Sunday Sermon - "Since You Are a Child of God..."

When Jesus is tempted in the wilderness, there is no question about whether he is Son of God. The question is what sort of Son he will be. So too for us, the question is what sort of children of God we will be.

Feb 21 sermon.mp3

Luke 4:1-13

Since You Are a Child of God…

James Sledge --- February 21, 2010

Back in my high school days, I wrestled on a team that was a perennial power. We usually vied for the conference title and sent a number of wrestlers to the state championship. I have a lot of memories from those days: an inexperienced teammate’s win that turned a match in our favor, celebrations after big wins, and grueling practices where I would often sweat away six or seven pounds in two and a half hours.

But I think the most vivid memory of a practice comes from my first year on the team. We had lost a match the night before to a team we should have beaten. Our coach was as tough and hard-nosed as they come, and no one was looking forward to practice that day.

But rather than being all worked up and animated, Coach was calm and serene. He didn’t yell or scream at us to work harder; quite the opposite. He calmly told us to work only as hard as we felt like. Some of our opening exercises were normally done to the point of exhaustion, but this day Coach told us to stop as soon as they became difficult. When we moved on to the drills we did each practice he said, “Now if you get tired, stop.”

Of course this worked precisely as he hoped. Everyone gave absolutely everything he had, even as Coach kept urging us to take it easy, not to overdo it or strain ourselves. It’s funny how much you can wish for your coach to be yelling at you when he’s not.

Finally, and I suppose rather predictably, the moment came when things turned. Coach acknowledged the effort everyone was giving and said, “Well if you really want to practice hard, we’ll practice hard. If you really want to be champions, we’ll practice like champions.” What followed was the hardest practice I had ever experienced. But no one seemed to mind. After all, we certainly wanted to be champions.

There was never really a question about that. There was absolutely no chance that anyone would respond to Coach’s “If you want to be a champions…” with a “Nah, that’s okay. We don’t want to be champions. We just like saying we’re on a sports team.”

Many times when someone starts a sentence with, “If you…” that “if” is not really in question. “If you love me… If you really want this job… If you want to graduate… If you want to succeed… If you’re really a Buckeye fan…” Often such statements don’t really question whether the person wants the job or is a Buckeye fan. They presume that “if” part to be true. What is really at issue is how someone who is a Buckeye fan will act or what someone who wants to graduate should do. Even in a patently manipulative statement like “If you love…” the person speaking presumes the other’s love. There would be no chance to manipulate them if that were not the case.

And that’s the situation in the temptations Jesus faces in the wilderness. When the devil says, “If you are the Son of God…” there is no doubt as to Jesus’ identity. That is even more apparent in the original Greek of Luke’s gospel. There is a grammatical structure used here that we don’t really have in English, and you could even translate the devil’s words, “Since you are the Son of God…”

And so the issue in our reading is not who Jesus is, but rather what it means to be Son of God. It is easy to picture these events in rather cartoonish fashion, with a horned devil issuing challenges to Jesus. But Luke clearly understands these temptations to be very real for Jesus. They reflect his struggle to be the Son of God that God would have him be rather than the Son of God that religious people expected, that his followers hoped he would be, that his own desires and fears pushed him to be. And it doesn’t stop here. At the end of our reading, the devil departs “until an opportune time.” In Gethsemane, Jesus will struggle with whether or not he can be the Son of God who trusts God’s will so fully that he can face the cross.

These temptations are things Jesus actually considered. And are they really so bad? Why not turn stones to bread. Palestine is a terribly rocky place. Why not turn lots of stones into bread and feed not just himself but all those hungry people? And why not make a deal with the devil and seize political power? The Bible in other places speaks of Satan as the ruler of this world. Why not acknowledge that if it would mean an end to Roman oppression, an end to military conquests, an end to war? And why not jump from the pinnacle of the Temple and touch down softly in its courtyard, held up by heavenly angels? Lord knows that when I’m struggling to stay faithful I’d love for Jesus to pull a divine magic trick like that and make trusting him a lot easier.

What is it that makes Jesus Son of God? Is it simply an identity he is born with, and there is no changing it? If Jesus had become a military Messiah and defeated the Romans would he still have been the Son of God? If Jesus had gotten cold feet in the Garden of Gethsemane and escaped the cross, would he still have been the Son of God? Or does the fact that he is Son of God preclude him from doing that?

And what if we ask similar questions about ourselves? People often want to claim that all humans are “children of God.” If that is true, what does it mean? From a Christian perspective, we say that in our baptisms we are adopted and claimed by God, becoming sisters and brothers of Jesus and therefore God’s children. But what does that mean? More to the point, what sort of life is consistent with being a child of God?

If you met the devil out in the wilderness, what sort of temptations would he lob your way? “If you are a child of God…” Or better yet, “Since you are a child of God…” The issue isn’t whether God adopts you. The issue is how God’s kids should act.

Since you are a child of God, surely God wants you to be happy. So focus on making yourself happy. Make sure you have plenty of money and things first.

Since you are a child of God, God is there to meet your needs and wants. When you pray, ask God for lots of stuff and have faith that God will give it to you. You don’t have to listen for God telling you what you really need. You know what’s good for you.

Since you are a child of God… What comes next for you?

Every week in worship, we proclaim that we are indeed children of God as we pray to “Our Father in heaven.” That prayers says something about what it means to be God’s children; longing for God’s rule, asking for enough for the day, being as free with our forgiveness to others as God is with us.

And it’s not only the Lord’s Prayer. The Bible is full of information on what it means to be a child of God, with Jesus himself as the obvious model to follow. Our brother Jesus is THE child of God. But who can measure up to this sibling?

More than once I’ve heard someone describe being a Christian, being a child of God, something where you are never good enough, an endless guilt trip. Since you are a child of God, keep trying harder, but know that you’ll never measure up.

My high school wrestling coach asked a great deal of us. He would urge us to work harder and harder, to do things we never imagined we could do. But it never felt impossible. It never felt like we were trying harder and harder all the while knowing we’d never measure up. In fact, many of us would have tried to do just about anything Coach asked us to do. But that was because we were like family. We knew how much he cared for us, how much he loved us. We knew how much he wanted the best for us, and so we trusted him almost absolutely.

All praise and glory to the God who loves us so much, that in Jesus God went to the cross that we might be children of God.