Transcending Temptation and Sin

You may have noticed that the devil plays a rather prominent role in our scripture readings this morning. If you worship here regularly, you may also have noticed that I don’t spend a lot of time preaching about the devil. I preach about love, joy, peace, and hope, a lot. I preach about God’s love for all the world and all people. I preach often about how Jesus Christ has called us to humble service for our neighbors and for the most vulnerable among us. But, I don’t spend much time at all talking about the devil. 
One reason that I don’t speak much about the devil is that the devil plays a very minor role in the books of scripture. Apart from these passages, only one of which specifically names the devil, there is also a mention of Satan in the book of Job. However, in the popular imagination, in our cultural understanding of Christianity, the devil looms very large. Despite having no physical description in the bible itself, the word devil, immediately brings to our minds a short, red, hooved fellow, holding a pitchfork, and sporting horns and a tail. In our modern western culture this cartoonish character is widely assumed to be a central character in the Christian story, he is elevated to the role of arch-enemy of God, a sort of evil counter to the Holy Trinity. 
Personally, I don’t believe that this cultural understanding of the devil as a rival power to God is at all biblical, or for that matter, particularly Christian. The Christian faith is monotheistic, there is only one God, and that God is good. Christianity does not pose a dualistic theology: there is no rival power to God. In the vast majority of Christian thought, evil does not have an independent existence, it is simply the distance from, or the absence of God. 
However, the devil does indeed appear in our readings today, so he is indeed, a part of the bible, and of the Christian faith. How then, should we understand this character? If he is not the red-clad arch enemy of God, who is he? And what are we to learn from him? 
Reinhold Neibhur was one of the most important theologians of the twentieth century, and he also happens to be a part of our history, he was a member of the German Evangelical Church, a graduate of Eden Seminary, both now part of the United Church of Christ. In his writing on the character of the devil in scripture, Neibhur claims that the devil is a metaphor representing the fact that sin posits itself. What does this mean, that sin posits itself? Sin is generally understood as missing the mark, doing something in such a way that puts distance between yourself and God. So to say that sin, posits itself, is to say that sin proposes itself, it positions itself in our lives, it somehow is already there, already possible, already an option for us, without our having to bring it into the situation. 
I’ve got a little story to illustrate my point here. Mr. George once told me a story about visiting his nieces and nephews. There were three little ones, the oldest a toddler, the youngest an infant. And as Mr. George was speaking to their parents, one of the older two took a toy from the youngest. Soon the two oldest babies were passing the toy back and forth and keeping it away from the youngest, who began to cry and scream. Not more than two years old and all by themselves they had come up with the idea to take something from another, to tease and taunt another person. These babies didn’t have to learn this behavior, they didn’t have to see someone else do it first, it was enough simply to see another baby with a toy. The idea of taking it, or taunting the baby, posited itself. Sin posits itself. So it is in the story of the serpent and Eve in Genesis. The serpent, often thought to represent the devil here, puts the idea of taking the fruit into Eve’s mind. There is no-one to teach Adam and Eve how to sin, how to misbehave, for they have no ancestors, no parents. But nonetheless the idea that they can do wrong, that they can distance themselves from God, the idea that they can sin, is already there with them in the garden. The serpent illustrates how sin, posits itself.
There is another piece of the popular conception of the devil with which I am not overly fond. This is the conception of the devil as the warden of a supernatural hell to which we may be condemned in the afterlife. Again, this idea of a supernatural punishment for sin in the afterlife, and the devil as the warden of this hell, has scant biblical evidence. Most of what Western Christianity envisions of hell comes from Dante’s Inferno and not the Bible itself. I don’t spend much time talking about this hell either. That is because I believe that it has most often been used to strike fear into people’s hearts, to scare them into believing. This practice seems greatly at odds with the God of the Bible who repeatedly tells us not to be afraid, the God who grants strength and courage. However, just as the devil can be understood in a healthy and helpful way, so too do I believe we can come to understand hell in a more productive fashion.
Hell describes what builds within a person the more they turn away from God, the further they fall into sin. Hell describes the way in which sin, builds upon itself, how one sinful action can lead to another, and another, and another, until sin becomes like a prison cell locking us away from God, from life, from truth, from beauty, from joy, and from God. One of the greatest illustrations of this human tendency is given in Fyodor Dostovesky’s novel, Crime and Punishment. In this book, the main character, is a poor student named Rodhya, who is struggling to pay his rent and keep up with his studies, and feeling pressure from his family. One day he makes a trip to pawn something to an old woman in the neighborhood, when the idea to rob her enters his mind. The entire novel is an exploration of how this evil thought begins to grow into an obsession, and then how Rodhya deals with himself after committing the crime. This one crime, of course, requires that he lie to cover his tracks. He becomes increasingly suspicious of others, and paranoid. Not only of the police, but also his friends, and eventually his family. His mental state deteriorates, he begins lashing out at his loved ones. His paranoia and his guilt overcome him and he is completely miserable. This is what I primarily understand Hell to represent: the tendency of sin to build within us, to warp our personalities and our lives, and to ultimately destroy us. Understood in this way, hell is an experience in this life, it is the ever increasing distance from God that results from our sin.
So, maybe the devil isn’t a short red hooved cartoon character, but rather an illustration of how sin is always already present in our minds. And maybe hell isn’t a fiery pit in the afterlife, but rather the epitome of human misery in this life. But when you think about, I haven’t actually given us much good news yet. Sin is ever present with us, it is a possibility in every moment of our lives, a possibility that we cannot eliminate. And to sin is to risk sinning more and more, and imprisoning yourself in a hell of your own misery. Ouch! That’s some dark and depressing stuff.
However, there is more to the Christian understanding of what it means to be human than just sin and evil. The Christian understanding of the human being, is that we are inherently contradictory, we are paradoxical beings. As a creation of God, human beings are good, just as all of God’s creation is good. Yet we are also capable of evil. In each and every moment of our lives we are capable of choosing to sin or not to sin. There is no person so good that they do not experience temptation, that they do not have the capacity for evil within them. At the same time, there is no person so evil, so enslaved to sin, that they do not have the capacity for good within them. Each and every human being is capable of incredible good, and unbelievable evil.
The Good News is that we have not been left to our own devices in this life. We have not been left to our power in making these choices between good and evil. The Christian Church proclaims that in Jesus Christ, God has taken on flesh and shared our common lot, our human lives. Immediately after he is baptized and before he begins his ministry, Jesus is taken into the wilderness where he begins to prepare himself with prayer and fasting. There in the wilderness we are told that devil visits him. There in the wilderness, God in Jesus Christ, experiences the human temptation to sin. Jesus is tempted to care only for his own well being, his own food, shelter and wealth. He is tempted to arrogance, to claiming the entirety of God’s prerogative to himself, and finally he is tempted with power, the power over others, the power of domination. In each instance, Jesus is able to resist the temptation, to defeat sin. Having experienced and overcome the temptation to sin, Jesus, and God, are now intimately familiar with sin, with the desire to miss the mark, to harm oneself, to place distance between yourself and God. From this point forward, the devil leaves Jesus, and his ministered to by angels. From here he goes on to preach repentance and forgiveness for sins, to offer the grace necessary to bridge the gap between the sinner and God, to proclaim a kingdom where God and the people are in perfect harmony. 
This repentance, this grace, this kingdom are the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is not that sin does not exist. It does today and all days. It exists as a possibility for each of us in every moment, and it always bears the capability to drag us ever further from God. Rather the good news, is that God has promised us that the Holy Spirit, the very power of God, will be with us whenever we call upon it. The good news is that Jesus Christ, has defeated sin and death, and offers us grace in abundance. The good news is that whenever two or three of us are gathered in the name of Christ, Jesus is there with us. Empowering us, walking with us, loving us to greater life with God. 
We come to church on Sunday, not because we want to celebrate our perfect goodness, our freedom from sin. Rather we come to church on Sunday to be reminded that sinners though we are, we are nevertheless loved by God. That God so loved us, that God took human form, experienced sin and death, defeated them, and promised to always be with us in our own struggle. We come here to be reminded that God has promised always to forgive us, always to show us mercy, always to lead us back to her. We come here on Sunday to be refreshed and renewed by the power of God so that we might meet the challenge of living our lives to the fullest. We come here on Sunday to remember that with God we need not fear sin, nor death. That with God we may bravely live lives full of joy, peace, hope, and love for our fellow human beings. That is the good news of the gospel, and that is my hope for us here at St. Paul’s during Lent: that we might use this season, to reflect on our own temptations and sin, that we might remember that temptation and sin are parts of human life, and that together with God and one another we may transcend temptation and sin, and we may live in and work towards the fulfillment of that glorious kingdom where all live in loving harmony with God.

Amen.