Lent 1, March 1, 2009 Mark 1, 9-15

He was sitting on a sofa in the parlor of the Greenwich Village town house he rents, with his beloved 16-year-old miniature chihuahua, Loki, asleep on a pillow beside him. Another chihuahua slept on a pillow on the floor. The room was a shrine to the many chihuahuas he has owned and buried. There were photographs of dogs everywhere, along with urns and lighted votive candles before a statue of the Virgin Mary draped with rosary beads. Rourke likes little dogs, he told me, because they live longer than big dogs and because you can pick them up, hold them close, smell their fur and feel their hearts beating.

However, today Rourke is just happy to be acting after his career and life tanked. “I have no one to go to, to fix the broken pieces in myself.”

He rescues abused dogs; he cries a lot: over his stepfather’s supposed abuse; the loss of his brother to cancer and his dogs to old age; the failure of his marriage to the actress Carré Otis. He admits he destroyed his own career, because, as he puts it: “I was arrogant. . . . I wasn’t smart enough or educated enough” to deal with stardom. Put differently, Rourke fell prey to temptation. The empty promise that things would stay the same forever and that he could handle it all, but as an old therapist once told me, “Life never gives like it takes away.”

“For 12 years I was alone, I had lost everything,” Rourke said. “The three people closest to me — my brother, my grandmother, and my ex-wife — were no longer there. I had no real friends.”

So if you are on top of the world - wow… handsome, a celebrity, a person with money… lots of friends… You have it all.

Then you are on the bottom -- rock bottom. You have a life that is caved in… why? Well, temptation… arrogance… feeling you are a master of the universe and you will live forever. As our Bible Study said the other day, “Pride cometh before the fall”, and by the way, so does stupidity.

Like Rourke, “the wrestler” is searching for redemption through repentance. Unlike Rourke, however, there will be no third act for Rourke’s character Ram, the old wrestler. He was a victim of temptation… he believed the promises of the world. You are a star…

“I was in 7-Eleven, and this guy says, ‘Didn’t you use to be a movie star?’” The same fear runs through my mind that as I enter a 7-Eleven, I run into someone I had confirmed, married, or baptized and they look at my quizzically and say: “Didn’t you use to be a minister?”

Temptation… the fall… and now a third act. Another chance. What is so tempting that you could destroy your life?

WELL, LOT OF THINGS REALLY… IT HAPPENS…

I DON’T KNOW WHY I LIKE THIS POEM… perhaps because I have been stuck in the honey once or twice myself.

Jar of honey chanced to spill
Its contents on the windowsill
In many a viscious pool and rill

The flies, attracted by the sweet
Began so greedily to eat
They smeared their fragile wings and feet.

With many a twitch and pull in vain
They grasped to get away again
And died in aromatic pain

Moral

Foolish creatures that destroy
Themselves for transitory joy.

Temptation is many things, but it confronts us as being easy… less work… less effort… easier. They call New Orleans “The Big Easy” maybe because it is so easy to fall into temptation there. In Biblical times temptation finds you alone in the wilderness inhabited by demons that want to destroy you.

So, here we are on the First Sunday in Lent. It starts with nothing other than Temptation. Mark has a terse account—while Matthew, Luke have much more detail. Mark says only that Jesus was tempted in the wilderness where there were “wild beasts…” It is a dark, fierce, enigmatic tale which opens the Gospel.

It is interesting how this is placed right at the beginning of all Gospels. Jesus temptations begin right after his baptism…

This is my beloved son – then, bang, into the wilderness with WILD BEASTS… Mark is the only one who refers to “wild beasts”. Back in Genesis Cain is warned that if he does well, fine, but take care, “Sin is crouching at the door.”

SIN…

Today we live in a culture that does not understand sin—or ignores it or treats it as something ancient and irrelevant. The most important sin is self–deception.

So here we are - TEMPTATION….

The greatest example of temptation is dieting… you can measure it… you know when you are off the wagon… and have blown it. When you see a doughnut, you know it’s wrong. Would that life could be so simple…

But substitute that for

• fidelity in marriage,
• honesty in finance, (well we have been introduced to the phrase Ponzi schemes—it is clear that we have seen unprecedented and unethical behavior from Wall Street and our whole financial community,

• telling the truth in conversation. These days you can’t seem to get people to tell the truth unless they are under oath…

• responsibility in conduct. Did you know that when you are drunk at a party you can do anything… just say, sorry I was drunk. It is an old trick taught to me by a classmate in college. He said: “Don’t drink too much and then pretend you are drunk, as an excuse or license to do anything and sometimes get away with anything.”

And we have the wretched pathology of human moral ambition and human moral failure. I don’t need to explain this in further detail.

So, what do we have today… The gospel of Mark does not elaborate on the whole thing, but clearly we have a struggle. We do know that the examination comes at the end of the 40 days when Jesus was famished.

He was being watched from a distance. You know these old movies when people are just lying in the desert and the buzzards are flying. I always wonder when do they make up their mind to come down and get you…? Or in the movie the English Patient when he leaves the woman in the cave in the dark to run for help… When do the predators come in…?

Jesus is standing, and then kneeling praying… then the devil moves in… It’s time to start. Jesus had run out of resources and might be open to accepting a little help.

• Why doesn’t God send a rescue team… a raven with some bread..
• Why doesn’t God give you the power to rear up and roar so loudly at the devil that he runs away and never comes back?

There are no doves, no voice, or reassuring words…just him, the desert, and finally the devil. It is sort of like being addicted to pain killers whose prescription has just run out. It is awful… For some reason, God wants Jesus to fly solo. Face things alone. Just like we have to sometimes. No one can resist temptation for you.

Notice how the tempter begins…”If you are the son of God”. The word IF is the key word because it questions his identity, who he is, what he must do. It is Jesus’ identity that the devil seeks to destroy. THAT IS AFTER ALL WHAT TEMPTATION IS ALL ABOUT: to crack the identity, change who you are, what you stand for, what you are meant to be. The goal is to make you less than you are and what you are meant to be. In Jesus’ case, the devil wants to strip him of his divine journey and identity.

The three temptations the Devil thrusts at Jesus:

1. To turn stones into bread.
2. To throw himself down from the temple…
3. To worship the tempter…

None of these are bad temptations in themselves. In the end, temptation is always to give up. Life is filled with people who have given up…quit… or thrown in the towel. Temptation is always to satisfy our own needs first. Last temptation – if only I had the money, the time, the energy… I would do good.

Asking God to do things as if we are testing God.

But the ultimate temptation is to quit… to give in and to give up… Luther talked of despair… not wanting to continue…

Temptation is all about that monkey on your back that will bring you down. Jesus ultimate temptation is really ours as well—not only give in but give up. But in the end at the heart of our faith is one who does not give up on us. He loves us to the end. He gives his life for us and for the life of the world.