Journey's Weekly Homilies

Feb. 17    1st Sunday of Lent
(Gen. 2:7-9;3:1-7,   Ps. 51,  Rom. 5:12-19,  Mt. 4:1-11)
Homily:  Tom C.  

miracle, mystery, and authority:  Jesus and the affirmation of the social (Matthew 4:1-11)

(sing the beginning of the sh'ma)

Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one. 

The entire story that we heard in today's gospel is a commentary on that one line.  When Robin read the first reading, the translation said:  The Lord is your God, the Lord alone.  But echad does not mean "alone."  It means the number one.  There is one God, there is one world, there is one life; as Matthew would say, there is one reign of heaven.

This much is clear.  But what might not be quite so clear to good Americans like ourselves is that this is not so much of a religious statement as it is a social and political manifesto.  The ancient world simply didn't think about religion as separate from politics.  The thought of the separation of church and state would have given them a headache.  Well, to be more accurate, they couldn't have thought about it – the words and ideas simply didn't exist yet.  In the first century, religion was society, and society was religion.

Israel experienced the text, which was prayed every day, as the means of its resistance and liberation.  Some Assyrian or Greek or Roman general would come riding up to the gates of Jerusalem with an army and say:  Now you're all going to become slaves of our empire.  You're going to worship our emperor.  You will be assimilated.  Resistance is futile. 

And Israel would reply:  Gee, that sounds really terrific, and ordinarily we'd jump right in, but our problem is – just look in our book.  ADONAI ECHAD.  Our God is one.  We're already under an exclusive contract to God's empire, and so I'm afraid we can't become part of your empire. 

So:  the practical effect of Israel's radical monotheism, which all comes out of Deuteronomy, is that the people were never allowed to become some else's slave.  They had to remain free as a condition of their religion.  This truth was not something that belonged to the rulers and their priests – this truth was on the lips of the people every day. 

(repeat the first line of sh'ma)

So now, you might well ask, what does this Deuteronomy stuff have to do with Matthew's story of Jesus in the desert?

I'm glad that you asked that question.

First, let's remember how Matthew got Jesus into the desert in the first place.

Matthew starts the story by telling us that Jesus is one of the people, a true descendent of Abraham and David, of heroes and prophets, both women and men.  Herod (the Roman's favorite puppet-king) searches to destroy him, but Jesus is saved by magicians who come out of the East, from the home of the bitter enemies of both ancient Israel and, now, Rome.  He joins the resistance movement of John the Baptizer.  John is busy denouncing the imperial collaborators, the Pharisees and the Sadducees:  you brood of vipers!  And there at the Jordan River, that ancient site where once the people all crossed over together, Jesus has a vision confirming that he is God's son, in other words, a real Israelite, a true descendent of Abraham and David.

That revelation sends Jesus out into the wilderness, where he fasts for forty days and forty nights.  Just as Jesus once fled into Egypt (just like the children of Israel), now Jesus wanders in the wilderness (just like the children of Israel).  Jesus is re-enacting the entire history of the people.  Matthew might say:  Jesus is the people.  The story of Jesus embodies all the memories, all the stories, all the songs, all the suffering, all the victories, all the ancient yearning for meaning and liberation, of all the people. 

And now, Jesus, like Israel, is tempted in the desert.  In the desert Israel had been given freedom, but for that evil generation, you remember, freedom was not enough.  "Were there not enough graves in Egypt that you had to bring us out to this place to die?" they cried out.  They longed for something other than the liberation they had been granted.  Even Moses, weakened by their grumbling, struck the rock twice.  As a result, the book of Exodus tells us, none of that generation crossed into the Promised Land. 

And now Matthew is re-telling that same story, except now, it is Jesus in the desert.  Now it is Jesus who is tempted.

The story of Jesus' temptation in the desert is one of the most famous stories in all of world literature, and perhaps the most wonderful meditation on its meaning comes from the story of the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.  Jesus returns to this earth, to Spain during the Inquisition.  The people all flock to him, but the Grand Inquisitor, Cardinal Torquemada, has him thrown in jail to be tortured and executed.  But before the sentence is to be carried out, The Grand Inquisitor comes to the jail to tell Jesus why he has to be killed all over again.

And the Grand Inquisitor says:  do you remember back when you were tempted in the desert? 

The wise and dread spirit, the . . . great spirit talked with you in the wilderness, and we are told in the books that he "tempted" you. Is that so? And could anything truer be said than what he revealed to you in the three questions and what you rejected? In the books they call it "the temptation." And yet if there has ever been on earth a real stupendous miracle, it took place on that day, on the day of the three temptations. The statement of those three questions was itself the miracle.

The three questions, the three temptations according to Dostoyevsky, are miracle, mystery, and authority.

Miracle.  Turn these stones into bread.  Mystery.  Throw yourself down from the top of the temple and angels from the heavens will come to save you.  And authority.  All of the kingdoms of the earth can be yours; all you have to do is abandon the reign of heaven by worshipping me.

The Grand Inquisitor says that this is Jesus' crime:  that he rejected those three things (miracle, mystery, and authority) that are all that most people really want out of life.  The church gives them these three things, and Jesus has cast them off.  That is why the church must go on and Jesus must die.

But let us leave Dostoyevsky and go back to Matthew's commentary on Deuteronomy:  our God is one.

Remember that in the story Jesus has just received a revelation at the Jordan River, a voice from the sky saying "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."  When Jesus is tempted by the devil in the desert, he has a choice.  He could simply use that personal revelation, that miracle, mystery and authority:  the voice from the sky says that I'm the Son of God, you idiot Satan!  In the words of the prophet John Lennon:  Get back to where you once belonged!

But as you know, this is not what happens in the gospel of Matthew.  No, Jesus argues not from his status as the Son of God, not from any personal revelation, but each time with a quotation from the people's book of Deuteronomy – in other words, Jesus answers with the same wisdom that is freely available to everyone from the book that is the common property of all.  Matthew structures the story as a kind of rabbinical argument between the devil and Jesus.  Jesus wins by clinging to sacred text that belongs to everyone, and rejecting the emblems of the supernatural (miracle, mystery, and authority). 

As the ancient rabbis said:  once truth came into the world through sacrifice and revelation.  Now truth comes into the world through dialogue and learning. 

As if to dramatize all this, with each temptation the devil takes Jesus to a higher place – from the wilderness to the top of the temple, from the Temple to a mountain where they could together see all the kingdoms of the world.  And each time Jesus rejects the heavens in favor of the earth.  "Here in the world, now while I live" – this will be where the reign of heaven will be played out. 

As a Catholic, I experience this insistence on this world as a very traditional idea.  That's why Catholicism is so obsessed with the liturgy and the sacraments – because, in its best moments at least, it tries to take this world seriously. 

So when we sing the South African freedom song Senzeni Na (What have we done?  What is our sin?) it is not an expression of groveling and sniveling (the Lo, I Am a Wretch school of theology).  Rather it is calling God to account on behalf of this world.  What have we done, that there is so much suffering here?  What is our sin that we look around and there is so little justice?  Likewise, when we sing Kyrie eleison (Lord, have mercy) at the beginning of the liturgy, the traditional meaning is not about how awful we are.  It came into the liturgy as an expression of defiance.  Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison.  Christ is the only emperor here, so, sorry, we won't be sacrificing to your emperor, we won't be joining your army.  Jesus is Lord is not so much an expression of piety as it is a shout of rebellion; or, more accurately, parts of early Christianity understood piety and rebellion to be different expressions of the same religious idea.  That is what we mean when we say "on earth as it is in heaven."  ADONAI ECHAD.  God is one.

And here at Journey, (we who are the poster children for Catholicism-as-liberation) we sing in Song at the Foot of the Mountain:  "if you are not and cannot be, unspoken word resound in me."  I cannot tell you how much that line has meant to me over the past twenty-five years.  I cannot tell you how much it has meant to stand here with you in a community that has the courage to sing those words.  I can only tell you that every song I have ever written, every melody I've ever made, springs from our communal decision to risk singing those hard texts, the music that dares to speak bits of the truth in church, exactly where it is so rare. 

It is no coincidence that as the hierarchy of the church has tried to undo the work of the Second Vatican Council (a Council which insisted on the significance of this world), a whole spirituality industry has developed around miracle, mystery, and authority.  It has found fertile ground especially in the United States where we have the money to buy it and the individualism to nurture it.  And so we have seen, in the popular culture and in very many of our churches, religion becoming less and less about Jesus and the mission of the reign of heaven, the restoration of the radical egalitarianism of creation, and God's option for the poor.  Rather, religion has been experienced as more and more about ME:  how I feel, about changing my emotional state, about being personally rewarding or fulfilling for me.  This is exactly the miracle, mystery, and authority that is the stock-in-trade of the Grand Inquisitor.  This is why the Grand Inquisitor and all of his successors have always tried to substitute a kind of maudlin sentimentality for the hard work of the reign of heaven.  This is why sites of personal revelation like Fatima, Lourdes, and Medjugorje have historically been the expression of right wing religious and social movements.  If religion can be reduced to  me and my feelings, my personal situation, then there can be no solidarity, no liberation, but only a variety of entertainment and personal enrichment.

But, with respect for everyone, I do not understand the mission of Jesus as being specifically about my individual feelings.  SH'MA ISRAEL, ADONAI ELOHEINU, ADONAI ECHAD.  Our God is one.  Religion then is for the sake of the world.  Sacraments are for the sake of the world.  This liturgy, this bread that we break, is for the sake of the world.

I preached on the first Sunday of Advent and asked the question:  what are you hoping for?  Now, on the first Sunday of Lent, I am ready to answer what I am hoping for. 

I am hoping for a community willing to risk embracing this story.  I am hoping for a community who, like Ezekiel, will take the scroll and eat it.  I am hoping to live in a community who will love justice, and have the courage to reject the devil's temptations of miracle, mystery, and authority, even when they come wrapped in a pleasing appearance.  As Matthew said, this sort of thing comes wrapped in rich clothing and fine palaces.  All of which is to say, I am hoping to live in a community where together we might know and experience the radical oneness of God.  I am hoping to be a part of the movement for the reign of heaven. 

(sh'ma)

With all our heart.  With all our selves.  With all our strength.