We’re the mop up crew

In adult Sunday school class at Upper Arlington Lutheran Church yesterday Dave told us a vivid story of how we are to defeat Satan. He said his father was in the Battle of the Bulge, the greatest and longest battle of WWII in the dead of winter with terrible losses on both sides. His father told him that although the allies won, those who survived the battle still had to contend with the dangerous mop up in each village they passed through. And that's what we have to do. Christ has won the battle, but we have to do the mop up. That's a paraphrase of course, and don't ask about the sermon because I can only handle one good story a day.

Well, actually I remember one other. Our pastor, Steve Turnbull, told us during the 9:00 traditional service his 20th wedding anniversary is this week. I looked around the sanctuary at all the gray heads--at least for one couple I think it's 75, and some celebrating in the 50s and 60s. Many have grandchildren older than our pastor. We were probably all thinking--"you babies."

Lent Day 6–The 2nd temptation of Christ

I usually don’t copy an entire story/meditation, providing a link instead.  But for this one, it was so appropriate to power grabs of today, I hope Father Robert Barron won’t fault me for providing the whole thought. You can receive these by e-mail.

Photo by Lisa Hendey

 Having failed at his first attempt to tempt Jesus in a direct and relatively crude way, the devil plays a subtler game: "The devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a single instant."

This is the more rarefied, more refined temptation of power. Power is one of the greatest motivating factors in all of human history. Alexander the Great, Caesar, Augustus, Marcus Aurelius, Charlemagne, the Medicis, Charles V, Henry VIII, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Nixon, and Kissinger - all the way down to your boss at work. These are all people who have been seduced, at one time or another, by the siren song of power.

We notice something very disquieting in the account of this temptation: the devil admits that all the kingdoms of the world have been given to him. He owns and controls them. That is quite a sweeping indictment of the institutions of political power. But it resonates with our sense that attaining high positions of power and not becoming corrupt is difficult to do.

It might be useful here to recall the two great names for the devil in the Bible: ho Satanas, which means the adversary, and ho diabolos, which means the liar or the deceiver. Worldly power is based upon accusation, division, adversarial relationships, and lies. It's the way that earthly rulers have always done their business.

A tremendous temptation for Jesus was to use his Messianic authority to gain worldly power, to become a king. But if he had given in to this, he would not be consistently a conduit of the divine grace. He would be as remembered today as, perhaps, one of the governors of Syria or satraps of Babylon (and do you remember the first-century satrap of Babylon?)

No, Jesus wanted to be the one through whom the divine love surged into creation, and so he said to Satan, "It is written: 'You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall you serve.'"

Questions in the Bible

The first recorded question in the Bible comes from Satan (in the form of a serpent) which was, "Indeed, has God said. . .?" (Did God really say. . .Yea, has God said. . . )

Since Adam and Eve fell for that clever ruse, the second question recorded was from God, "Where are you?"

And upon rereading this very carefully today, I see that God, when giving them (Adam) instructions on how to take care of everything he had created he said, "but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die." It was Satan that told Eve she would be like God if she knew good from evil, and we've been dealing with that lie ever since.

The vilification of Pat Robertson

When the 700 Club Host referred to an old story that Haitians had made a pact with the devil 200 years ago for help in driving out the French and therefore had suffered greatly over the years, Christians and non-Christians, liberals and conservatives reacted in horror. This was a bit surprising to me. Western literature, music and folklore is filled with this story. Why should the Haitians have not known the story? Their masters were Europeans; their religion was Christian mixed with elements of African pantheism. This story was not original with Robertson--was this black Haitian preacher also vilified for telling the myth and then unpacking it biblically? What sort of reverse racism, and anti-western thought is this? Or, conversely, why is it that poor descendants of slaves can't get as caught up in this story as sophisticated, educated Westerners?

The idea of making a pact with the devil is deeply ingrained in our culture--Theophilus, Solomon, Virgil, Simon Magnus, the Faust legend and the literature, music and poetry that surrounds it, and of course, the real Doctor Faustus, who was a contemporary of Martin Luther and Melanchton. And let's not forget Louisa May Alcott, Pushkin, Liszt and Berlioz. And what about Hollywood? Isn't much of that or any modern entertainment just a pact to postpone death in a never ending quest for youth, money or fame?