When Christians Get it Wrong

Feb, 26, 23 - First Sunday in Lent

Matthew 4: 1-22 - Pastor Deb Birkeland

“Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” That line jumped out at me in the reading of this very familiar text of the temptation of Christ. I’m so grateful that Jesus has the power to overcome Satan and the insidious nature of temptation, for there are many ways in which we Christians can get it wrong. With that in mind, I have a few stories to share with you today that all speak to the theme of temptation.

Here’s one that will make you smile:

So….These three pastors are sitting in a fishing boat, something about the mood of the moment caused one of them to say, I’ve never really confessed this, but I have to tell you brothers, I have a gambling problem. In fact, a lot of the church money has been lost to my gambling impulses. There is an awkward pause, and then then second pastor says, well as long as we are confessing, I’ve got to admit that I have a bit of a drinking problem, nobody knows about it, but sometimes, when I tell everyone I am off to do some study and reflection, I’m really…well, you know… There is another awkward silence as those pastor’s wait for the third pastor to speak up. But he doesn’t say anything. He just sits there fishing. Finally one of them says to him, well pastor, we are confessing our sins, don’t you have something you’d like to get off your chest? Well, yes, he admits. I struggle with gossip…and I can’t wait to get off this boat!

Here’s one that will make you mad:

A young man described an experience when he was invited to attend a special youth group gathering at a big church in his town. He noted that the kids at school rarely spoke to him until it was “Bring a friend day” at youth group and they invited him to join them at a local water park. Here’s his description of how the day went:

It didn’t start out badly; the rides at the park were fun, and I even enjoyed hanging out with some of them. But during the long ride back to the church, they started talking about people. They discussed who was having sex, who was smoking week, who was gay. The more they talked the worse things they said. Many of the people they were talking about were my friends, and they knew it! To make things worse, some of the ones talking the loudest were doing the very things they were gossipping about. Finally, they got on the subject of who was going to hell. It seems that if you didn’t go to their brand of church, you didn't stand a chance to get into heaven. That, of course, meant me, and it didn’t seem to matter to them at all that I was sitting right there soaking it all up.

And a third story. This one will make you sad:

Here is a young woman who describes being pressured to re-evaluate her Christian beliefs while in college. Here’s her story:

My college roommate and I were invited to a party being put on by a Christian group. The party was fun, and when they invited us to their bible study group later that week we said sure. But the Bible study was anything but fun. Almost from the start, the discussion centered on whether Jews would go to heaven. No one in the group thought they would. In fact, several in the group spoke as though the Jews were responsible for killing Jesus. My friend finally spoke up and told them that she was Jewish.The study went downhill from there. Some were soft sell, some hard sell, but all of them tried to convince my friend to “ask Jesus into her heart,” When we left that evening, I’m not sure who was more upset, me or her! Since that night, I haven’t had anything to do with Christians.

What is perhaps one of the greatest of Satan’s temptations my friends? I think it may just be getting us to think that we have it all figured out and we, as Christians, are right all the time. For as soon as WE are right…someone else must be wrong! Like King of the Hill… sometimes we Christians get caught up in the drama rather than the freedom of being followers of Christ.

Christians on this side of the cross have always struggled to “get it right.” Much of the New Testament was written to followers of Jesus who were “getting it wrong.” The Apostle Paul, the first pastor of the church, wrote letters to encourage repentance of their sins of self-righteousness, hypocrisy, judgmentalism, spiritual pride, moral compromise and a host of other issues. The gospel of Christ, Paul writes, boils down to one word, and that word is LOVE. Love bears all things; hopes all things; endures all things….and NEVER ENDS. Faith, hope, Love….the greatest of these is LOVE. (1 Cor !3)

Rather than worshiping and serving God alone, and offering His love to all… we must confess that we are prone to the sin of the easy way out. Giving into our human desires for self satisfaction like those pastor’s on the boat; or following the crowd in disparaging the “other” like those kids in the youth group; or stirring up politically oppressive cruelty toward those we deem as different, inferior or threatening to our social status.

Jesus would not take the easy way… and thank God! Imagine if he HAD turned those stones to bread and filled his aching belly? Imagine if Jesus had thrown himself down to prove who he was? Imagine if Jesus had bowed down and worship Satan so that the world would be his oyster? Sometimes we Christians act as if he did. But the cross stops us short! We don’t get to take our eyes off that cross….ever.

Christianity doesn’t invite perfect people to JOIN UP. It invites people who are prone to get it wrong, and THEN offers them GRACE! Grace is the ingredient that can make us people of LOVE rather than HURT. And Jesus wouldn’t settle for ANYTHING else but GRACE for ALL God’s Children.

And so, I share one final story: This one you will take home with you and ponder.

When author Robert Louis Stevenson was a little boy, he was sitting by his window looking intently outside as the night sky was darkening. These were the days of gas streetlights and outside his window at the street, was the town lamplighter. He was carefully putting his ladder up against each lamppost, climbing up the ladder, and lighting the lantern. He would take it down, move down the street, and light the next one. Stevenson’s father came into his bedroom and asked his son what he was looking at so intently out the window. To which the little boy replied, “I’m watching that man out there knock holes in the darkness.”

This, my friends, is what Jesus calls us to do. Knock holes in the darkness that defines so much of human experience and pain, with the light of forgiveness, grace and most of all…LOVE. Jesus came out of the wilderness to begin his journey to the cross where LOVE would pour forth a Grace, and revealed as God’s largest of all holes in our darkness.

And so join me in praying that as we walk this journey in Lent to the cross, and anticipate the shouts of Easter joy, we will see Christ and one another in a new light, and with new hearts. Thank you God for giving us Jesus, and for sending Satan away. Amen.