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Sermon |
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February 13, 2005 |
A Sermon Preached at St. Stephen’s on
February 13, 2005, by the Rev. Cork Tarplee
For those of you who have ever lived in or traveled through the South, here’s an emblem for this sermon: the Kudzu vine. The vine is a glorious example of something pretty good gone badly wrong. A native of Japan where there are critters that eat it and keep it in check, Kudzu is a hardy and beautiful plant with glossy leaves and showy flowers. Engineers from the Southern Railroad discovered it and imported it to the United States in the 19th century to control soil erosion on railroad embankments. It seemed like a good idea at the time. No longer. In Japan, it is lovely, but here in the American Southeast the vine grows unchallenged and unlimited by any natural forces with the result that it takes over everything, even bringing down telephone and electric wires. Hold that image in your mind. Now we are about to talk about sin and temptation.
The thing about most of the bad things we do is that like Kudzu, they aren’t bad in and of themselves. The problem is what we do with them. Sex is a really great thing, for example, and so is chocolate, but we can misuse both of them like crazy and wind up hurting ourselves and other people. The important ethical question has to do with how and why we do the things we do. And that’s where temptation comes into the picture.
Writer Jim Taylor says it’s a pretty common experience for him to board a plane and have the attendant read his name on the ticket and ask, “Are you THE James Taylor?” Now Jim is a talented writer and well known in theological circles, but he knows by now that THE James Taylor they’re talking about is the singer/songwriter. Every time he is asked this question, he says, he starts to feel a little jealousy, but then he stops to consider. He wouldn’t really like to trade places with his namesake, he says, because he knows the other guy has been through two divorces, a lot of drug and alcohol problems, and a stint in a mental institution. Writes Jim Taylor, “I never had the money to get into any of those situations. I couldn’t have afforded the booze, let alone the drugs. I didn’t have nubile groupies offering an eager alternative to the woman I promised to be faithful to.” Most of us can identify with that. Most of the bad stuff we could be getting up to is not off limits to us because we are morally superior. It is off limits because we can’t afford it, we’re afraid of the consequences, or we don’t have the opportunity. Temptation really begins when the means to act is within our grasp, when we have a real choice to make. All of us, I think, need to take temptation seriously.
Temptation is a serious matter for all of us—even if we aren’t rock stars—because all temptation is ultimately about power and all of us, whether we know it or not, have power. In every moral choice we face we can use the power we have to dominate or to benefit others. In the wilderness, Jesus faces three temptations, and we can take these three as representative of ways we are all tempted to misuse our power. Jesus is tempted to turn stones into bread—to dominate the natural world. Then he is tempted to aggrandize himself in a spectacular daredevil leap, to dominate the attention of the world with a display of superman-like powers. Finally, he is tempted to build an empire. What is wrong with this picture is not the things themselves: bread is good; extraordinary physical acts are good; civil societies are good. What is wrong is that the temptations are about domination and not about benefiting others.
In contrast, during his ministry Jesus does some things just as remarkable as the ones the tempter proposes: he feeds, heals, and comforts, sometimes using miraculous powers. The difference is not about whether Jesus has power or not. The difference is how he uses the power he has.
The same is true for all of us. We get to choose how we deal with those around us—and we all have extraordinary power. We may try to dominate those we claim to love or we may use our influence to enhance and support them. When we are in conflict with our significant other, it makes a difference whether we try to force them to see things our way or whether we try to create a safe climate in which understanding can grow. When we interact with our children, it makes a difference whether we try to mold them into the shape we would like them to assume or whether we support, encourage and enable them to grow in the ways they want to grow. When it comes to our dealings with ourselves, it makes a difference whether we treat ourselves with scorn and derision trying to force ourselves to be something we are not or whether we take the more difficult road of coming to understand who we are and helping ourselves meet our real needs. This principle operates on more than just a personal level as well. It makes a difference whether nations try to force each other be the way we would like them to be or whether nations truly respect the different values that make each people unique.
The Kudzu vine is an attempt to dominate and control the landscape with a quick fix. It didn’t work. Quick attempts to dominate won’t work for us, either; they will just grow out of control. In the end, there is no substitute for the hard work of real, respectful love. With Jesus as our model, may we use this Lenten time of self-examination and growth to discover more about ourselves and our temptations. May we use our Lenten experiences to try to find new ways to treat those around us with love. And may we grow this Lent into more caring people. AMEN