First Sunday in Lent (2007): "Calling On the Name of the Lord"

First Sunday in Lent (2007): "Calling On the Name of the Lord"
Deuteronomy 26:1-11;
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16;
Romans 10:8b-13;
Luke 4:1-13
Preached by the Rev. Preston Parsons, February 25th, 2007

I would like to speak a bit about temptation and sin this morning. Not a bad topic for us in most seasons, but it is Lent, and in this season it is especially appropriate.

And the story of Jesus' temptation in the desert will be an excellent place for us to start.

***

There is one thing I would like for you all to know by the time you leave this morning: temptation is not the same as sin.

Now there is good news and bad news in what I am about to tell you- the good news is this: you know all the times when you are tempted to do something that you know is sinful? All the times, everyday, you are tempted to commit a sin? The times you are tempted to gossip about your enemies, friends, or (perhaps most likely) when you are tempted to gossip about your brothers and sisters in Christ? Or, perhaps the times when you are tempted to steal from the place you work? Perhaps the times when we are tempted to think of the church as a private club?

I could go on, about what your temptations might be, but I won't. I have a feeling you've got a pretty good sense of your own sinfulness, and you can pretty easily fill in the blank in the sentence "my biggest temptation is . . ."

The good news is that those temptations to sin aren't actually sins until you give in.

***

Jesus, in our story, was tempted, though didn't give in: Jesus is tempted, tempted as we are. Yet we know that Jesus is without sin. So we can take some comfort that Jesus was tempted in the desert, because if Jesus was subject to temptation, yet he was also without sin, we know that our own temptations are not the same as sin.

I suppose the bad news, or the hard news, is that we will always be subject to temptation. Even the holiest among us are, and always will be, subject to temptation. So is good to know that we are not alone in our temptation, that Jesus was tempted as well; but it is also hard to know that there is no end to temptation, because resisting temptation is hard work, isn't it. We aren't Jesus, none of us are quite that holy. We all give in, we all sin.

(If you tell me you don't give in to sin, that just makes your spiritual diagnosis that much easier because I already know that you are giving in to the temptation to lie. Either that or you are deluded enough about sin that we need to have a nice long talk.)

***

A long time ago- around the time that Christians were no longer being persecuted by the Romans, in the 4th century AD- around that time, some Christians began to flee to the desert, some to the deserts of Egypt, some to the same desert we read about in Luke. These Christians went to the desert, lived in huts and caves, chanted the psalms, and wove baskets for a little bit of money. They did this to come face-to-face with their own temptations.

None of them overcame their temptations, but many of them, did learn how to deal with their temptations. In the body of literature that owes its debts to these early monks, they wrote the same thing I'm saying today: temptation never ceases. But there is, according to these spiritual athletes of the desert, a dynamic of temptation and sin that we can recognize if we take the time.

You know those sins you commit- the sins that you don't realize you've committed, until you look back and say "how did that happen again!" Most sins are committed this way. Everything happens before we even know it. But the monks of the desert, sitting in their little huts and caves, singing the psalms and weaving their baskets, teach that there are actually a number steps in between temptation and sin.

After temptation, say the temptation to gossip, perhaps, for example, the temptation to tell Heather that Bill said that he thinks Preston smells funny on Sunday mornings-

after temptation comes acceptance of the temptation, and the dwelling on the temptation; you begin to think to yourself "I wonder what it would be like to tell Heather that Bill said that he thinks that Preston smells funny on Sunday mornings . . ."

Often, after dwelling on and thinking about the temptation, we then wrestle with that temptation, and we begin to think "I really shouldn't tell Heather that, should I . .. " Sometimes we successfully defeat that temptation in a spiritual wrestling match, and we don't commit the sin and gossip.

But, if the temptation remains undefeated, the next stage is assent, and we give in, feeling helpless. After assent, we do it, we gossip, and we say something bad about Bill and Preston to Heather.

This is where the monks of the desert teach us that sin happens, not in the temptation to sin, or the wondering about the sin, or in the wrestling with the sin, but in our assent to the sin, and the putting of the temptation into effect.

Further, when we give in to gossip enough, or we give in to any temptation often enough, temptations like the temptation to steal, or to think that the church is only for us - once we give into temptation often enough we become captive to the sin. And the movement from temptation to sin becomes nearly instantaneous.

The movement from temptation to sin becomes so quick that we don't even realize that we've been tempted and that we've given in. This is called captivity, and I'm sorry to report that captivity is where most of us are in our sinfulness.

The monks of the desert have a way to combat temptation before we give in and sin. Following St. Paul, as he writes in our passage from Romans, the monks of the desert teach us to call on the name of the Lord. Sometimes this was to say something as simple as "help," or to say something like "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

Why did the monks of the desert do this? Two reasons, and both of them are good news: Firstly, as St. Paul writes in Romans, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved . . ." The monks of the desert knew this to be true because they practiced it, continually calling the name of the one who saves us from sin. By their calling on the name of the Lord, they weren't saved from temptation, but they were often saved from acting on the temptation and committing the sin. This is something that all of us can practice: we can all call upon the Lord in prayer to save us from our sin.

But the monks weren't saved from sin because they called upon Jesus for help, and this brings me to the second reason the monks called on the name of Jesus, and why we also would call on the name of Jesus: we call upon Jesus for help because he is the one who has saved us from the power of sin, and whose power working in us (by the Holy Spirit) sanctifies us. The prior act of Christ’s resurrection saves us from sin.

So I urge you to take the resurrection of Jesus to heart, and I urge you to confess Jesus’s lordship with your mouth.

Jesus saves us not because he was a holy man like the other holy people of the desert, but because he is Lord, as St. Paul writes, the Lord of all, Son of God, like us in all things, yet without sin.

It took this man, the one without sin, the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, the resurrected one, to save us: believe in the resurrection, and you are justified; confess him as Lord with your mouth, and you will be saved, not from temptation, but from our captivity to sin. And this salvation of the resurrected one, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, is good news indeed.