Overcoming Temptation: Divinity’s Battle for Our Spiritual Wellbeing
March 17, 2019
There will be a live audio Reflection & Prayer Service with community chatroom conversation in connection with this Multimedia Service this Sunday evening at 9 pm ET. Catch it towards the end of this Multimedia Service or on our Worship page. Video of the broadcast is posted there later.
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OPENING SONGS
Try to dance, move, sing, hum or play along with this music – or enjoy a meditative listen with deep, mindful breaths
Rainy Day
Jacob Banks
Burn It Down
Alter Bridge
READINGS
From Biblical & Hebrew Scripture
Luke 4:1-15 New International Version (NIV)
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.
The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.”
Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.”
The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours.”
Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.”
The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down from here. For it is written:
“‘He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.”
Jesus answered, “It is said: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test”
When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time.
Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.
From Swedenborg's Theological Writings
Click here for free ebooks of Emanuel Swedenborg's Theological Writings
Click here for free ebooks of Emanuel Swedenborg's Theological Writings
Overcoming Temptation: Divinity's Battle for Our spiritual wellbeing
By rev. Cory Bradford-Watts
Lent is an interesting tradition, perhaps you’ve participated actively in it before, I have – is anyone doing anything for Lent now? [Let us know in the comments below]
I remember when I was a teenager attending Salvation Army church, my friends and I loved to choose the things we were going to give up for Lent. Sometimes sugar, sometimes TV or some other habit. It was always an effort towards self-discipline and some sort of fast with the goal of better health in the end, and we had fun doing it.
Today we read the scriptural root of Lent in the Christian Gospel: the story of Christ’s 40 days of temptation in the wilderness. We’re told that Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit at the beginning of that story, which brought him into the wilderness where he was tempted by the Devil. He was filled with the Holy Spirit and in that state he was tempted. Fascinating, isn’t it? That the Divinity within the Lord allowed what we can only assume might have been a fraught process for Christ.
I don’t know, but I suspect Christ wasn’t having as much fun through his journey of temptation as I did participating in Lent. If nothing else it seems like it was a necessary struggle, where the Lord in his bodily life faced the temptations that often captivate our earthly hearts. A time when God faced those seductive, selfish things that distance us from healthy spirituality and healthy living.
So, Christ is tempted by three things in today’s scripture: he’s tempted to 1) turn stone into bread, 2) gain all authority and glory in service to the Devil, and 3) to test God and prove himself by throwing himself off of the temple. Let’s reflect on these temptations for a few moments and see if they illuminate our own walk through temptation.
To paraphrase for ourselves I’d say that number one, changing stone into bread, sounds a lot like changing the rightful order of things for our own benefit. For Jesus, this could amount to even changing creation just so that he could eat. We can each be tempted by this, by our desire to twist or disorder things for ourselves, to appropriate aspects of the world around us for our own satisfaction even if it was not meant for that. Further, it can be a temptation to disorder or undermine our relationships and those of others for some seductive, selfish desire.
In response, Jesus says we do not live on bread alone. He points to the fact that although he may be hungry and desirous, feeding that desire is not his only sustenance. He says our appetites are not our only source of life, and he refuses to disorder creation to satiate it.
In a way, that first temptation often relates to the second one: the temptation to gain power and wealth for selfish reasons and in service of the Devil, as it’s put.
Interestingly, this temptation and the first one seem to come back to selfishness. People often seek power over others for that very reason, right? Similar to that first temptation, we often seek dominating positions for destructive, selfish reasons. We see that in our politicians and in their behaviors, sometimes putting themselves above integrity and rightful practices. And unfortunately, we also see that in our religious leaders, and in ourselves.
In response to this, Christ points to serving Divinity alone. He uses his awareness of the rightful, healthy order of things, and says serving self and Satan doesn’t fly. Instead, we should serve God in her loving kindness, in her mercy and justice. It may seem simple, but like the first temptation, Christ points to healthy spirituality, following God’s will and centering God in our worship, instead of worshipping ourselves and our dominating desires.
And finally, in this version of the story, the Devil, the Hells as Swedenborg might put it, tempted Christ by asking him to prove himself by jumping off the temple, saying that surely the Lady will save him with her angels just as scripture has promised. As the Devil suggests, we can often put God and scripture to the test in our efforts to magnify ourselves or assure ourselves that God exists. We’d like the Lord to serve our aims instead of the other way around, which, in a sense, is the pinnacle of selfish orientation as it goes as far as literally trying to abuse the Holy One for our own aims. In a way this summarizes all three temptations; we have a tendency to use God and God’s gifts for self-glorification and satisfaction.
And again, to refute this, the Lord points to the scriptural emphasis that we should always listen for and follow God’s holy will. Instead of acting out of selfishness, instead of coopting everything around us, the earth, power, and God, for ourselves, we are called to look for the deeper message, to seek the loving will of Love itself, and follow that. It was easy for the Devil to point to scripture and abuse it, but Jesus pointed out the point of scripture, he emphasized the crucial meaning in the Hebrew texts, and allowed that cornerstone to guide his intentions and his actions.
Like with Jesus, each time we’re faced with temptation it comes back to the same thing. I believe we should strive to follow God’s deeper message, listening for her will and fighting to reject our selfish temptations. As Christ did and with the strength of Christ, we are tasked with trying to fast from our destructive temptations and instead focus our intentions on loving God and loving the goodness around us, our neighbors, and discerning how to uplift these things further.
Easy enough. Right?
Ok, so I always had a hard time keeping to my Lenten fasts as a kid. I think I often fell off whatever they were rather early on, because to me there was no real purpose to it. I had heard a lot of spiritual wisdom but I had no conviction towards it. And although I attended my protestant church and went to the local Muslim Mosque with my dad, I had not developed any real belief that God existed or that I should reflect on my spiritual health and work for change, to truly fast. Lent was just a fun time to engage with my friends.
Today, it can still be hard to enter the call to a Lenten fast, to overcome temptation. It’s not always easy to challenge the temptations towards selfishness: our ego’s efforts towards disorder, power, and prestige. In fact, it can seem impossible, but we’re told that in God all things are possible.
Emanuel Swedenborg, the theologian who is the unintentional namesake of our diverse, interfaith-Christian tradition, didn’t think that the process of Christ overcoming temptation was all that easy or quick either. He believed that on Jesus’ journey towards embodying the Divinity within, Jesus went through the most severe temptations out of all of us, and that this process actually started when he was very young, after he had become convinced of some healthy spiritual truths, and that it only ended with the grievous temptation of the cross.
Swedenborg believed that Christ did all this for us. He did it to be present in our own battles with temptation, because it is truly God, Krishna, within us who overcomes evil. God entered the world in order to save humankind, no matter our tradition. To save us from the destructiveness we have largely come to love, not by writing us a blank check where we can do anything we like, but by becoming more present in our spiritual journeys and providing the strength that we can use to turn away from destructiveness and domination, providing the strength and inspiration to turn towards spiritual wellbeing and God.
It may seem like these struggles and conflicts with our temptations are our own, but scriptures the world over and especially the Bible are clear that it is not our battle, but God’s within us. We have but to strive as though it came from us.
Swedenborg believed that our journey through temptation with God was so important that it’s described throughout Biblical scripture in many ways, not just this 40-day story in the wilderness. He relates it to the Israelites 40-years in the wilderness, which is similar to Jesus’ 40-days as it also has three temptations. He also connects this journey with the Israelites 400 years of slavery and with Noah’s 40 days of flooding.
As you may have noticed, he had a deep conviction that the numbers in scripture, like 40, and the details of every story alluded to spiritual truths. These stories illuminate our journeys with God through their parable, through their repeated, intentional metaphors and symbolism. Scripture says that Jesus always talked in parable, and similarly, Swedenborg viewed all that he considered scripture as a spiritual parable from God. The Bible is filled with stories with deeper meanings that Swedenborg hoped to become more and more attuned to, much like how Jesus was attuned to the deeper meaning of scripture when confronted by the Devil’s flippant misuse of it. It’s the deeper call of scripture towards servanthood and love that illuminates what we should change within, and that we should fight for our spiritual and communal wellbeing.
In his readings of scripture as metaphor, Swedenborg explains that the reason there are so many battles and wars in the Hebrew and Christian Bible, is because humanities journey through the wilderness of temptation toward heavenliness and health is fraught with internal and external conflict. It’s tough, as we all may know. The Lord has never promoted us waging war despite all the battles in scripture, but instead he wants us to battle the evils, to fight the temptations towards selfish disorder within each of us. God calls us to discern our true enemy, our oppressive affections, and repent. As we saw in our story today, we are called to start to enter into conflict with hellishness, the Devil, and receive the power to overcome from Divinity.
May we eventually find peace from this journey in the wilderness. May we turn to the truths and the parables of scripture to inspire us, to illuminate and embolden our paths with God. May this world be uplifted by our reception of Christ’s healing hand in our lives as we seek to inspire this journey of positive transformation and wellbeing in all peoples, of all beliefs and cultures, and in the earth around us.
Amen.
Lord, I Need You
Matt Maher
Flood
Jars of Clay
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