Stones [Lent 1A - Matthew 4:1-11]

 The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Matthew 4:1-11

 

Stones

 

I did not make bread.  Not out of stones.  And not during quarantine.  I, of course, have nothing against bread.  Three out of the four members of my family eat a lot of bread.  I enjoy it in most of its many forms.  Loaf, stick, pizza crust, host: all good.  Pretzels, pita, banana, naan: delicious.  But I did not make bread.  Not out of stones.  And not during quarantine.

 

But I know a lot of people did make bread when COVID incarcerated them in their homes.  I know that because the TV told me constantly that people were making bread.  But I did not.  Instead, I made videos: Bible Study videos, Morning Prayer videos, sermon videos, videos of my littlest son eating unexpected foods.  So many videos…  But again, I did not make bread.  But maybe you did.  And so, on the first Sunday in this most penitential season, a season in which we will hear often of sin and confess often as well, I do want to assure you: despite what you heard in the Gospel today, making bread is not a sin – even though, clearly, the devil was one of those many people making bread during COVID.

 

I am making this assumption about the devil because that is the very first thing the devil says to Jesus when they meet up in the wilderness.  It doesn’t exactly say this in the Gospel, but if there weren’t so many delicious stones lying around, I feel pretty confident that the devil would have offered Jesus some of his sourdough starter.

 

Bread does feel like a strange opening temptation.  I mean, I get that the devil wanted to build up to the big one: worship me and I will give you the entire world – which, by the way, includes plenty of delicious bread.  But still bread making is not included in the list of seven deadly sins – unless you eat way too much and then, well, that is gluttony.

 

And so why bread?  Well, this really goes back to the desert days of ancient Israel.  You might remember reading about that time.  Back in the days of Moses, in the second book of the Bible, God liberated the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt.  They miraculously crossed the Red Sea and walked right out in the vast wilderness.  And while they were happy about their freedom at first, they grew tired of the wilderness quickly.  And they started complaining.

 

And what did they complain about?  Food, of course.  They were hungry.  And that hunger caused them to pine for the days of slavery.  And no, you did not hear me wrong.  They were ready to trade their newfound freedom for a plate of Egyptian leeks.  And even though ancient Romans regarded Egyptian leeks as the finest of all the leeks, that is still not a good trade.

 

But it does remind us of the power of hunger.  Esau traded his inheritance for a bowl of soup; Rapunzel was imprisoned because her mother was obsessed with lettuce; Goldilocks risked her life for porridge.  And the devil considered hunger the very best entry into the life of God Incarnate.

 

And perhaps that was because the devil knows the Bible.  Clearly he does; he even quotes it at Jesus in today’s Gospel.  And the devil remembered that those Exodus people, those ancient children of God failed the hunger test in the wilderness, and so perhaps this child of God, this Jesus, would also be led astray by the persistent pangs of hunger.

 

The devil is, in the story, searching for a weakness.  Human history suggests that there is always a weakness.  The devil didn’t need it to be hunger, but hunger, desire, has a stunning history of human destruction.  And one cannot fast, certainly not for many days, without thinking about food.  You know that; you’ve seen a shipwrecked cartoon character look like a ham.    

 

The first temptation appeals to one of the most fundamental human needs.  We cannot survive without food – and our body is quick to remind us of that fact.  We need to eat.

 

And yet, fasting, what Jesus was doing in the desert, is one of the spiritual disciplines to which we are called in this new season of Lent.  It feels admittedly unnatural.  Why not eat if you are hungry?  Why not eat if you can? 

 

I doubt the devil’s timing was accidental.  He comes well into Jesus’ fast.  The devil shows up when Jesus is weak and hungry.  The devil shows up to remind Jesus that he can eat; where there is a stone, there is a way.  Jesus has this Holy Spirit power, a power God bestowed upon him in the baptismal story that in Matthew’s Gospel immediately precedes this one.  So why not use it?  There are a lot of rocks in Palestine and so bread does not have to be a problem.  It is a rocky terrain; Jesus could start a bakery if he wanted to.  Why be hungry when hunger is not a necessity?

 

In answering the devil, Jesus recalls the story of his ancient ancestors, those wandering Hebrews.  The verse that he quotes back is from the book of Deuteronomy.  And it is just a small part of a larger passage – one that gives his answer context.  In that passage, Moses says to those wilderness people, “Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments. He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna…in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”

 

God was not looking at their stomachs; God was looking at their hearts.  Was there faith in there; did they trust God with all their heart? 

 

Fasting is the reason the Holy Spirit, not the devil, led Jesus into the wilderness.  There is nothing innately special about fasting.  Without the spiritual component, fasting is just a diet.  But through the eyes of our faith, fasting reminds us that it is God who sustains us.  We don’t supply our needs; God provides all that we have and all that we need.  Fasting is an act of trust that teaches one to trust.  It is strange, but no stranger than placing your life in the unseen hands of an unseen God.

 

Jesus didn’t have to trust God; the devil came to tell him that.  Jesus could have taken things into his own hands.  He could have fed his hungry stomach; he could have climbed the Temple and forced God out of hiding; he could have bypassed the cross and taken a painless shortcut to a throne of power.  Jesus could have given into every temptation; he could have taken control of his own destiny.  The devil was giving him the chance to take the future by the throat.   

 

But instead, Jesus stayed with the stones; he left those stones alone.  It was Jesus trusting that the manna would be there when he needed it most.  He believed that God would provide, that God would catch him when he fell, that God would pave the path before him – maybe not a path to success, but definitely to salvation.  In that desert, and later in Gethsemane and on the cross, Jesus trusted God with his life.  And it was hard; it was a risk.  If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t call them temptations. 

 

Maybe the devil will never meet you for a face-to-face, but your path will most certainly be lined with temptations.  They won’t be the same temptations Jesus faced.  There is no longer a Temple and you most likely will never have the opportunity to rule the world.  But you will be hungry and you are surrounded by stones.

 

And you will wonder, often, who has the most reliable hands.  And there will be days, I know, I have them, when you will think your hands are the most sure. 

 

But in this season, God is asking you to place your precious life in hands much stronger than your own.  I know it is a risk to wait for manna when there are so many stones.  I know it is hard to follow the same Spirit that led Jesus into a barren wilderness.  I know it feels too risky to trust your future to such a quiet, unseen God. 

 

And yet here we are: in the presence of that quiet, unseen God.  The God who is even now staring you right in the heart, asking you to take a chance, hoping you will trust in God enough to leave the stones alone.