Who? - Luke 4:1-13 (1st Sunday in Lent)
I want to tell you the story of a man whose
wife is in a nursing home. This man
continued to faithfully try to help her, even when there was little he could
concretely do. The man, in his 80s, had
stopped into a medical clinic to get stitches removed from his thumb. He asked
the nurse if the doctor could see him quickly, because he had an important
appointment at 9 a.m.
“What appointment was that?” the nurse
wanted to know.
“I need to go to the nursing home to eat
breakfast with my wife.”
“Is your wife ill?” asked the nurse.
“Yes. She has Alzheimer’s.”
“Would your wife mind if you were a bit
late?”
“Oh no,” he said. “She hasn’t recognized me
for five years.”
“And you still go every morning, even
though she doesn’t know who you are?”
The man only smiled. “She doesn’t know me,
but I still know who she is.”
Alzheimer’s. In the seventeen years I have served as a
pastor I have encountered this diagnosis in so many people—church and family
members alike. Many of you know that in
the past year my own mother has been diagnosed.
This is a cruel disease. Many
folks might want to debate that cancer or AIDS or some other illness is worse,
but I would have to say, from my own experience, that Alzheimer’s tops the list. Illnesses, such as cancer or AIDS, that
attack primarily the body, may cause pain, may rob a person of the lifestyle
they were used to living, and may even rob them of their lives. However, Alzheimer’s robs them of their
memories and their selves. I have
watched as folks, some slowly, some rapidly, not only forget their past, forget
things around them, forget family members, but worst of all, they forget
exactly who they, themselves, are.
One way folks with Alzheimer’s forget who
they are is forgetting what point in their lives they are currently living. Let me share with you a personal
example.
Anita’s stepfather, Clint Chappell, was
diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He battled
it for more than nine years before dying.
At one point in his battle with this thieving illness, soon after the
diagnosis, and compounded by an emergency surgery to have a pacemaker installed,
Clint forgot that he was well into his retirement years and thought he was
still selling insurance. On several
occasions, he wanted to go out and either collect on or sell policies as he did
much earlier in his life. The disease
had robbed him of all of the thirty years in-between—the years in which his
children grew up, the years in which his children had married, the years in
which his grandchildren had been born.
He forgot that he was a happily retired grandfather of three. He had forgotten who he was.
Why am I talking about this depressing
disease? What does Alzheimer’s have to
do with our reading from Luke and the temptation of Christ? Well, my brothers and sisters, it is not because
I enjoy talking about Alzheimer’s. It is
not because I want you to feel sorry for my mom or my family. The reason that I bring up Alzheimer’s, my
brothers and sisters, is because I think we all suffer from Spiritual
Alzheimer’s from time to time. We are
often forgetting who we are, whose we are, and who we are called to be at this
point in our lives.
Satan sought to infect Jesus with Spiritual
Alzheimer’s.
Satan said, “Jesus, if you are the Son of
God, turn this stone into bread.” Satan
wanted Jesus to cave into his hunger after fasting for forty days. Satan wanted Jesus to forget that he had come
to feed and care for the world; Satan wanted Jesus to use his powers to feed
and care for himself. However, Jesus
remembered who and whose he was, Jesus remembered that He was the Son of God
and a member of God’s Chosen people, the Israelites. He responded by quoting God’s Word he would
have learned as a child, “It is written, Man does not live on bread alone”
(which is concluded “but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord”).[i]
Again, Satan tried to get Jesus to forget
who he was. Satan took Jesus to the peak
of the mountain and waved his hand showing Jesus all the kingdoms of the
world. Satan said to Jesus, “To you I
will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me,
and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be
yours.” Satan tempted Jesus to give up His
power, to forget that He, Jesus, was the true Lord of the world, and to worship
Satan in order to gain power. Satan
wanted Jesus to forget that He was the Son of God and the One whom through
everything had been created. Satan
wanted Jesus to forget that he came to serve not tyrannically rule. Jesus, however, remembered who he was and to
whom he belonged, by responding “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and
serve Him only.”[ii]
Finally Satan tempted Jesus a third time to
forget who he was by tempting him to test God.
Satan whisked Jesus from the wilderness and into Jerusalem, placing him
on the top of the Temple. Satan tempted
Jesus to throw himself down from their elevated location. Satan even sought to trick Jesus by quoting
Scripture himself, reminding Jesus that God will protect his chosen one with a
legion of angels.[iii] Jesus, though, counters, with “It is said:
‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”[iv] Jesus had just been baptized in the Jordan
River, had seen the skies open up, the Spirit descend upon Him, and had heard
the voice of God say, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well
pleased.”[v] Satan tempted Jesus to forget this
affirmation and doubt whether He was God’s Son.
Jesus, though, fought back any Spiritual Alzheimer’s and held on tightly
to His identity as the Son of God.
Satan gave up for the time being, but as
our passage promises us, Satan went away until a more opportune time. I think sometimes we forget that Satan was
waiting for another attempt at infecting Jesus.
However, if we read God’s Word carefully, we see that the Tempter comes
once more. On the cross, Jesus is once
again tempted to use His divine power to save himself. Satan spoke through all those who were
deriding Jesus, “‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of
God, his chosen one!’ The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him
sour wine, and saying, ‘If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!’ One of
the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, ‘Are you not
the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’”[vi] Each time Jesus was tempted to forget who He
was and why He was here. Praise be to God, that Jesus did not forget
who he was and that he defeated Satan once and for all.
However, Satan has not given up. Satan tempts us to succumb to Spiritual Alzheimer’s
in much the same way he sought to tempt Jesus.
Satan tempts us to forget that we are now
called Christian. He tries to get us to
turn away from the Word of God and seek after the bread that comes in wealth,
fame, and pleasure; he tempts us to cheat in business to get a larger profit; he
tempts us to do things we shouldn’t, just to make a name for ourselves; he
tempts us to pursue illicit sexual relationships or drugs to make us feel good
momentarily, satisfying for a moment only what Christ can satisfy within us
forever.
Satan will tempt us to forget that we are
to love the Lord, our God, with all our heart and soul and strength. He will tempt us to set other idols above
God. What idols? Satan not only tempts us with idolatrizing
media and sports stars, but also aspects of our own lives. He tempts us to worship our careers, our
money, our calendars, our families, and even ourselves. Satan wants us to forget that God should take
the first place in our lives and tries to convince us that it is okay for God
to play second fiddle to whatever we want to have or do.
Finally, Satan wants us to forget that we
are to trust in God. When illness,
disaster, or some other tragedy strikes, Satan tempts us to live in fear. When we are wronged, Satan tempts us to seek
vengeance for ourselves. He wants us to
forget that God has promised to put the words in our mouths, and rather than
share the Gospel, we live in the fear that we might say the wrong words or upset
somebody with God’s truth. He tempts us
to pile our money away in the bank worried about a rainy day or spend it all on
what we deem we need and only give the leftovers for mission and ministry.
The sad part, my brothers and sisters, is
that often we find that we have given into this Spiritual Alzheimer’s. Too many times we find ourselves back in the
same condition we were in prior to understanding the Salvation that Christ
offers and the life He calls us to. We
forget who we are and who we are called to be.
We forget that once we pass through those waters of baptism, whether
sprinkled, poured, or immersed at any age, that we are no longer living lives
for ourselves, but for God and neighbor first.
Unlike the Alzheimer’s that plagues so many
of our elderly, this Spiritual Alzheimer’s has a cure. Like the husband who has not forgotten who is
wife is and is determined to be with her every day regardless, even when we
forget God, God remembers us. God
continually calls us back into relationship with Himself and gives us the means
to do it. He provides us with Sunday
School, Worship, Bible Study, and Christian Fellowship among other things to
give us reminders of who we are and who we are called to be.
My brothers and sisters, Remember. Remember that You are a beloved Child of
God. Remember that God has called You
and claimed You. Remember that we belong
to Him, not to the world, not to Satan, not to fear, nor anything else. Remember, Remember, Remember! In the name of
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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