Listening for God: When Dependence Means Independence

Sermon, 2/21/10 (Lent 1). When our goods become our ends as well as our means, we become dependent on what brings us independence. Such is temptation: settling for the good, and surviving (depending on our false god of independence), versus focusing on the best, and thriving (depending on God for our independence). How so? The pastor shares a personal story ...

Scripture          Luke 4:1-13    

Lenten Series: Listening for God

“When Dependence Means Independence”

Prayer: Gracious and Loving God, we struggle so hard to discover, then embrace, who we are in this world – to become independent – when you call us to discover, then embrace, whose we are – to become, let us say it, dependent … on you.

We long to belong, when we belong to you all along.

As we slog through this wintry season of Lent, guide us to and through those wilderness places where we may face our wayward world afresh.

Afresh – and assured – that our dependence on you leads us to independence, in the end.

Over a decade ago, when Amy was finishing seminary and was pregnant with Drew and we were living in Oklahoma, I was fortunate to be afforded three days off to attend a much-need spiritual retreat with other Presbyterian pastors in Texas.

One of those three days was devoted to complete silence. I wish it could have lasted longer. As a newly-minted pastor – and an introvert, at that – constantly in a small town’s public eye, I was wallowing in the luxury of complete detachment from the daily expectations of social mingling.

The theme of the retreat was taken from a phrase in Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus: “Rooted and Grounded in God’s Love.” And during the day of silence, I was finding myself rooted and grounded in that love in a way I had not felt in quite awhile.

I was tempted to remain in that place and space – even when our twenty-four hours were up, and we were called back together to reflect as one on the movements of the Spirit the previous day …

Twenty-four hours alone at a retreat – a retreat where we were well-fed.

Contrast that with our story today of Jesus’ forty days alone – and fasting through it all.

Fasting not from fast food … or fried foods … or that ever-favorite Lenten sacrifice of food known as chocolate.

“He ate nothing at all during those (forty) days,” Luke tells us. Followed by the most useless statement I know between the covers of this Bible: “And when (these days) were over, he was famished.”

It is reported that throughout those forty days, the devil had been about tempting Jesus. But now – at the end – he hit him with the Big Three:

• The economic temptation – to show he could provide for himself, whatever the cost.

• The political temptation – to show he could be powerful, whatever the cost.

• The religious temptation – to show he could be protected, and in  spectacular fashion, whatever the cost.

He could be a provider. He could be powerful. He could be protected.

Whatever the cost.

The cost of his independence.

Ironic, isn’t it: The more dependent Jesus becomes on God through all his temptations – beyond his and all our childhood comforts of provisions, power, and protections – the more independent from these temptations he becomes.

Temptation. Go ahead: Nudge one other. Swap tales of how you almost pulled the covers over your head and didn’t make it to worship today (of course, I’m glad you did). Right now, one of you may be quoting to yourself the immortal words – or should I say the immoral words? – of Oscar Wilde: “I can resist anything but temptation.”

Ah, but there may be more truth to that statement than we care to admit! For temptation makes itself so difficult to resist because it does not present itself for what it is.

It would so easy, wouldn’t it, if temptation would stride right up the front porch of our lives, knock on our front door, and – once we opened it – extend its hand to us and say, “Hi, there! Here I am! I’m temptation!”

Or it would even be easy if it tried to barge its way in, shouting through the front keyhole, “Make way for me! Here I come!”

Or it would even be easy if temptation would sneak around to our back door, which we bolt-lock for such eventualities.

But who can resist temptation, when it wanders around to the side of our souls, and whispers in our ear – casually, seductively – “Here I am. My name is Good. Won’t you come out, and play?

“Don’t you want to declare your independence from that conscience of yours?

“Don’t you want to be … free from it all?”

And free from it all, we would be! Problem is: What would be left for us to be free for?

‘Tis true, that the devil’s appeal to the basic, instinctual desires, found in Jesus and in us all – economic, political, religious – are God-given. They are good. And ‘tis true that, because these instinctual desires are all good, they are all worthy of our longing to enjoy them and play with them.

And yet, in his desert crisis, some still, small voice within Jesus discerns a difference. It’s the crucial difference. That – as the old saying goes – the good can be the enemy of the best. That playing with Good and enjoying it is one thing. But when we settle for playing with Good, we inevitably wind up playing God.

For the more independently we think we become, and act, with our provisions – our power – and our protections, the more dependent we become on what we think makes us independent.

Can’t we hear in this story those side-door whispers of what’s good asking to be let in, in a futile attempt to become what’s best in our lives? …

• “Pssst: Is it provisions you want? Let me lay some bread on you. You’ll be coming back for more …”

• “Pssst: Is it power that’s important to you? Here’s a dollop of recognition. I suppose you’ll want a full serving later …

• “Pssst: Is it a sense of security – of protection? I got your back. And soon, you’ll be putting up all kinds of fronts!

The Rev. Heidi Neumark is a Lutheran parish pastor who works with Latina and Latino immigrants in the South Bronx. She gets it right when she writes,

Sometimes it’s tempting to settle for a lot less. And so we come (in our gospel today) to another alien in the desert. There at the edge, and potentially the tempting end of the wilderness, Jesus is given a chance to opt out. To settle for his own control and comfort. To isolate himself from wandering Arameans … But … this immigrant is desperate to make a better life for his children. And so he takes the desert route, refusing to settle for less even at the end, when faced with a crown of thorns sharp as a (borderland’s) barbed wire ...¹

This immigrant scenario may not ring true for many of us. Not directly. After all, as American citizens we seem to enjoy “an inheritance to possess”, as Deuteronomy puts it in another lectionary scripture today. A Promised Land, flowing with milk and honey and … coffee (imported). Yet precisely because we live in our land of ever-more, it’s tempting to settle for a whole lot less.

That is: until we meet the alien in our midst. The face of God dislodging us from the spaces we reserve for our “goods”. The innocent one, who reminds us of the alien we once were, or are – the alien in our selves. The struggling one, whose plight we use to retreat behind our economic provisions and our political power and our religious protections – our masks of godliness – because suddenly, real human hunger and real human intimacy and full human community present a threat to us.

For real human hunger and real human intimacy and real human community, they do threaten us. And so we of the land of ever-more find ourselves settling for the ever-less threatening. And when we settle, as we too often do, for playing with the Good in our goods, we inevitably find ourselves playing God.

We become dependent … on what makes us feel independent. When the only independence we can have is to throw our Lenten souls on the mercy of the court of God.

It felt so good for me to bask in those twenty-four hours of complete silence at that “Rooted and Grounded in God’s Love” retreat.

Until the final hour of silence, when we were called to eat breakfast together. Since one was allowed to speak, we had to communicate to our tablemates by gesturing to that salt shaker over here, or that juice over there.

When you are not allowed to talk at the table of communion, things can get pretty stressful. And when I get stressed, I tend to eat rather quickly.

Having gulped down my breakfast, I rolled my aching stomach – along with the rest of me – out of the dining hall and onto the grounds of the retreat center for one last solitary walk.

It was then I heard the grunting sound. At first, I thought it was indigestion. Then, I realized the sound was a few feet behind me. I turned, and I saw the retreat center’s mascot: a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, enjoying a morning treat. Rooting and grounding itself in God’s love.

And I had to laugh. For it was then that I realized, in the midst of the retreat silence, where my fear of hunger and intimacy and community at that breakfast table had left me. That pig and I shared a lot in common.

Temptation had slipped in through my side door. For even in the midst of that good and that grand and that golden silence, I had replaced my meditative self with my greedy self. Separated, not only from my sisters and brothers, but from my ultimate dependence upon the grace and glory of God.

A dependence not on what makes me free from …

A dependence on what makes me free for.

Why need we settle for the goods in life … when our dependence on God promises us only the best?

Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.

¹Heidi Neumark, “Aliens welcome”, “Living by the Word”, Christian Century, February 6, 2007, p. 17.