The Devil on your shoulder.

The Devil, Satan, gets a bit of a strange rap in the Christian church.  And when we think about him, we think about him as the tempter, the one who goes out of his way to lead us astray. 

We see ourselves as the noble heroes, the warriors, who are standing up against the wiles and guiles of the Devil, who push back against him and his tricks.  We want to do the right thing, like Adam and
Eve did, and we would have been fine without him. Had there been no serpent in the garden, then we would all have still been there.  There would have been paradise for forever, had that serpent not been there, and not been sharing temptation with Eve.

So one of the questions that comes up about the serpent is not just 'how does it talk,' but 'why would God make the serpent in the first place?'  It's a good question, right? If the serpent brought temptation to the world, if the serpent whispered things into the ears of our first parents, then surely, surely, it would have been better and simpler if God had not created that creature at all.

Or would it? This question ought to haunt us more than it does.  It doesn't haunt us too much, because we figure that we don't need to think too much about it.  We're okay, and we want to do what is good and right, and circumstances get in the way.  But if you really think about it, If you sit down and ponder what we're all about, then you'll come to a horrible realization.  And this realization comes to us courtesy of something else that gets a bad rap in Lutheran churches, the book of James.

Luther referred to the book of James as the epistle of straw, criticizing it for its insistence on works, and how we ought to be doing them.  And we Lutherans look at this book, telling us that faith without works is dead, and we naturally bristle against it.  We bristle, we get upset, and we feel as though this sort of talk doesn't belong in the scriptures, especially with our motto as Lutherans being 'grace alone.' We feel as though any discussion of this stuff doesn't belong in the Bible at all.  But here we are, thinking about the book of James, and what it could possibly have to add to our lives.  For you see, the Lutheran church wasn't built up on just the story of Christ, but there were serious questions that people asked, after becoming Christians.  They asked themselves 'now what?'  Once you become a Christian, then what do you do, and who are you? That's why there's all the discussion about works, because it's not as simple as just joining the church and being set for eternity.  You don't manage that, because joining the church, it's just the beginning, not the end.

And when James talks about our temptations, he doesn't do what we would want him to do.  We want him to tell us that we are doing our best, and that the devil just gets in the way of all of it.  We want that to be our narrative, but it just doesn't hold up, and James tells us the dark truth as to why that is.  In our reading from Sunday, James tells us this about temptation, and by extension, sin:

'No one, when tempted, should say "I am being tempted by God," for God cannot be tempted by evil, and he himself tempts no one.  But one is tempted by one's own desire, being lured and enticed by it.  Then, when that desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and that sin, when it is fully grown, gives birth to death.  Do not be deceived, my beloved.'

Did you catch all that? Did you catch what is being talked about?  In this part of the scriptures, James wants to make it clear that the problem isn't that we're being deceived by the Devil into what we don't
want to do.  We have the desire for sin, it's right there in front of us always, and by and large, we go for it because we want to.  If the devil is amongst us, if he is hard at work trying to drag us to hell, then he has a pretty easy job, because what we are tempted into is what we want to be tempted into.  We seek it out, it doesn't have to come and find us.  And if we want to be tempted, we will be, and we will find our way into these situations again and again and again. 

Think of it this way - it's like on the Jerry Springer show, when couples were confronted with their infidelity, and the explanation was 'well, we was drinking, and one thing led to another,' or 'we was drinking, and it just happened,' or whatever.  None of these things 'just happen.'  You knew what was going to happen for sure, before you got to the house.  But you still went in, because you wanted that
temptation.  You craved it, and it was easy to fall into.  You went out of your way to find it, because it wasn't coming  fast enough.  And this is exactly what we do.  Though I'm not going to deny the existence of the devil, I will say that he sure doesn't have to try too hard.  He has, in us, willing participants in our own destruction.  We do the things we ought not to do not just because we are tempted into it from outside, but because we really, really want to do it. 

In that way, our biggest struggle continues to be against ourselves. 

And this is why the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness is such a big deal.  It's a big deal because he was able to resist temptation in a way that we are not.  His nature was not corrupt like ours, he wasn't as prey to disastrous decisions, as prey to errors and mistakes, as prey to sin as we are.  When Satan shows up to test him, Jesus rebuffs him, because he is that lamb without blemish.

Remember, a long time ago, when  Abraham was asked to take his son, his one and only son whom he loves up the mountain and sacrifice him?  Well, that happens, and Abraham dutifully loads his son up with wood, and they walk up the mountain towards the spot where Isaac will be sacrificed.  When they got there, Abraham bound Isaac, and prepared the knife to sacrifice his son. But right before he plunged the knife into his son, a voice called out from heaven, telling Abraham to spare his son, and that God himself would provide the sacrifice. 


And that's what the faith is all about, really.  It's all about God providing the sacrifice. It's all about the new ram caught with his head in the thorns.  It's all about the child walking the wood that he is going to be bound to up the hill where he is supposed to die.  And at the last moment, the knife is turned away from Isaac.  But the spear is turned towards Christ.

The story of the binding of Isaac has a reputation in the church, and outside it, as being the worst one, the worst story.  It has a reputation of being the most contemptible story in the scriptures, based on the request from God for Abraham to sacrifice his son, and based on Abraham being willing to do it.  God says to Abraham 'sacrifice your son for me' and Abraham says 'thy will be done.' And if you're tempted to bristle at that story, might I remind you about the core of the Christian faith, in which we believe that Jesus died for us.  The sacrifice that God promised to Abraham back in the Old Testament, the sacrifice without spot or blemish.  The one who resisted temptation, who resisted the temptations because he did not want to fall into them.  The one who willingly walked his cross up the hill, like Isaac walked the wood up the hill.  Then as Isaac was bound, Christ was nailed in place.  And where the knife was spared from Isaac, the spear was plunged into Christ.  And the biggest thing of all, is why.  When we look at the story of Abraham and Isaac, we get uncomfortable when we contemplate that God would ask someone to give up his son, his only son whom he loves, because he was asked.  But that's exactly what we do.  We do it to God.

What the entire Christian faith revolves around is around the cross of Christ, where he died.  The perfect sacrifice that was promised from long ago, the perfect sacrifice that was offered up for us, the perfect sacrifice that God himself would provide, and God provided that sacrifice.  We said to God, 'take your son, your only son, whom you love, and walk him up a hill for us, and sacrifice him for us.'  And God does.  And Christ dies.  He dies for you and for me, dying for us on the cross, as the sacrifice that God provided.  And his perfection, his resistance to temptation was transferred to us.  We who are sinners inherit his grace. 

If the story of Isaac bothers you, if you read it and it troubles you, and gives you concern, it should.  It should bother you that God would ask for Abraham to offer his son.  But if that bothers you, then you need to think about what you take for granted - that God would offer his son for you.  And that's the centre of the faith.  And this is what Lent is all about, it's about us taking time to think about the temptations that we don't resist, temptations that we willingly fall into, and what cost it has.  The story of Isaac doesn't end on that mountain.  It ends on the mount of Golgotha, where Jesus himself declared that it is finished.  His resistance to temptation has freed you from the consequences of yours.