February 27, 2004
Proud towers
Anybody wrestling with vocation is probably influenced at one time or another by the world’s Three Big Compulsions. We want our life and work to be relevant. We want to have at least enough control over it and our environment to keep it “between the curbs.” And we want it to be noticed, even if only for Andy Warhol’s “fifteen minutes.”
The daemons knew something like this was going on with Jesus, maybe even before he did. The same thing is true with us. The devil is in such details as one’s confusion about vocation. The devil was in these details in the wilderness, with Jesus and waited out there until he was half starved to death to move in on his anguish.
You want to be relevant? Turn these stones into bread. You want to be in charge? Here’s a whole empire of kingdoms and all the authority and glory that goes with it. You want to be noticed? Take a flying leap off the pinnacle of the temple, surely the angels won’t let anything happen to the Son of God. No vocational headhunter could come up with better tests than these (Lk 4.1-13).
We’re facing a national election motivated at its very heart by which party claims to be the most relevant, the most spectacular, the most powerful. The devil expected a field day by using them with Jesus. But the gospel as Jesus understood it and as we’ve received it never fails to knock every one of our such pretentious priorities into a cocked hat as it asks not for relevance or power or fame, but for justice and peace and a fair concern and respect for all.
Of all the answers Jesus gave, one stands front stage center. “You shall worship the Lord your God, and God only shall you serve” (Lk 4.8b). And it is to our eternal benefit that it does. This major turning point in Jesus’ understanding of himself and his work proved to be the furnace of his transformation, to protect him from becoming a victim of society, and from continuing to be entangled in the illusions of the false self. In the face of these temptations, he affirmed God as the only source and substance of his identity.
The church today seems often to find itself in a vocational wilderness, wondering what is its ministry and to whom. It’s struggling with relevancy, with authority, and with wondering why the world simply doesn’t seem to notice much anymore. Many ask “what would Jesus do,” but don’t seem sincere enough to realize that he asked the very same question of himself but refused to seek its answer in the world’s terms.
Ironically, what Jesus told the devil in the wilderness, he tells the church today. Religion’s proud towers are for princes and tourists. Its intricate doctrines are for the angry and the arrogant. Its pretensions to power are just warmed over Caesar outlined in fancy script. “You shall worship the Lord your God, and God only shall you serve.”
The kingdoms of this world are humanity’s mistake, not its glory. Can you imagine Jesus vested in silks and sitting on a throne demanding that we do him homage? I doubt it. Rather might he be here at table erasing centuries of warfare, turning us to discover our common humanity, easing us out of our historic enigmas and into the shared language of love.