I guess the closest word concept we have in American is OK. But OK doesn't have that sense of sufficiency. OK can actually be derogatory or resigned. How was the movie? OK. Oh, just OK. How was the concert? OK. Oh, not worth going to? You see what I mean? We Americans, particularly Americans like us Doverites, don't particularly care for OK. We aspire to great, awesome, best, once in a lifetime, remarkable.
And yet, if pressed to come up with one word for the ultimate benefit of having a strong faith, as in, why should I bother with faith, why be a Christian? Why try to live like Jesus? Well, I can't think of a better word, a more accurate word, than OK. As in, my faith teaches me that I'm OK. I believe that I'm going to be OK. I wake up every morning knowing that everything's going to be OK.
In this context, OK is better than just OK, isn't? No stress, no fear, no worries, no insecurity, no sense of lack, none of the rush and push many of live nearly every waking moment of our lives, and sometimes in our dreams as well. Just an endless series of present moments of sufficiency, no burdens from the past and nothing but confidence about the future. OK.
The thing is, most of us aren't OK, as in we don't feel OK, as in we'd like to be a little better, a little prettier, a little healthier, a little smarter, a little or a lot of anything and everything. Most of us don't think we're going to be OK, that everything's going to be OK.
In this morning’s lesson, we witness the two stages in the Jesus way to OK. It all starts with his certainty about his identity as God's unconditionally beloved child. As he emerges from the water of his baptism he knows, not just intellectually but viscerally. This is who I am, how I am, what I will be. And then he spends 40 days really digging into the meaning of his identity. It’s called the temptation, but the Greek word, peraizo, means to be examined, disciplined and we can see this as Jesus setting the agenda and not the devil. After all, Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness for the purpose of being put to the test. In other words, this is not some chance encounter with the some creepy character with horns, a tail and a pitchfork or rolling eyes and a forked tongue in a horror movie.
Admittedly, this is the very short course. It’s not really fair. I think Jesus gets off easy, only spending forty one days from awakening to clarity when many of us spend decades trying to figure it out and some of us never quite get there. Even so, it is an odd story from our modern perspective having the devil show up and all. We want to discard the whole thing because we don't believe in things like devils. We may not believe in them, but we do know that the word Diablo is a verbal noun from the Greek dia+ballo which means “to throw over or across." The devil is the one who misleads, throws over, deceives or diverts and this devil has come to do just that: to attack Jesus about his identity and to divert him for living his identity: Let’s see what kind of Son of God you are? What your sonship is like? And what you think the purposes of God are?
As I mentioned last week in speaking about the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew was writing for an early Jewish Christian community. As such, he draws often and for meaning on the characters, stories and motifs from the Hebrew Bible, what we call the Old Testament. These allusions and parallels would have jumped out for his congregation, highlighting meaning and relevance that may be missed by us who live, perhaps, at a slightly greater remove from out Bibles. For Matthew, Jesus is the second Moses, the savior to bring God’s people out of slavery and into freedom as Moses led the Hebrew slaves out of slavery in Egypt. Scholars think that Jesus' forty days in the wilderness hearken back to the forty years that Israel wandered in the wilderness between Egypt and the promised land, the Exodus, because every quote from the Bible in the repartee between Jesus and the Devil comes from the Exodus story.
Just to refresh your memories on the Exodus and how this would have resonated with Matthew’s congregation, when the Hebrew slaves left Egypt, God told them to bring nothing with them, that God would provide for them on the way. Not knowing where exactly they were going, they set out. They were totally reliant upon God’s steadfast love for the journey. Without maps or even a clear destination in mind, they followed God who went before them in a pillar of cloud by day and light by night. Without possessions or even supplies, they relied upon God for their daily manna to eat and water which would come from the stones which Moses touched with his staff.
One would think that this was a pretty good deal, compared with being slaves in Egypt. It’s not a five bedroom colonial in Dover, but at least they had left the whips and taskmasters behind. Nonetheless, they complained and grumbled. Footloose and fancy free, with a great future before them, but they were not OK. They complained about not getting where they were going. They grumbled about the monotony of the manna. They doubted the certainty of the water and God’s ability to provide. They wanted autonomy from God and despised dependency. And these are the episodes from which Jesus takes his Biblical quotes – the living by bread alone referring to the manna, the testing The Lord your God referring to their doubting the water, and the worshiping God alone being the commandment for how to be when they finally arrive.
Why would Jesus brush the Devil off with references to the Exodus, the story of Israel's liberation from slavery, of their struggle with not being OK? Well, the devil tempts Jesus with an alternative OK. To be beyond nature - Stones into bread. Physical invulnerability. And power, but power with a catch. Jesus would be the Devil’s and not God’s. In some ways, it’s all one: power. Power to avoid being who he is. Power to avoid the life that he is going to live. Power to avoid touching and relating to the people he is going to touch and relate to. Power to be outside of life rather than inside. "Listen Jesus. You're not OK. You're not going to be OK. Everything's not going to OK. Try my way!"
But that is not who Jesus is and not whose Jesus is. Jesus came to be in this world with us as we are in it, which involves working for our bread, embracing the reality of our physical limitations and mortality, and being open to choose God or not. What the Devil is really inviting Jesus to do is to pass on his life, for with the things the Devil offers Jesus, he would not have to get down on his knees to lift up the lowest. Jesus would not have to teach and live love. Jesus would not have to go to Jerusalem and the Cross. It would be a get out of jail free card, cross Go and get $200 card.
But the lesson of the wilderness for the people of Israel and the lesson of God incarnate, God in a human body in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, is while we may want a get out of jail free card, cross Go and get $200 card, that's not who the people of Israel are, who Jesus is and not who we are as his disciples. We are God's unconditionally beloved children. We are OK, right where we are on Marvin Gardens or Tennessee Avenue.
Some of us may have had parents who lived us into OK from the cradle. But that was a long time ago and we may have no idea what OK feels like. We may never have been embraced as the unconditionally beloved. Like being held in your father's arms while you splash at the beach. You feel the strength. You are secure. No danger. Just delight. Or coming home after school to a hug, clean clothes, supper, a warm bed, a bedtime story and a kiss good night...just because. You didn't earn it. You maybe even misbehaved. But your parents loved you wholeheartedly nonetheless.
You might think it's not the same for us as it was Jesus. Think again. Born in poverty and oppression. Misunderstood by his friends and family. Rejected by most, even though he hit high benchmarks and achieved remarkable things. Never married. No kids. Mother frustrated with him most of his life. Betrayed by a friend. Abandoned to face death. Moments of real doubt and fear, yet he always came back to who he was, God's unconditionally beloved child, and back to OK. Jesus trusted completely in God's steadfast love for him and resisted everything that would circumvent that trust - no life preservers, no parachutes, no safety belts, no reserve oxygen tanks.
My friends, Jesus came to lead us from not OK to Ok, from our slavery to not being OK to a freedom of OK, from being bound by a fear of never being OK to a confidence that everything's going to be OK. Your own tempter, your devil, if you will, even if you don't believe in devils, will try to deflect you from this path. Maybe he or she already has. Or you can start living OK. Imagine that.
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