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Mark 8:31-38 Some years ago, the new president of CCAD held a party at his home so that the faculty and trustees could get to know him better. We did indeed get to know him better, and he was fired hardly more than a year later. One example of his charm at the party was a conversation with me and a few other faculty about our hobbies, if any. “Photography,” I said. He nodded. “Fishing,” another guy said. He nodded. Another said, “I like to watch the Weather Channel, sometimes a couple of hours a day.” He just stared at her, and said, “You need to get a life.” What does this have to do with today’s Gospel? Jesus said, “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” The problem with “getting” or “saving” one’s life in modern terms is that this so often means doing something for yourself, something that will make you richer or better-looking or at least less boring. So the former president’s comment about the Weather Channel wasn’t just a general injunction but a suggestion that she take up fishing like Walter or photography like Edward, or maybe needlework or gardening or something, or maybe move on to teaching in Seattle or Houston where she wouldn’t be so bored. In broader terms, he was also suggesting that “Your life is empty, it has no meaning”; Jesus too suggested that some lives are empty, and offered discipleship as the alternative. As I read today’s lesson, I kept thinking about last Sunday’s lesson – and, of course, there is a reason why these passages are put together in sequence. To me, one of the reasons is that the temptations in the wilderness represent wrong ways to get a life, and today Jesus tells us the right way. Since Admire chose not to discuss the temptations in detail last week, I’m going to talk about them a little now, but from the perspective of how different they are from “Take up your cross and follow me.” The first temptation was to give up self-denial and do a magic trick, turning stones into bread, to make himself more comfortable. Hunger alone would make this an attractive proposition, but throughout our lives, hungry or not, we are constantly urged to use our skills to make ourselves materially comfortable, to gain status in our communities, to put our personal stamp on our lives. Just as Satan suggested to Jesus that he take care of his own hunger and no one else’s, so we are taught from childhood to look out first for ourselves and satisfy our own needs first. This is why one of the biggest sections of any bookstore will be the “self-help” aisles where we learn how to “pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps,” as Emerson put it, usually by thinking positive thoughts about ourselves until they come true and we are rich and successful in our jobs. The most famous of these mantras, still repeated many times a day by many people, is “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.” The emphasis is pretty clear, as it is the psychobabble we hear every day about “self-esteem,” “selfworth,” “self-determination,” “self-motivation” and so on. From this point of view, each of us is like a miniature Las Vegas: What comes from the self stays in the self. Jesus’ point of view is different: don’t pull up your bootstraps but instead take up your cross and follow me. The second temptation is not wealth through self-improvement but sheer power. Satan gives Jesus a vantage point where he can see “all the nations of the world,” that is, south through Egypt to Ethiopia, west to the Rock of Gibralter, north to Asia Minor and west through Iraq and Iran to the first of the Himalayas. Our world is larger than that, but still it is an impressive piece of real estate. And, while the Gospel doesn’t mention this, I think the second temptation is a lot harder to resist than the first. After all, the ruler of the world will surely have his or her material needs met without difficulty, so the ruler will be free to be wise and just. That is the real temptation: Take a shortcut, gather power to yourself rather than let it flow out of yourself, and do good without suffering. Another story we all know, Tolkien’s novel The Lord of the Rings is all about this form of seduction. Only the real lord of the Ring, Sauron, accepts it for what it is – pure evil – while everyone else who comes near it believes that he can control it and use it for good. Even saintly Frodo fails in his mission to destroy the Ring because its power possesses him; only divine intervention saves the world from its evil. In the Gospel too, Satan says that all the kingdoms of the world have been given to him, and offers to turn them over to Jesus, implicitly so he can take a shortcut in saving them and avoid the agony of the cross. But Jesus, perhaps recalling this conversation in a high place, rebukes Peter – “get thee behind me, Satan!” – when Peter objects to the idea that Jesus must undergo great suffering and rejection by all human authorities. Satan required in the second temptation that Jesus worship him, by which he would have forfeited his life, and in the third, rather desperate temptation he tries again to make Jesus turn divine power into a magic trick, this time ordering angels to catch him in mid-air. What matters to me about the third temptation is where it happens: at the pinnacle of the Temple in Jerusalem. From there Jesus could easily see the hill of Golgotha where his ministry would end among mocking soldiers and bystanders who would say “If you are the Son of God, send angels to bring you down from there!” He would face the same temptation, this time in agony, but would choose instead to die like any one of us. Jesus foretold his death, and in the process relived his temptation in the wilderness, not only so the disciples would know what was to come but to offer an invitation to them, and through them to us: Give up your obsession with yourself and your needs, deny them, not just to observe Lent but throughout your whole life and being. We do not have to take up a cross to be crucified, but we do need to put to death the selfish impulses that carry us into ourselves and away from other people and from the image of God in all people. We must do this every day, in our work and our prayers, because only then can we learn to live no longer for ourselves alone, but for him who died for us and rose again. Amen.

By Edward Lense