March 1, 2009 at Saint Mark in Norman, OK
Genesis 9: 8-15 + Psalm 25 + 1 Peter 3: 18-22 + Mark 1: 12-15
At my age it is getting increasingly difficult to love weight. I lose everything with no trouble at all from keys and cell phone to my car in the parking lot, but five or ten pounds or an inch or two from my waist becomes a major effort that requires more concentration and attention than anything I can think of. There are candy bowls all over that office! Any trip to the south that brings me near La Baguette or Panera Bread, and I’m done for. So, I avoid driving the streets that get me there. Have you ever noticed what gets placed just inside the door of the grocery store? Two steps inside and there is a table of cookies, cakes, and pies. To make matters worse, they offer free samples. The other day I came home from lunch and there was a cheesecake on the front seat of my car. What could I do? I was going to lunch and passed that bakery. I decided that it was no accident that I had to go that way, so I said: “Ok Lord, if you want me to have a nice cheese cake, make sure there is parking place near the door. If there is no place to park, I’ll do without.” Would you believe than on the seventh trip around the block a parking spot opened up!
I have a good friend who announces proudly at the conclusion of every purchase of something he does not need that, “God wanted me to have it.” We have gotten to the point in our great and long friendship that it is a constant joke between us. I often begin our conversations by asking: “What did God want you to have today?” It has dawned on me that with almost no conscious awareness all of us have slipped into a pattern of negotiations or bartering when it comes to temptation, and I believe that simple little things become big things before we know it. What starts as cheating on a diet might end up with cheating on a spouse or cheating on an expense report.
As a confessor and spiritual director, I more and more recognize how common this thinking has become. “The devil made me do it.” is the silly way we often trivialize bad behavior and wrong choices. We just don’t want to call it what it is: temptation. It is not a game of manipulation. Temptation is a serious encounter.
If we study the behavior of Jesus in such an encounter, we can learn something helpful. Name the temptation. Call it what it is in particular. No generalizations allowed. Be specific. That is what fixes the situation. Then name the tempter. It is the only way to stop rationalization as in saying: “I had to take that money from work to pay my mother’s hospital bills.” No, you did not! Next, practice resistance. Moral training is just like any other training; music or sports. It takes discipline and regular practice. You start small and build up. “No” to a tiny pleasure is how you end up saying “No” to a big one. The amount of money spent at gyms for a personal trainer strikes me as a bit curious when moral or spiritual trainers called: “Confessors” are avoided, maligned, and ignored.
Finally, call for help. Relying on one’s own resources alone is programmed failure. Claim the grace that God offers, consult a mentor, but always ask and trust the help of God. This is what Jesus did. He found temptation to be a time and place in which to meet God.
The presence and the power of evil can never be ignored. The human interest in self-gratification and ambition goes right along with it. But temptation need not be a bad thing because in the midst of the struggle between good and evil one will always find God. That is where Israel found God: in the desert. It is where Jesus found His father: in the wilderness. His experience in temptation changed him, and no doubt made him more humble and stronger. It would be right to believe that it can be the same for us.
In the classic and wonderful work, Murder in the Cathedral, T.S. Elliot gives us Thomas Beckett facing a wilderness of loneliness, doubt, confusion, and fear. He reflects that the greatest temptation anyone ever faces is rarely about right or wrong; but most often it is the temptation to do the right thing for the wrong reason. This is the final test we have in our quest for holiness and greatness. It is well to consider it now in the first days of Lent. Doing the right thing for the right reason takes a considerable amount of self-knowledge, humility, courage, and patience to do so; but these are gifts we have and will always discover when we live in the presence of God.