Temptation
A sermon by Ted Virts
March 9, 2014
Sonoma CA
Theme:
Let’s start by defining evil: It’s something that is not just against the moral order but intentionally and willfully against that order. Evil embodies a dimension of rebellion, although this rebellion needn’t be directly experienced as such by those engaged in it. People can do evil without thinking too much about the acts they are performing. In fact, people who perform evil acts – genocide, abuse of racial or ethnic minorities—often understand themselves to be obeying the moral order of their particular culture. Part of the power of evil is the way it insinuates itself intimately into people’s lives.
Charles Matthewes Why Evil Exists
Scripture:
Matthew 4:1-11
“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil…The tempter came to him…” Matthew 4
The cast of characters in this morning’s scripture reading is a little more like
Halloween than Spring time.
Jesus is led into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasts for 40 days and forty nights, and the scripture informs us (as if we needed to know) that after the month long fast he was hungry. If you were to read the sentence before our reading began today you would note that Jesus was just baptized by John, and the Voice shows up and says “This is my beloved Son, in whom I’m well pleased.” Then the
Spirit leads Jesus to the wilderness to be tempted. No break. No celebratory party.
Here is the temptation: “if you are who you say you are, what are you going to do about it?”
Lent has begun. The Lenten tradition is essentially the question of the tempter/the tester/the adversary – that is who the devil is in scripture most of the time: the one who checks in to see if we are who we say we are. The devil doesn’t “make us do it”
The devil says, “hey, how about this? “
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Temptation isn’t really temptation unless we are interested. Wanna try some Meth has not been something that has interested or tempted me. There are other things that I am more interested in, but I’ll spare you that revelation.
The dictionary says that to tempt is:
“to entice or attempt to entice (someone) to do or acquire something that they find attractive but know to be wrong or not beneficial.”
This issue of temptation is not new. Neither is the connection between temptation and evil.
The Lord’s prayer has the line “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…”
Few of us would say that we are evil. Most of us would say that we have made some mistakes, that we have done some bad things, but few would admit to evil.
I want to take our Lenten journey seriously, and with that we will be spending a few weeks on the matter of evil and sinfulness.
When I was in the Catholic school as a child we were confronted with the question: do you want to go to heaven or do you want to go to hell? I couldn’t figure out why this was a hard question.
But there is a puzzle there. St. Paul says in Romans that “the things I shouldn’t do, those are what I do; and the things I should do, those are what I avoid” There is something within us as humans that has us make choices that are not good – and though the range of consequences goes from being thoughtless or rude, to being bad or wrong, to being evil – the dynamic is the same – somehow and some times we choose the wrong way.
What is that about? What is it that tempts us in such a way that we abandon what we know is right, for something that is less than right?
I’m going to use the category of evil over the next few weeks. I hope these sermons are conversation starters to allow you to think, pray and examine your own behavior, choices and attitudes. The goal is not guilt. The goal is truth telling. The underlying truth is that God knows about you, the task is for you to know about you.
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Charles Matthewes defined evil in our worship theme:
It’s something that is not just against the moral order but intentionally and willfully against that order. Evil embodies a dimension of rebellion, although this rebellion needn’t be directly experienced as such by those engaged in it. People can do evil without thinking too much about the acts they are performing. In fact, people who perform evil acts – genocide, abuse of racial or ethnic minorities—often understand themselves to be obeying the moral order of their particular culture. Part of the power of evil is the way it insinuates itself intimately into people’s lives.
Professor Matthewes definition has some components and some built in confusion that is typical of us when we think about evil: Intentional violation of the moral order. Rebellion. But sometimes that rebellion isn’t experienced as such by the perpetrators of evil. And that evil insinuates itself into people’s lives.
To start us off on our journey of evil - who doesn’t want to come along with that lead line? – I invite you to listen to a few ways of looking at evil –
In general there are three families of thought about evil (these, and the specifics are from Charles Matthewes Why Does Evil Exist? - a Great Courses
DVD series)
1.
Evil is folly – it is choosing or creating chaos against the ordered world, it is depriving creation of its inherent goodness. It is revolt against the intrinsic order of creation.
2.
Evil is part of the cosmos, and part of human nature. Evil is within us and we must struggle against it.
3.
Evil is maturation. To be fully mature demands separation. We are harmed and we harm to gain wisdom – think of the garden of eden where the humans eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and then can no longer be in paradise.
Make sense? When people talk about evil it is either destruction of the basic goodness of creation, or it is a giving in to the selfish part of ourselves, or it is part of the natural course of events that is necessary for us to live in the real world – we cannot function in the world without a “loss of innocence.”
Within those three families of thought about evil come the long list of attempts to understand evil over the millennia. I’ll phrase them as questions,
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and I invite to think about what fits for your understanding, what might be new, what you might think is missing.
 Is evil a cosmic battle? God vs. the Devil?
 Is evil fate, luck, chance – a randomness – being in the wrong place at the wrong time?
 Is evil a consequence of ignorance? A failure to know and align yourself with the moral order?
 Is evil a weakness of will? you know what is wrong, but don’t resist enough?
 Is evil the human rivalry with God? We really think we know best?
 Is evil directed by God as a test or tool of God? Remember Job – the tempter says to God that Job is loyal because everything is going his way? Remember Abraham and Isaac – is God really first? (note these examples are written to reinforce that God is not like us – God is foreign, alien, terribly mysterious)
 Is the struggle between good and evil endemic to humanity – Jesus vs. demons; us vs. our demons?
 Is evil inevitable? You need to fall in order to be saved?
 Is evil the daily impulse of the human heart – rival energies – that you must choose between each day? Is evil laziness? if not rebellion, then refusal to resist?
 Is evil rebellion – not following orders, instructions or being obedient to God or the expectation of the moral order?
 Is evil self deception, or self reliance? – where God is out of the picture.
 Is evil the political necessity for the greater good? The end justifies the means? the sacrifice of the few for the good of the many?
 Is evil a social construct? Evil is what we say is evil?
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Whew! There is a preacher story that a parishioner came up to the pastor after the sermon and said, “I never knew about evil til I listened to you!”
Thanks.
So where are we?
Evil is socially and psychologically complicated.
For this Lent, my emphasis is not on labeling “them” evil – that is too easy, and too much fun. I’m more interested in us taking the journey into our own heart and life. Genesis is right. We have eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I suspect that few of the thoughts about evil across the millennia are surprising or particularly foreign to you.
I do want to be careful though about escalation of rhetoric. There is a difference between rudeness, thoughtlessness, selfishness, sinfulness, badness, and evil.
Maybe one way of looking at evil is that it is the ultimate self-preservation – self-preservation to the exclusion of everything else. If self-preservation is at the core, it is no wonder that evil is complex. Much like an eating disorder, you can’t not eat, and you cannot pay attention to self-preservation.
The question is where is the line between ignorance, thoughtlessness, selfishness, sinfulness and evil? as St. Paul says, we all fall short of the glory of God.
I think we don’t have to look far to find out how we make excuses for our actions that are less than holy.
Ever heard your child say, “you’re not the boss of me!” (or thought something similar yourself?
Ever heard your child say, “It’s not my fault, he made me do it?” (or thought something similar yourself?)
We’ll look at pride and blame in the next couple of weeks.
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In the mean time, remember this:
Your and my behavior are not unknown to God.
And the central truth of Christianity, described in many ways, is that our trust in and believing Jesus is that his message of grace and redemption says this:
There is nothing you can do to make God love you more. There is nothing you can do to make God love you less.
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