A few years back, when I was helping out in another congregation, a member of that church came to the service a little early. He wanted to talk to me. I could see he was steamed, and that it wouldn’t take much for him to boil over.
It was one thing, he said, for The Episcopal Church to change the words of The Lord’s Prayer, but it was quite another for the Pope – the POPE, HIMSELF – to call for a new version of The Lord’s Prayer because thinks the common English translation of the Lord’s Prayer is mistranslated.
The Pope, he said, is calling for a new version that doesn’t imply that God might lead people into temptation –that, he says, is the Devil’s job. He wants the sentence changed to read, “do not let us fall into temptation.”
Well, THAT, said my angry old friend, was just a bridge too far. If that happened, if even the POPE was changing stuff, and TEC had already changed too much, he was out. Done. Finished. Gone. You may have noticed that things have been a little tense for a while.
Well, first of all, The Episcopal Church is not changing the words of The Lord’s Prayer. Actually, we never change anything without first calling for a Committee to Study the Possibility of Change. And, if a majority of Episcopalians don’t like the findings of the Committee? Well, we just call for another Committee to study it some more.
It’s called “Anglican Fudge” – we ‘fudge’ a definitive answer so as to avoid, “The Troubles”.
It didn’t help that I pointed out that there are already two versions of The Lord’s Prayer in the Book of Common Prayer. We are bold enough to put them side by each. One asks that we forgive our trespassers – the other that we are forgiven our sins as those who sin against us. One asks that we are not lead into temptation – the other asks to save us from the time of trial.
As a side note, during Lent, we will be singing The Lord’s Prayer, which provides yet another translation of trespass/sin/debtors/being led into temptation and delivered from evil.
My friend was angry because in a world that is swiftly changing, he wanted – demanded! – that his church stay the same. He needs to know how the story ends. He needs to know that the church won’t mess with the story. He really doesn’t care if we’ve gotten it wrong all these thousands of years later. Just don’t change one more damn thing. Please. It leaves him feeling alone – isolated – anxious and yes, if you must know, occasionally scared.
So, leave The Lord’s Prayer alone. Please. And, thank you. Or, I’m outta here.
This is not a sermon or a lecture on The Lord’s Prayer. This is a sermon on the First Sunday in Lent and the Gospel, traditionally and predictably, is about Jesus being tempted in the wilderness.
The details vary a bit between Matthew and Luke, and Mark is predictably sparse, but the theme is consistent each year: Temptation.
I want to talk about the temptation that I think is central to being human, and in this passage, Jesus is being very, very human. Even Jesus is tempted in the same ways we are.
Across the street from the house in which I grew up in the city was a large, undeveloped plot of land. When we moved from the city to the newly developing suburb, our house was on the end of a dead-end street and next to it was also a large, undeveloped plot of land. To me, those areas were as close to “The Wilderness” as I cared to get.
Once, while walking alone in the woods, I thought I heard someone behind me. I got really scared and started to run. I didn’t pay attention to where I was going and tripped over something and my right hand landed on a broken piece of a bottle.
I bled profusely which made me nauseous and queasy and lightheaded, but somehow I ran all the way back home with the broken bottle stuck in my hand, sure with every step that I.Was.Going.To.Die. All alone. In the woods. The wilderness. Where wild animals would come and eat me alive.
Or, Barnabas Collins, the vampire from “The House of Dark Shadows” would smell my blood and swoop down, bite my neck, and turn me into a vampire.
I was only seven or eight years old – the time when all little girls become more dramatic than Sarah Bernhardt – but I still carry the faint half-moon scar on my right hand – a reminder of my time in the wilderness and the dangers that can lurk there.
In Hebrew, one of the words for wilderness is more literally translated as “the wordless place.” While there may be times in our lives when we might wish for some peace and quiet, this wordless wilderness has a frightening landscape that whispers from the shadows, “You’re all alone.”
And that’s one of the most frightening things a human can experience – especially when we are hungry or angry, lonely or tired.
I think that’s what scared me the most: being alone in the woods with no one to hear me. I think, on a different level, that’s what made my friend angry – the fact that changing the words to a familiar and much-loved prayer would separate us from each other – or from what he understood about himself. If that was going to happen, he’d rather leave first than be left alone.
And, here’s the truth of it: As much as we sometimes drive each other to the edge of frustration and back again, as often as we drive each other to the brink of insanity, the truth is that we need one another.
We need one another especially in times like this, when the world seems out of control, when war is raging on in Europe for the first time since 1945, when it’s difficult to trust our elected officials, when we feel scared or anxious – when we are in a “wordless place” that whispers from the shadows, “You’re all alone.”
I’ll leave you with this last story: Years ago, I was volunteering in a newly designated “Safe House” – a shelter for battered and abused women and their children.
One night when I was on duty, a woman in her early 50s came in from the emergency room. Her whole face was swollen, purple and black and her eyes were just tiny slits from having been beaten and battered. Even her neck and wrists and fingers were bruised.
I fixed us a pot of tea and we sat at the kitchen table as she told me her story. She had been married for 35 years. She had been battered and abused for 34 and a half years. I asked her what was it that finally got her to put an end to it all, to finally get help.
She said, “You know, my life
had become a slot machine. I kept putting quarters in, pulling the lever, and
expecting to come up cherries."
"I would think, ‘I’ll make his favorite meal
tonight’, put in a quarter, pull the lever, and no cherries. I would think, ‘Okay,
I’ll get the kids bathed and fed and in bed so they won’t make a sound and disturb
him’, put in a quarter, pull the lever, and, well, no cherries."
"No matter what I tried, I’d still get beaten. No bowl of cherries for my life.”
“I couldn’t tell anyone. I was
too ashamed. I couldn’t go out looking like this. What would people think of
me? I became more and more isolated. Alone. I couldn’t even let my adult kids or
grandkids see me like this. I missed them. Terribly!"
"That was the worst part. I
never felt so alone in my life.”
“So,” I asked, “what happened?”
“Well,” she said, “I woke up this morning and realized something.” She paused.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Well,” she said. . . . . . “I realized that I had run out of quarters.”
She paused again and said, “I
realized that if this was going to an end, I was going to need help. I couldn’t
be alone anymore. I wouldn’t be alone anymore. The temptation was to think I could
make it stop on my own. I can’t. I needed help."
"And I got help. Now," she said, "I’m not
going to be alone anymore. He will.”
There are all sorts of wildernesses in life – the kind that are real, the kind we imagine, and the kind we create. In each one, the greatest temptation is to listen to the voices in that wordless place who whisper to us, “You’re all alone.”
When we are in one of life’s
wildernesses, the most courageous thing we can do is to seek out and ask for
help.
The real heroes I have known in my life were like that woman, who were up
against incredible odds and refused to believe they were alone; who were anxious
and scared and yet walked through their fears to seek out and asked for help.
It takes courage – real courage – to ask for help.
Don’t give into the temptation to believe that you are all alone. You’re not. God knows your suffering and your fear and your temptation because Jesus, who was fully divine and fully human, knew those very human sufferings and fears and temptations.
I have come to know that believing that we are all alone – without even God – is The Great Temptation.
There’s a reason our
baptismal vows call us to “seek and serve Christ in others.” It’s not just
about the work of ministry. It's that, but it's not only that.
It’s about the work of community. It’s about not
falling into the temptation of believing that we are “all alone”. It's about knowing that we are all in this together.
In both Mark and Matthew’s gospel, this story ends a little differently. After the devil left Jesus “until an opportune time”, as Luke tells us, both Mark and Matthew tell us that “the angels came and began to serve him.”
Even Jesus was not left all alone. Even Jesus needs community.
Sometimes, even Jesus needs angels.
Amen.
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