside, the mother, the grandmother, the great-grandmother, and I told them through my tears what I’d witnessed.  ‘Take their picture right this minute, in this very spot,’ I told them.  ‘Promise me you will show her this picture, and you will tell her the story of this day, that you’ll never let her forget him and his love for her, and this perfect moment in her little life.  No one knows what life has in store for her, or who among you will be here when she needs you,’ I said.  ‘But she will forever have this day to remind her of how much she was loved.’

“‘We all cried as I left,’ Jill said.  ‘And they were taking the photograph.’”

A photograph of a child’s beginning.  A photograph of one so beloved.  Beginnings are important.  Aren’t they?  The beginning of a child’s life and how that child is welcomed into the world and into her family.  The beginning of a new relationship.  The beginning of a new job.  The beginning of a movie.  All set the stage, give the framework for what it is that is yet to come, for what will be next.

Every time we offer Broadway 101 classes and sessions for our visitors and our newer Broadway Christian Church friends, we talk about beginnings.  We talk about our beginning, and we show photographs of those beginnings.  We show the picture of the 21 acres that were bought for a mere $18,000 making sure we would never want for space to grow.  We show the picture of those adults standing out on Broadway Street, 101 adults, 75 children, and five infants who started this congregation and set the course for a priority of ministry with children and youth.  We mention the young leaders, some of whom are in this very room today, who were in their twenties and thirties, but who have made sure that new and young leadership will always be welcomed and encouraged in the life of this congregation.  And always, we always mention what charter member Pauline Walden said on the Sunday we were leaving the old sanctuary and anticipating being in this new one.  Some of you may remember.  Pauline said, “Broadway is a congregation that was birthed in love, and that has made all the difference.”  A congregation birthed in love.  Broadway was not birthed or begun from a conflict, or out of animosity, or self-righteousness.  Broadway was birthed in love from the hope, the longing, the nurturing of First Christian Church downtown, and the commitment of those 101 adults.  With that gift came the Broadway Spirit, still present today, welcoming, generous, energetic, hopeful, healthy.

Beginnings are important, indeed.  Beginnings are to be remembered.  Today we stand at the first Sunday of Lent.  It is a beginning of sorts.  It is the beginning of a season of preparation and anticipation as we begin the steps with Jesus toward the crucifixion and beyond to the resurrection.  Today we stand with Jesus at the beginning of his ministry.  Now granted, that may have been hard to hear as the Scripture was being read, as we just pluck out a story from the midst of a chapter, but in that beginning verse where it says, “Next Jesus…” is a good hint that something has happened just before.  What has happened just before in Matthew’s telling of Jesus’ story is that Jesus has just been baptized.  It is a rite of passage.  It’s the kind of moment that sets all other moments into a new light.  Bible students agree.  It is the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry.  At that moment of baptism, at that moment of Jesus coming out of the water, seeing a dove, the Spirit alighting on him, he hears a voice, “This is my son, the beloved with whom I am well pleased.”

I hope somebody like Jill was present to say, “Take a picture!  Save this moment.  Because you are going to need to show it to him later on when things aren’t so bright as this day.  Capture that moment, because he’s going to need the reminder of God’s love pouring out upon him and the affirmation, ‘This is my beloved.’”  It was a birthing out of the waters of baptism.  It was a birth in love in the profound and identifying love of God.

Then next, Jesus opened a soup kitchen.  No.  Next Jesus preached a powerful sermon.  No.  Next Jesus started a movement to rise up against the hierarchy of the Jewish religious institution.  No.  Next Jesus spends 40 days in the wilderness, a beginning that will set the stage; give the framework for what is yet to come, for what comes next. 

Forty days, fasting.  Forty days of cleansing, clearing body, mind, spirit.  Forty days of waiting and growing into that identity that has been thrust upon him.  “I’m God’s beloved.”  Letting the truth of that sink deep into his being.  Forty days of preparing. 

Rick talked last week about 24 hours of Sabbath time.  As I listened to him last week, I found myself trying to imagine 24 hours of not working, of not checking my calendar and everyone else’s.  Twenty-four hours of actually just being still, not having the flu as the way to get there.  It was hard for me to imagine that.  Was it for you, if you were here?  I could get to about six hours, but 24 hours?  Forty days?  Wow!

And then after 40 days, according to the text, came the temptation, the Devil, Satan, the Tempter.  Lots of names for that power, and energy, and presence that would try to persuade Jesus that he could be someone other than who he had been called to be as God’s beloved.

I like how Elizabeth Michael Boyle describes that encounter.  Elizabeth is a Catholic sister, a professor at Caldwell College, a poet, a playwright, and she is also Broadway Christian Church’s George Boyle’s sister, which is how I received her wonderful book, Preaching the Poetry of the Gospel.  About Jesus’ temptation, Elizabeth says, “Visualizing the mountaintop confrontation between Jesus and Satan feels a little like watching an Olympic competition on videotape hours after its decisive outcome, knowing already who will win, and delighting in the champion’s superior power and style.  We applaud as Jesus quietly disposes and flattens the Tempter’s flimsy value system.”  And then she notes, “But the story does not record the expression in Jesus’ eyes as he answers.  My imagination,” she says, “sees him showing neither contempt or triumph, but genuine pity.”  Next she makes that important bridge from this story to you and me.  “The gospel offers,” she says, “more than an instant replay of Jesus’ testing.  It vividly previews our own.  It dramatizes instruction for the daily struggle with our greatest temptation, the fear of trusting a God who does not share our values.”

“Our greatest temptation – the fear of trusting a God who does not share our values.”  I had to read that sentence a few times.  You know, poets will do that to you.  They’ll say things in a way that will open up a new thought, a different perspective.  The values the Tempter suggest to Jesus do seem to mirror the values we human beings want most to apply for one another and ourselves. 

That first value, satisfying our hungers.  “One does not live by bread alone,” Jesus said.  Now I don’t think that was a forerunner of the Atkins Diet Plan.  But, I for one, am greatly relieved that he did not say, “One does not live by potatoes alone,” because I would have to disagree with that.  “One does not live by bread alone.”  What a contrast to what we experience daily.  We are a society obsessed with food.  Are we not?  Maybe it’s because we have so much of it available for us, or maybe because food becomes a way to feed more than our physical hungers.  If I stand in a grocery checkout line, and I gaze at the magazines on the rack, I’m hard pressed to find one not promoting the best new recipes and the latest, greatest diet plan.  Jesus recognizes there are emptinesses that recipes and diets can’t fill.  And the love we are seeking is in God’s affirmation, “You are my beloved.”

The second value Jesus calls into question – the thrill seeking, the death defying, the miraculous survival, the razzle-dazzle of fame.  Jump!  Get that fame for ten minutes.  Live on the edge.  Push the limit.  “Fear Factor,” “Survivor,” “The Apprentice,” all express the epitome of this fascination of ours with pushing the limit.  Then there are those of us who live on the edge of our calendars, trying to eek out 28 hours in a 24-hour day.  Super Mom!  Wonder Woman!  Makin’ it happen!  Beating the odds!  Jesus recognizes the futility of proving oneself, testing the limits, testing God’s limits, and he rests in the truth and the promise of his baptism, “You are my beloved.”

Third value – power.  Clean and simple power in all of its manifestations.  The kingdoms of the world.  Money.  Politics.  Material possessions.  Jesus turns from this emptiness, claims the source of his power – serving God, based on God’s belief in him.  “You are my beloved.”

Our values?  Our values express how we try to identify ourselves, how we stake out who we think we are or we should be.  In my imagination, Jesus looks at us with neither contempt nor triumph, but with genuine pity, and great love, and great hope.

By his beginnings, by his choices in the midst of temptation, by remembering his identity, Jesus offers us an alternative identity, and alternative values to trust.  He is God’s beloved.  You are beloved.  We are God’s beloved.  If we could but take a picture of that truth to always remind us.  This is what the season of Lent can offer us, a new beginning.  A time to discover our most profound, deepest, real identity and values.

So how about trying this on for Lent?  Every morning when you look in the mirror… Everybody looks in the mirror every morning at some point of the morning?  Every morning when you look in the mirror, see yourself as God’s beloved, and tell yourself, “I am God’s beloved.”  OK.  Practice.  Say it with me, “I am God’s beloved.”  Every morning until Easter morning on March 27, including Easter morning on March 27, I invite us to let that truth sink deep into our being.  “I am God’s beloved.”  See yourself in that photo as a little child gently touched by a loving, great-great-grandfather.  See yourself in that picture of a church born out of love and sustained by God’s Spirit.  See yourself hand in hand with a young man coming up out of the waters of baptism, and the Spirit resting upon him, and resting upon you, and the voice of God promising, “You are my beloved.”  Let’s just try it for the next 42 days.  Let’s just wait and see what God and the angels might do with us.

And together we say… “Amen.”

Benediction

Adoring God, your love is so much more than enough.  Help us to accept no substitute.  This offer is never void, given to participating souls, in a heart near you.  Life back, guaranteed.  Amen.