So the devil said to Jesus, “All you have to do is to bow down before me; then all of this will be yours.” I wouldn’t normally begin my first sermon of Lent on a political note, but it’s just last Sunday that the world marked three years since President Putin’s tanks rolled into Ukraine. The first time in Europe since the Second World War that one country had invaded the sovereign territory of another, and endeavoured to take it by force. My paper last weekend carried the story of how the president of Ukraine was, as I saw it, deliberately mocked and belittled by the president and vice-president of the United States. It made difficult reading: whatever the rights and wrongs of the argument, there’s a right way and a wrong way to behave in international diplomacy, and this was the wrong way on so many levels.
On the first Sunday of Lent We’re reminded of the Bible story this season recalls. The temptations faced by Jesus in the wilderness, all of them to do with worldly power. The devil has shown Jesus in a flash all the nations of the world. “This is all mine,” says he. “I can do what I like with it, and I’ll give it all to you, and all its glory. All you have to do is to bow down to me.”
I am astonished - though maybe I shouldn’t be - to see the USA, the leader of the free world, seeming to make common cause with Russia - Russia, where there are today more political prisoners than at any time since the 1980’s. I was sickened to see - in the Oval Office - President Zelensky criticised for his clothes, worn to identify with his people at war in the defence of their land. Too much of our world today has, I believe, gone to the devil.
Years ago, I was involved in a mission campaign. I was part of a team, we went from door to door to talk to people about faith. And I’ve never forgotten this one guy who harangued me at some length about how religion had been the cause of more wars than anything else in human history. That rather one-sided conversation made for a very difficult few minutes for this novice evangelist!
But on the face of it, he was right, of course; any history book will show you how religion has played a part in many a war, other acts of cruelty too. But in reality, behind that history there’s a deeper and more fundamental truth: the one thing that more than anything plunges the world into war, whatever label it may bear, is the human lust for power.
That lust for power can be dressed up in lots of different ways. It can wear the trappings of religion or patriotism; it can claim the flag of justice, the desire for vengeance, the insistence that the other side should be punished. But what it’s always really about is power, and the stuff that tags along with power or feeds the lust for power: envy of those over there have got, fear that they might grab from you before you can grab from them, all of it made somehow holy by an insistence that our cause is right and just, and that we are the ones blessed by God.
But at the heart of every unprovoked assault and every smash and grab raid there’s someone who in some way has sold their soul to the Devil. Those words of his “All this I will give you” - they add up to a false bargain. What is all this that he will give us? It’s nothing more than mud and dust; and how much blood, how many human lives, is any pile of mud and dust worth?
And yet I know that I’m not immune to this - I’m not immune to wanting what I haven’t got, to getting angry at the thought that someone else has what I think ought to be mine. But not even Jesus when he’d finished his time in the wilderness - not even he was immune to temptation. It kept on coming: he was tempted as we are, we read in Hebrews. The devil retreated, but he didn’t go far, he was just biding his time, waiting for the right opportunity to come round. But, to complete that quote, Jesus was “tempted as we are, yet without sin” - and to each temptation that came his way he responded with a word of Scripture, he consciously turned away from the devil and his lies, and to the one he called Father.
And we should too. Christians believe Jesus to be both God and man, but out there in the desert it was very much the humanity of Jesus that was to the fore. In a place of huge vulnerability, he’s there to face up to all the possible wrong turnings that lay ahead for him, and to distinguish the false voices from the true. And in doing that, scripture is throughout, his weapon of choice.
It should be ours too. The word is near you, says the apostle Paul - it is on your lips and in your heart. We need that same turning to God that we see in our Lord, that same inward, heartfelt awareness of God’s authority, that is the authority of love, if we too are to stand firm against the world, the flesh and the Devil - in other words, against the stuff that can turn our heads, about being top dog, getting our own way, being the one in power. Give God the power, is what Paul says. Give God the power, and make no distinction between people, for God loves us all.
The fact is that anything that we believe in strongly can be misused, can become a vehicle for the bad stuff. It’s interesting to note that Mr Trump, Mr Vance and Mr Putin would all claim to be Christians, at least when it suits them to. And certainly all of them seem easily to find Christian ministers and priests ready to speak out in their support.
What is wrong and sinful often presents itself as attractive and plausible. Every one of the temptations that came the way of Jesus in the desert was plausible - why not take this short cut to maybe doing some good in the world? Why not dazzle the people with the power at your fingertips? Temptation in our lives often looks like a good way, but that doesn’t mean it’s God’s way. In the last of the temptations we even find the devil himself using scripture to back up his case - “Look,” he says: “Here’s a scripture that says God’s angels will bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.” But Jesus still has a further word of scripture to counter what the devil puts before him.
That’s why the word of God needs genuinely to be in our hearts and not only on our lips. The Bible is after all a large and complex book, and in fact the word Bible means a library of books, not just a single one. There’s so much that people have justified using the Bible: slavery, apartheid, wealth, power and even war.
So our reading of God’s word has to start with one we call the Word of God - with Jesus. Here is the man who could grab unlimited power, but instead becomes the servant of all. Here is the man who could be kind, but instead accepts a crown of thorns, and lays down his life - even for those who hammered in the nails. No-one is excluded from God’s love - and even those who exclude themselves by signing up with the Devil are still loved, if only they could know it.
Pray for Ukraine - and Gaza, and Yemen, and so many other places in our world where peace is needed. Pray for a peace that is just and lasting, and includes all, that gives to all, that allows safety and freedom and growth for all. And whenever you pray for peace, add the words, “Let it begin with me.” My word for this Lent is kindness. If my faith is not a culture for kindness and a springboard for kindness then something is very wrong with it. Maybe I’m listening to the wrong voices, maybe they’re leading me the wrong way, that temptingly easy way of short cuts, rather than the narrow path where Jesus leads us. May God plant his true word of love in our hearts, and may it reveal itself in kindness, that we may be lights for a darkening world.
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