Sermon 02/10/08 (Matthew 4:1-11)

“Self-Control: It’s What’s for Dinner!”
Matthew 4:1-11
Rev. Désirée H. Gold
St. Mark’s United Church of Christ, Baltimore, MD
Sunday, 10 February, 2008
First Sunday in Lent

 The season of Lent means different things to different people. It is agreed that Lent marks the forty days and forty nights before Easter -- a reminder of this morning’s Gospel: Jesus “fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished.” But the importance that modern-day Christians give to the season of Lent varies.

For some, Lent is a period of reflection and prayer, a time to deepen one’s relationship with God. In that same light, others focus on Lent as a time of special commitment. Some center on Lent as the journey to the Cross, a reminder of Christ’s crucifixion -- the shadow that must be remembered before we celebrate the Resurrection. Still others see the Lenten season as a special time for repentance from sin. And one preacher I know preaches about Lent as the journey back home, toward the Realm of God.

But for some, Lent is primarily about... TEMPTATION... avoiding it, that is! Throughout the ages, this morning’s story about Jesus resisting the temptation of Satan has been translated into strict rules about what one may and may not do during the season of Lent. Tied both to the ideas of repentance and the journey to the Cross, many people feel the need to give something up during the season of Lent. I believe last year I told you about my habit of giving up “odd” things during Lent, such as popcorn or raisins. I won’t share with you what I have committed to this year (remember the Ash Wednesday gospel about fasting in private), but many Christians around the world are well on their way to the “misery” of resisting temptation during the season of Lent.

Catholics and others often choose to give up meat during Lent. Some churches encourage their members to temporarily give up certain, um, enjoyable activities. And while the notion of “going without” during the season of Lent is not as common as it once was, many Christians continue to adhere as strictly as they can to the “rules” they set out for themselves during what is supposed to be a holy season.

The movie “Chocolat,” which takes place in 1960, is a perfect example of the resistance to temptation gone wrong. In the film, an eccentric woman named Vianne, and her daughter, move into a provincial French village smack dab in the middle of the Lenten season. This would not be a problem...except that Vianne wants to open up a chocolate shop despite the fact that the entire village, at the insistence of the mayor, has given up chocolate (and anything else enjoyable) for Lent. The mayor does all he can to keep Vianne from opening her shop, and when he is unable to do so, he begins a boycott on the shop.

Trouble is, Vianne is extraordinarily skilled at making chocolates, and despite the “pious” efforts of the mayor, more than a few “rebel” members of the community visit Vianne’s shop and taste her forbidden fruits. Truth be told, she serves up more than chocolate. She serves pure joy, in her eccentric but kind presence and in her willingness to accept those who were otherwise outcasts in the village. Although Vianne is not a practicing Christian, she seems to know more about the love of God than the most “pious” residents of the town.

Ultimately, the town, and even the mayor, soften to her. Late one night the mayor himself gives into his temptation after breaking into her shop and gorging himself on the chocolate shop’s entire window display. In his shame, he realizes that his behavior toward Vianne and company -- behavior which, at one point, reaches a level of violence -- says little about the season of Lent. ...And it is certainly not holy.

The “pious” but unholy characters in “Chocolat,” and many of us today, try to resist temptation because we think it is the right thing to do, or as a sort of competition with ourselves, just to see if we can do it. The idea to resist temptation during Lent originally derived from Jesus’ resistance of “the tempter,” but sometimes our own struggles to resist have very little to do with the God who is the center of this morning’s Gospel.

Let’s look at the Gospel again. What is it really saying? And what can we get from it, besides encouragement to stay away from chocolate or enjoyable activities for forty days and forty nights?

Notice, for example, that the three temptations Jesus faces from Satan all have to do with becoming like God. Satan does not tempt Jesus with delicious chocolates or with some other “temptation” that we modern Christians may choose to give up for Lent. Satan tests Jesus with the temptation toward Godlike power. And Jesus, divine though he may be, answers in the manner that any religious Jew should. Even if Jesus could change stones into bread, throw himself down a cliff and survive, or bow down before Satan, he chooses not to because he knows that to do so would be to turn from the God that is both his parent and his Lord. Jesus’ strong responses to those temptations, therefore, revolve around the complete seriousness with which one is to take the most important of the commandments, from Deuteronomy 6:4-5: “The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”

Our own resistance to temptation should fall along similar lines. Lent is not about resisting temptation for the sake of resisting temptation. It is not about avoiding things just to say we can or just to wallow in the misery of want, and it is not even about punishing ourselves before God. If you choose to give something up during this Lenten season -- or if you choose not to -- make your choice and do so for the glory of God. Do so because you love God, not because you love the fact that you can, indeed, resist that chocolate (or popcorn or raisins or whatever).

Biblical scholar Douglas Hare points out that it may be a little difficult for us everyday followers of Christ to really identify with this temptation story from Matthew. We do not “hold conversations with a visible devil, nor are we whisked from place to place as Jesus is in the story.” We know that we can’t turn stones into bread and that it would be a very bad idea for us to jump off a cliff. Besides, “what did Jesus know about the temptations that are faced daily by the recovering alcoholic and substance abuser? the lonely divorcée? the struggling business owner? the teenager who covets acceptance above all?” As Hare notes, “there is, however, a common denominator that links all of these with the temptations ascribed to Jesus. The basic, underlying temptation that Jesus shared with us is the temptation to treat God as less than God.”1

During this holy season of Lent, remember that. Be aware of the ways in which you treat God. Allow that awareness to shape your behavior, and to deepen your relationship with God. And do all of this with prayer. Now let us pray.


1 Douglas R. A. Hare, _Matthew_ (Interpretation, A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1993) 26.