 Dr. Carl Price |
When
to Walk Away
Sermon:
Scripture: |
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The
story of the temptation of Jesus has been used as a lesson in
dealing with our own struggles for centuries. Did you hear
about the clergy family who had trouble keeping their budget
balanced because the wife had trouble with the wardrobe part
of their finances? The lady knew she overdid it now and then
and they talked about it on several occasions. Finally the
husband said, “Dear, remember the temptation of Jesus, and
how he said, ‘Get Thee behind me, Satan’? Maybe you need to remember that when you feel tempted to buy
a dress that we can’t afford.” The
wife thought that was a great idea and things went quite well
for several months. Then one day the husband came home and saw
a box on the table from a very expensive dress shop.
Before he could say anything or ask a question, the
wife appeared and said, “Dear, before you get upset, let me
tell you what happened. I was walking down the street and saw
this dress in the window. It doesn’t cost anything to look
in a window, so I just stopped to look. Then I thought I would
like to check the material and look at it a little closer. It
doesn’t cost anything to look inside either; so I went in
the store. The material seemed to be very good quality and I
thought it would be nice to try it on; they don’t charge for
trying dresses on, you know. “It
wasn’t until I had the dress on and was standing in front of
the mirror that I felt the temptation to buy the dress; but I
remembered what we had talked about and I said, ‘Get thee
behind me, Satan.’ “And
Satan said, ‘It looks good from the rear, too!’” I
suppose the lesson here might be that there are times when
conversations with the Tempter aren’t the best way to deal
with the situation—times when, figuratively or literally, we
need to walk away. Which is why the words of Kenny Rogers
about a game of cards came to mind as I read this ancient
story. You
have probably anticipated the words. Kenny Rogers didn’t say
them first, but he probably said them more often and, for
sure, he got paid the most for saying them: “You need to
know when to hold ‘em,
know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, know
when to run.” Some games you should just get entirely away
from. Which
brings me to why I think this may be the underlying lesson in
the story. Have you ever wondered why Jesus didn’t tell the
Tempter to beat it when he suggested the stones be made into
bread; or at least when he hinted that a leap from the Temple
would attract a crowd? I mean, why give the Tempter another
chance? Life is not a ball game in which the opposition is
guaranteed three strikes. The Tempter does not operate like
Regis—he will never politely ask if that is your final
answer; he will always offer another opportunity to give the
answer he wants. So
why did Jesus enter into debate, so to speak, with the Tempter
on two occasions, then distance himself so conclusively on the
third? What is there here that prompted such a quick and
decisive turning away? Part
of the answer to that question is probably the nature of this
offer…“All the kingdoms of this world.” A piece of us
probably doesn’t like to believe that such a blatant offer
would ever appeal to Jesus. What would Jesus want with the
kingdoms of this world? Didn’t he often speak about the
inadequacy of things? And didn’t his life demonstrate very
clearly that he lived what he said? But
this temptation is not really about wealth. Wealth is clearly
a part of this imagery, but there comes a point when the issue
ceases to be money. I mean, how much money does anyone really
need? I know it always seems like the answer is “Just a
little more than what we have,” but seriously, does anyone
really need the kind of money they talk about in the sports and
entertainment world, to pick the most obvious examples? Or the
dollars involved in the Enron and WorldCom and other scandals
that have covered the media over the past several months? Are
these events really just about money? I
told this story on the Men’s Retreat four or five years ago,
but it seems to fit our theme, so I ask any of you who may
remember it to bear with me. A westerner decided to go to
India and take up a life of poverty with one of the orders
that shunned possessions, believing that a loincloth and a
begging bowl were all that was needed in life. He found a guru
who was willing to take him on as a disciple and so began the
simple life. After a couple of years, the teacher told him
that he was going on a pilgrimage into the mountains and the
time had come for the disciple to go it on his own. Things
went well for several weeks. Then he woke up one morning in
the brush and stick shelter where he slept to discover that
the rats had eaten his loincloth. Embarrassed, he tried to use
his bowl as a modesty cover while he begged a piece of cloth.
A few weeks later the rats struck again. After the fourth or
fifth such embarrassment, the disciple decided that what he
needed was a cat. A cat would take care of the rats and save
both his loincloth and his dignity. People were always giving
cats away—that wasn’t a problem—so he acquired a cat.
That solved the problem nicely; except that the cat got
pregnant, as cats often do, and he soon had several cats and
shortly after that, no rats for cat food.
So he had to start begging for milk for his cats as
well as food for himself. That
cut into his devotional time and, after a few weeks, he
decided he needed to get a goat. A goat would give him milk to
feed his cats and not take away so much time from his
devotions as the extra begging. So he traded some of his nicer
cats for a rather bedraggled goat.
That worked all right, but he soon discovered that he
needed to keep the goat tied up to keep it from wandering off.
And keeping the goat tied meant that he soon found himself
needing to gather grass to feed his goat—and the goat also
turned out to be pregnant. A
few goats later, when he found that he was spending still less
time at his devotions, he came up with the idea of hiring
someone to tend his goats on shares. That worked fine, but as
the number of workers grew to keep pace with his goats, he
found that personnel matters took more and more of his time.
He decided that the way to solve that was to get married and
let his wife manage the workers. That worked okay, except that
his wife was not satisfied with a stick and brush hut to live
in, so he had to build her a house. Several
more years passed and one day the old guru returned from his
mountain pilgrimage. He went to the site of the stick and
brush shelter to greet his disciple and found the largest,
finest house in the village in its place. Distraught and
dismayed, he looked up the disciple and said to him, “My
son! What have you done? What is the meaning of all this
opulence?” To
which the disciple replied, “Holy Father, it was the only
way I could keep my loincloth!” Understand
that I am not advocating loincloths and begging bowls, and I
don’t intend to suggest that there is anything inherently
wrong in making money. How we make it and what we do
with it are issues for faith, but beyond that there is an
insidiousness about materialism, isn’t there? And it reaches
a point where, no matter what we say, it really isn’t about
money anymore. In the same manner, “the kingdoms of this
world” was not really about wealth. It was about power. Again,
it is easy to think that Jesus would never have been attracted
by such an offer. But let’s face it: if there was no appeal,
why does the Bible call it a temptation? Temptation means you
are tempted,
doesn’t it? The prevalent image of the Messiah in Jesus’
time was of a political and military leader. Multitudes of
ardent Jewish nationalists waited for such a leader to issue
the call to take up the sword in revolt against Rome. We say
that Jesus wasn’t that kind of Messiah, but
when did he decide that? Howard
Thurman, in his book The
Inward Journey, pictures Jesus sitting on the mountain,
but not with a horned and pitchforked figure sitting on a rock
across from him like the monk in the monastery outside Jericho
that I referred to in Steeple Notes imagined it. He pictures
Jesus pondering his mission and feeling the awful weight of
the world’s suffering and need, not from some mountain high
enough to see all the kingdoms of this world, but with visions
in his mind that can call up those images in any place. He
sees him dreaming of a world that must
do his Father’s will, that must
act in love to one another, that must
share its riches. Dr. Thurman writes: He
had wandered about the hill above the rock… The
kingdoms of this world — Darkness
crept down; the stars returned. Kings,
kingdoms, earthly rulers all To
do good by evil means; to win converts with the sword; to
conquer the world for a good cause. Does it sound any more
attractive now? Any more familiar? Any more—tempting? The
Crusaders tried it. So did Charlemagne. So did the armies of
Islam. Even Adolf Hitler said he had a dream of a world made
up of the elite, a Super Race. A war to make the world safe
for Democracy, we said. A war to end all wars, we said again.
Are we now on the brink of one
guaranteed to….what? Make the world safe for the
progress of capitalism? Have
you noticed how war tends to bring participants closer and
closer to a lower common denominator? We entered World War II
condemning the enemy for saturation bombing of civilian
populations; we ended up with Dresden and Hiroshima and
Nagasaki on the Allies’ list of targets. Understand
that I am not a pacifist; I do not think that we can survive
in this world by unilateral disarmament. I believe that evil
must sometimes be resisted with force. But I would remind us
that the Tempter has his own agenda in our debates, and if war
drags all to the lowest common denominator, then we have lost,
even if we win. I
have spent much of my time on this third temptation of Jesus
because it seems so contemporary and because it was at this
point that Jesus walked away; but I would suggest another
possibility on why Jesus walked away at this point. What if it
was more than the theme of this temptation? What if it was not
until then that he really realized that he was dealing with
the Tempter? I know the Scriptures speak of the Tempter
speaking to him on the first two instances, but what if these
temptations came to Jesus in much the same manner that
temptations come to us? After all, the Bible says that
“Jesus was tempted in all manner, even as we are tempted.”
Do you always see the Tempter when you are tempted? I sure
don’t. The question of bread began with Jesus’ own hunger
and whether or not to use his power for his own needs. The
question about leaping from the Temple had to do with how to
win attention for a hearing for his message. You do not need
any Evil Power sitting on a rock in front of you to be forced
to deal with those kinds of concerns. They are part of life.
We face them every day. How will I make this sale? How will we
market this product? How will I report this incident? What
will I put on my expense report? How will I face up to this exam? When
we struggle with those kinds of questions, are we always aware
that the Tempter is involved? Or does that awareness more
often come to us as hindsight, after we look back upon the
incident and see how close to the precipice we came? Or when
we realize that we made the wrong choice and look back in deep
regret and wish that we had seen it more clearly at the time? What
I am suggesting is that perhaps until this moment Jesus saw
himself simply trying to decide some things—struggling with
the issues, recalling Scriptures that would seem to offer
guidance, leaning this way a little, recalling another
Scripture that spoke a different word. Then this third assault
comes and suddenly he knows where the others had come from as
well. In telling of it afterwards, he would tell it like he
realized it had really been. Note that this third temptation
is the only one in which Jesus really
addresses
the Tempter. The other two speak about
the Tempter, but only here does Jesus actually speak to the Tempter. And when he does, it is not to enter into debate,
but to close the debate and walk away. Part
of the lesson in this story might well be the reminder that
the Tempter can quote Scripture, too, and we can’t assume
that because a verse of Scripture quickly comes to mind that
seems to support what we want to do, we have the answer to our
question. Part of the lesson here is surely the reminder that
the ways of the world—the dramatic and the spectacular, like
leaps from the Temple—is not necessarily God’s way. And
surely there is the message in this third event that all the
kingdoms of this world are not worth the price the Tempter
asks. But
perhaps the deeper, underlying lesson here is: As
soon as we recognize that the Tempter is
involved, it is time to walk away. You don’t
debate; you don’t argue; you don’t discuss; you simply do
not play that game. That game is rigged; the cards are marked;
the deck is stacked; the odds are against us—say it how you
will. We don’t win that game. Oh, we may win a hand now and
then, but the losses invariably add up to more than the
winnings. “You
need to know when to hold them, know when to fold them; know
when to walk away, know when to run.” Thank you, Kenny Rogers!
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