In the Desert

A sermon for Sunday, June 21, 2020

Would you pray with me?

God who knows our every temptation, thank you for gathering us together in this moment. Make your presence known among us. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

On Friday, our country celebrated Juneteenth. This year marked the 115th anniversary of June 19, 1865, when the last enslaved people in the South, living in Texas, received word of the Emancipation Proclamation and the freedom it granted them. It’s a holiday that I myself didn’t learn about until a few years ago and it brought joy to my heart to see the day so widely recognized. It felt like the world is breaking open, in the best possible way.

I say “breaking open” because, for many of us, that’s what’s happening. The world is breaking open and as the cracks widen, we’re beginning to see things we haven’t seen before. Sometimes, the breaking open of things is beautiful, like when you crack a geode open to see the gems inside.

Other times, it’s like tearing open a wall in an old house to find deadly mold growing everywhere. It’s frightening. It’s worrying. And it requires action. But in the midst of this breaking open, there’s still cause to give thanks. After all, once we know about the mold, we can do something about it.

We have a similar experience when we break open scripture. Some passages are exciting, giving us something bright and new to admire and ponder and receive joy from. But some passages aren’t, like our reading from Genesis today. Abraham banishes his first son, Ishmael, and Ishmael’s mother, Hagar, into the desert. This isn’t something we want to look at. This isn’t something we want to pay attention to. We want to hear the story of Abraham looking up at the stars and receiving God’s promise. We want to hear the story of Sarah laughing at the idea of having a child in her old age. We want to think about God’s faithfulness, which overcomes all obstacles.

But scripture doesn’t let us look away from Ishmael and Hagar in the desert. We can’t look away because God doesn’t look away. God sees Hagar and Ishmael in the desert. He sees this enslaved woman and her child, the child her master put within her, and God is faithful to her too. In the psalm, we hear echoes of Hagar and we are again reminded that we can’t look away from Abraham’s sin and the consequences of his actions, because God sees those in sorrow and desperation. God hears them and answers them. If we are striving to be more like Jesus, more like the Son of God, we have to do as God does. We have to look where God looks, even if we don’t want to.

With this backdrop in mind, let’s turn our attention to someone else in the desert: Jesus. We read the story of Jesus’ temptation in the desert back on the first Sunday of March, on the first Sunday of Lent. That feels like at least three years ago, though, so here’s a quick summary, in case you skipped the scripture videos:

• Jesus gets baptized by John the Baptizer.

• He’s led up into the wilderness by the Spirit and fasts for 40 days.

• The tempter tempts him with bread, angels, and power.

• Jesus beats the tempter and angels show up to wait on him.

And we love this story, right? We love this righteous, brilliant, strong Jesus, armed with scripture and standing up to the devil. It’s clear who’s wrong and who’s right. None of that complicated stuff that we have with the Abraham-Hagar-Ishmael mess.

It might be enough to know that Jesus, at the beginning of his ministry, was tempted and beat the temptation. That’s all that the gospel of Mark says. Mark 1:12 and 13 read, “And 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” and that’s it. Jesus is tempted, just like us, but Jesus can beat it, and because we are united with Jesus, as Paul reminds us in Romans, we can beat it too. Bada-bing, bada-boom, sermon done. But Matthew and Luke seem to think that what Jesus was tempted with matters, because they both tell a much fuller story, so let’s look at those temptations.

First, Matthew makes a point to say that Jesus was famished, and so that would explain why the tempter would offer up bread first. “If you are the son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread,” the tempter says, and Jesus says, “One does not live by bread alone but by every word that come from the mouth of God.”

It’s a quippy response, but it’s also a resonant one. The tempter wants Jesus to offer some proof that he’s the son of God and offers up an easy opportunity: just turn some stones into bread. You’re hungry. You may as well. Meet your own needs and show off your power. But Jesus doesn’t need that bread to prove to anyone that he’s the son of God: he’s just heard for himself that he is God’s beloved son, from God’s mouth to his ears at his baptism. And that knowledge is enough to fill him up. He’s got God’s words. He doesn’t need anything else. The world will scream its needs at you, as I’m sure Jesus’ belly screamed at him, but the world’s needs don’t change who you are. You are a beloved child of God.

Next, it’s a trip to the temple mount in Jerusalem, the pinnacle of the temple. Again, the tempter says, “If you are the Son of God,” but this time, there’s a new way for Jesus to prove himself, not to the tempter, but to everyone. “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.” Everyone will see the angels as they come down to save you. Everyone in Jerusalem will know who you are. Start your ministry off with a miracle, Jesus. Get their attention right from the beginning.

And goodness, isn’t that tempting? What would we give if we could get the attention of the world, get their ears, and let them know the transforming love of Jesus? And in this scenario, it costs nothing! God has already promised to bear us up—the tempter even points to scripture to make the point. All Jesus has to do is jump, and he’ll be given a megaphone that no one can ignore. For that kind of benefit, I have to admit, I would hesitate on that ledge.

Jesus, as always, is better than me, and he reiterates his first point and answers scripture with scripture. Again, God has already answered the question. Jesus is God’s son. Jesus doesn’t need to test it. The saying is true and worthy of all acceptance. The world’s attention doesn’t change who you are. You are a beloved child of God.

The tempter saves the best for last, and, though Matthew’s and Luke’s accounts differ on the order of temptations, I like Matthew’s better. Atop a very high mountain, the tempter shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor and promises them to Jesus. The tempter, essentially, promises to do Jesus’ job for him. Because we know that at the end of all things, at the name of Jesus every head will bow. In the end, the astounding, unfathomable love of God reigns over all the earth. In this moment, the tempter offers Jesus the easy way out. No long ministry. No suffering. You can skip over all the pain and worry and struggle and strife.

Now, notice what happened this time. No more doubting whether or not Jesus is the son of God. This time, the tempter wants Jesus to doubt God. Doesn’t matter if you’re the beloved son of God if there’s someone out there more powerful than God.

And that’s the lie. That’s the lie Jesus has been wrestling with this whole time. The lie is that there is somehow another way besides God’s way, that there is somehow an easier way than God’s way, that there is somehow a better way than God’s way.

Don’t we all want to believe that? Aren’t we all tempted by that? There has to be an easier way than this, we tell ourselves. There has to be some way where we can both follow God and rest comfortably all our days. Isn’t that what Psalm 23 tells us?

And isn’t that what we all long for right now? There must be some way to both hear the suffering of Hagar and honor the legacy of Abraham. Or, to put it in contemporary terms, there must be some way to hear and respond to the suffering of Black people in these United States without confronting and continuing to confront how white people benefited from their suffering. In these times of tumult, doesn’t God promise us comfort?

How tempting it is to bow to the comfort of white supremacy instead of following God’s way.

But, if we are following Jesus, we can’t help but love and worship God and God alone. And God, as scripture tells us over and over again, from Genesis to the psalms to the gospels to Revelation, hears the cry of the suffering and enslaved. God has always been on the side of the oppressed, even if we haven’t.

And hear me when I say this: even if you haven’t always been on the side of the oppressed, you are still a beloved child of God. Abraham still inherited the promise, even though he dismissed Hagar. No matter what the devil says, you are loved, deeply and wholly, and nothing in this world can change that. But we must learn from the example of Abraham. He and Sarah doubted that God would be able to fulfill God’s promise, and so Sarah told Abraham to impregnate Hagar, whether Hagar wanted it or not, in order to make God’s promise happen. Then, when God was faithful, as God has always promised to be, Sarah dismissed Hagar and Ishmael. She banished the reminder of her doubt and her shame. How often have we done the same.

My ancestors did not trust that God would provide enough for us all. They chose to enslave or benefit from the enslavement of people stolen from their homes in Africa, transported in horrifying conditions across the Atlantic, and made to work without pay or hope of freedom, in harsh conditions, so that white people could remain comfortable. And even when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863, it took two and a half years for the news of their freedom to reach enslaved people in Texas on June 19th, 1865. The war would have to be won before enslaved people in parts of Maryland and Virginia were completely and finally freed. And even after that, my ancestors would continue to benefit from and participate in laws and systems designed to keep freed Black people down.

Believe me, I want to bow down to the tempter. I want there to be an easy way to fix this. I don’t want pain, nor do I want to cause others pain. But my friends, there is no way but God’s way. There is no easy way. We have to look at our history, our past and our present, as God sees it, which is through the eyes of the oppressed. As tempting as it is, we white people have to go through the pain of this moment and many other moments besides. After this moment, there must still be a reckoning for our Indigenous, Latinx, migrant, and poor neighbors. This moment is not our last moment of pain.

But my friends, we must follow the example of Jesus. We must say that there is no way other than God’s way. We must trust that we are God’s beloved children, because God has already spoken it, and that God will not abandon us as we do this work, because God has spoken that too. If we reject the easy path, the tempter’s path, and if we choose to confront the pain rather than to let it pass us by, God has promised to be with us. And angels will be with us. Angels like James Weldon Johnson, Sojourner Truth, Richard Allen, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, James Baldwin, Fannie Lou Hamer, Bayard Rustin, Marsha P. Johnson, Toni Morrison, Angela Davis, James Cone, Zora Neale Hurston, Katie Cannon, Jacquelyn Grant, Renita Weems, Audre Lorde, Maya Angelou, Octavia Butler, Michelle Alexander, Angie Thomas, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Ibrahim Kendi. Angels like the Charleston 9: Rev. Dr. Clem Pinckney, Cynthia Hurd, Rev. Sharonda Singleton, Tywanza Sanders, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, Myra Thompson, Depayne Middelton-Doctor, and Rev. Daniel Simmons. If we follow the way of Jesus, we will be surrounded by these saints and martyrs, these faithful beloved of God, and we will find God’s way forward, even though it may be difficult for us.

My friends, beloved children of God, we are in the desert, in the middle of temptation. Let us live the lives Christ calls us to live.

Amen.