Jack McKinney

Pullen Memorial Baptist Church

February 25, 2007 – First Sunday in Lent

Text: Luke 4:1-13

A Broken Beginning

I talked to a friend this week who is several months into his first pastorate. This is a person who sought my counsel from time-to-time as he went through seminary and did all the traditional training programs that one does before entering full-time ministry. He would ask me all kinds of questions back then, and I would try to appear wise beyond my years and provide the answers that would see him through whatever scenario might arise.

I asked my friend how it was going. He gave a quick “It’s good, it’s good” reply, and then paused for a moment. And in that pause the truth had a chance to pop out. He said, “You know, this job is a lot different than I thought it was going to be.” I interpreted the comment to really mean, “In all those conversations we had where you tried to be wise beyond your years, why didn’t you tell me the reality about working in the church.” The only response I could give to my friend, which was neither wise nor particularly helpful, was “Yeah, it’s hard to explain it to people until they have done it for themselves.”

We spend a fair amount of time in our lives preparing for significant ventures by doing things that really don’t have much to do with the venture itself. High school students take SAT prep courses, and may take the test itself several times, but once they are admitted into college they will probably never see a test quite like the SAT again. Medical schools are notorious for producing doctors who have good technical skills but barely any training at all in how to talk and listen to patients. When a couple is preparing to have their first child they may spend hours in Lamaze classes getting ready for the delivery, but virtually no time in learning how to be actual parents. Which is interesting seeing as how the delivery takes hours, while the parenting part lasts a lifetime. Then again, parenting is probably a lot like being a pastor. It’s hard to explain to people until they have done it for themselves.

But regardless of how inadequate much of our training is for the professions we choose or the passions we follow, we all understand that it is important to acquire a certain skill set in order to begin. What happens, though, if what you are preparing for is not a job or career, but is something else entirely? And what if you are not really sure what it is you are preparing for, but you know you better get ready just the same? I think this is the dilemma Jesus faces in Luke 4.

The Gospel of Luke is the Gospel that tells us that Jesus was about 30 when he decided it was time to start. To start what is the question. We have no record of his adult years up to this point, no inkling about what he had been preparing to do, just the description of his going to the Jordan River to be baptized by his cousin, John. This makes some sense seeing as how John’s ministry was wildly popular and it never hurts to start a venture by associating yourself with a known quantity. But then Jesus does something you and I would probably not have thought to do, not because we aren’t smart enough, but just the opposite. We are smart enough to know that you don’t wander off into a desert for 40 days without food unless you want to suffer something awful.

So why does he do it? Why does Jesus begin his ministry or movement or whatever you want to call it by breaking himself down almost to the point of death? Frederick Buechner says Jesus did it because he was trying to figure out what it meant to be Jesus. Maybe that’s it. Maybe he decided that the only way he could get clear about who he was, and what God was calling him to do, was to go out in the desert and face his worst fears.

And I have to tell you that my own experience is so far from the one described in this text that I can’t even begin to understand it. Obviously I cannot relate to the pressures and expectations and questions that surrounded Jesus. I mean preachers get a lot of projections put on them from others, but messianic hopes are not one of them. But it’s not just the messianic stuff that is impossible for me to understand; the other thing that feels so foreign to me is the decision Jesus makes to face his fears and anxieties head on. He goes out into that desert to do battle with his demons, to wrestle with himself, and I can barely fathom what that must have been like.

Our fears cause us to learn a whole different kind of skill set. We learn to avoid, deny, distract, and if all else fails, run away like crazy. If we are afraid of someone in our life, we figure out a way to stay clear of that individual. If we are afraid of death, maybe we never go to a hospital, or nursing home, or funeral. If we are afraid of intimacy, perhaps we never allow ourselves to get too close emotionally. Or maybe we’re just afraid of spiders so we stay out of the storage shed. There are a million things we are afraid of in this life and our fears give us ample opportunity to avoid, deny, distract, and run away like crazy.

Which brings me back to Jesus and the odd way he chooses to begin his ministry. He decides to just go ahead and face all those fears up front and get it over with. He wanders out into the wilderness where in his most vulnerable moment he is tempted by the devil to do three things: to turn stones to bread; to worship the devil in exchange for power over the kingdoms of the world; and to throw himself from the top of the temple to see if God will send the angels to protect him. At face value these seem to be strange temptations, and once again they appear to have little to do with you and me. But maybe this is more of our story than we realize.

If it is true that our fears drive us to avoid, deny, distract, and run away like crazy, what are the techniques we use in that scheme? Well, we choose physical gratification as a way of avoiding the psychic and spiritual pain that cries for our attention. We seek power in relationships so that we can maintain control rather than allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and open. And we dream about fame and instant success rather than going through the hard work of figuring out who we are and what our lives are supposed to be. In other words, the three temptations that Jesus willing faces, that he takes on up front, are the same three temptations that we fall prey to regularly. And the funny thing is that whether you face your fears and demons up front and deal with them, or run from them like crazy, you are going to end up in the same place. You are going to be broken. The big difference is that once we have faced our fears, faced our temptations, indeed faced ourselves, and been broken in that process, we are actually ready to begin. If we are still avoiding, denying, distracting, and running, well, we are still going to end up broken. But in that case all we will have are the pieces of our lives scattered all about, and we won’t be ready to begin anything.

Wendy Wright has written, “Lent is a time when we enter into the mystery of pain and brokenness.” (“The Rising,” The Other Side, March-April, 2001.) This is a season when we are encouraged to go inward, to face that part of ourselves that we always avoid, not because doing so will relieve us of our pain and brokenness. Oh no. If you wander out into that desert and look your demons and fears in the eye, you are going to get hurt. But it is the only way to an authentic life. It is the only path that leads to wholeness and happiness.

In the play Look Back in Anger the playwright John Osborne gives a character, Jimmy, these words advising him not to fool himself about love: “You can’t fall into it like a soft job...It takes muscle and guts. And if you can’t bear the thought of messing up your nice, clean soul, you’d better give up the whole idea of life, and become a saint. Because you’ll never make it as a human being. It’s either this world or the next.” (From Robert Fulghum’s book, Words I Wish I Wrote, HarperCollins, 1997, p. 141.)

And maybe that is the real example Jesus gives to us when he wanders out into that desert before he begins his work. He risks messing up his nice, clean soul. He’s not trying to escape this world and its troubles, but engage this world and love it. But he knows that he can’t do that unless he has confronted his worst fears and greatest temptations. And if I have made that process sound interesting or profound in this sermon then I have lied to you. Because it’s not. It hurts like crazy to take your soul to that depth. It will break you quicker than you can imagine. But then, when you are good and broken, you are ready to begin. Begin what, you ask? Well, at the risk of ending this sermon with the same lousy advice I began with, let me just say: It’s one of those things that is hard to explain until you have done it for yourself.