Struggling with temptation
Lent’s 40 days of preparation for baptism and discipleship are modeled on Jesus’ postbaptismal test in the wilderness. Reading about Jesus’ struggle with the devil opens up some potential directions for the preacher’s journey to Sunday:
• Each of the three temptations invites Jesus to bypass suffering. In each he is offered triumph and glory. The desire to win approval, to be the best church, to succeed in some measurable, noticeable way always besets the church.
In The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky describes a church that has chosen to accept the tempting path of “miracle, mystery and authority.” (“The Grand Inquisitor” chapter is worth rereading this week.) Might the sermon invite the congregation to wrestle with the ways that it is tempted to accept the devil’s bargain? How is it tempted to bypass suffering—suffering within and without the congregation?
