Teach Us, To Follow
Posted on Feb 22, 2015 by David Whetter
Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, who abides in which of us. Amen
As I was reading our Gospel story this morning you might have been sitting there saying, hey, haven’t we already read this story this year? Well, yes, we have read parts of this story on two different occasions in the past five weeks. On the first Sunday after Epiphany, the day on which we always celebrate the Baptism of our Lord we read the first part of this story and we read up to the beginning of today’s Gospel about Jesus’ actual baptism. Then, just four weeks ago, the 3rd Sunday after Epiphany, we read the part of how when Jesus came out of the wilderness that he discovered John had been arrested and that it was then that he started his ministry. But, the part we have not read is the section in the middle of today’s lesson. According to Mark, as soon as Jesus was baptized, “the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him (1:12-13).
After Jesus’ Baptism, we see that God was not done with Jesus, yet. Yes, Jesus had been raised in the faith. Yes, Jesus had studied the scriptures growing up and he apparently knew God’s word, and, yes, Jesus was now baptized and filled with the Holy Spirit, but all of that was not enough. Even with all of that, Jesus still needed to spend time coming to understand what it would mean for his life and the lives of those who would come to know him and love him, to follow God and God’s ways. So, we are told that for 40 days, in other words, for a long time, Jesus was tempted by Satan to turn from God. Now Mark doesn’t tell us exactly how Satan tempted Jesus as do both Matthew and Luke, but we all know how Satan can tempt us, don’t we?
Satan is the master deceiver. Unlike Hollywood, which likes to describe Satan as this ugly, evil being, the truth is scripture is clear that Satan’s goal is not to scare us, or fill us with fear; no, just the opposite. Satan’s goal is to attempt and to comfort us. Satan’s goal is to make us feel like he is helping us get, do, believe what is right, but the truth is, he is the great deceiver. Satan attempts to rule our lives by tempting us away from following God’s ways and thereby following him instead.
When Jesus was in the wilderness, the temptations he faced were the temptations of power, materialism, self-satisfaction. All things that if left alone seemed fine, but when we listen to God and God’s ways, we know that seeking personal power is not healthy. Seeking material things is not satisfying and life-giving and serving our self-interests will not bring about the peace and harmony that so many of us seek and desire in our lives.
About eight years ago, as a faith community, we entered into a self-study and we did this with other faith communities using a program called Partnership for Missional Church (PMC). As we went through that process we discovered that we had been focused on ourselves and in doing so, we had actually stopped living as God intended us to live. God’s call for this community is to follow him and to be a beacon of life to the world around us. Over the years, we had been deceived into believing that if we were going to grow and survive, then we had to focus on our needs and our desires. We stopped serving the wider community, we focused on internal needs and programs, and we discovered in our PMC study that we were alone. We discovered that we were not doing what we had been called to do. We had been deceived.
So, we finally rejected Satan and we said we would look outward and we would once again try to become the faith community we were created to be 130 years ago. During our three-year journey in the PMC wilderness, we created the Pantry Pack program, which now feeds hundreds of people every week. We have a renewed emphasis on serving at Children’s Memorial faithfully several times a year. We participate in a collaborative ministry, the KC Service Network, which seeks to be the hands and feet of the church wherever we are needed. We are part of a collaborative youth ministry, KCLYC, which seeks to help our youth build relationships with each other and with Christ through service, Word, and fellowship. We are a ministry partner with St. Mark Hope and Peace and we are attempting to help support ministry in the urban core of Kansas City. And we now have entered into a collaborative leadership ministry that is seeking to prepare leaders for not only the church, but for the world.
All of this has been awesome, but it has also come at a price. As we have focused outward and focused on following God’s call for our lives, we discovered we needed to expand our facility, our staff and our ministries in general. We are asking our people for more and more of their time even though they are already over committed. We are facing financial shortfalls because as we have discovered, in this world, doing what needs to be done can be expensive.
In our current wilderness, Satan will do his best to convince us the church can’t do all these things. Satan will attempt to tempt us into believing that the only thing we can do is cut ministry because we can’t afford it and that it is more important for us to take care of ourselves, and our own facilities so that we can survive.
But, there in lies the great deception. God did not call Salem into existence so that we could survive, no he called us into existence so that we might thrive and share the gospel with the world.
I don’t have the answers to our problems today. I don’t know how to get more people involved in our ministries. I don’t have a magical answer to our financial shortfalls, but I do know we cannot allow Satan to deceive us. I do know that the ministries we are doing are not only transforming us, but they are transforming the world. And now, as we begin our Lenten journey to the cross it is time for us to listen carefully for Christ’s call for our lives and it is time for us to continue to ask Jesus to help us follow God and God’s call for our lives.
It is time for us to say, teach us, “O Lord to follow. In the midst of our wilderness, with Satan tempting us to turn from you and your ways, open our hearts and our minds to you and your ways. Teach us to reject Satan and trust in you, so that Salem might continue to be a beacon of light that glorifies you in this community.”
Brothers and sisters, following God and God’s ways is hard and rejecting the temptations of Satan is even harder. So, join me know as together we say this simpler prayer. “Teach us, O Lord, to follow you!” Amen