TRAILBLAZER

Hebrews 2: 14-18;  4:14-16

       This last February Dennie Carcelli and I met with your Session here  one Sunday after worship.   Right after that meeting I walked to my car, tossed my coat on the back seat, and drove off on a 2000-mile journey to Colorado and back to visit some dear friends from my first pastorate over 30 years ago.   The fact it was Winter didn’t stop me.   It was smooth sailing over Snoqualmie Pass and on through Yakima and the Tri-Cities to Pendleton, OR.   But looking up to the Blue Mountains ahead I could see the sky growing darker and darker—until, like a curtain falling suddenly in the middle of a play, the sky seemed to drop and begin an endless horde of snow blowing to the ground.

      Even though the road seemed to sink lower and lower under the drifts, I kept going.   But I was getting concerned.  I remembered another time I’d driven this same way and was told by a gas station attendant,  “Once you get on the other side of Dead Man’s Pass, you’ve got it made, buddy.   But don’t forget,” he said, “there’s a reason they call it ‘Dead Man’s Pass!’”

       It wasn’t far from the top of the pass to Baker City where I had reservations for the night.   Do I keep driving?   Do I turn around?   It was snowing so hard I could no longer see the lane markings and wasn’t completely sure I was still on the road.   I could easily lose my way.   Just as I was about to pull over and wait it out, hoping I wouldn’t pull over too far or not far enough, a semi passed me.   I quickly got behind it and followed the tracks of that lone truck on up over the pass and down the other side.   It was clear that I was only able to make it because I did not have to break fresh tracks but could follow the tracks of that vehicle that went before me and led me through the storm safely to the other side.

      Our second scripture reading this morning said,  “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.”  We are not breaking fresh tracks.   Jesus has been here and has walked the way we’ve walked.   He has blazed the trail for us.   The scripture also said,  “Since the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.   For it is clear that he did not come to help angels but the descendants of Abraham.   Therefore he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people.   Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are tested.”

      Let’s look at the testing that Jesus went through.  In what way was it like that which we endure as human beings?   In what ways was it uniquely his testing?   What does it all mean for us?

      Jesus was tested throughout his lifetime.  From the beginning to the end he had to fight his inner battles.  Jesus did not bypass being tested simply because he was the Son of God.   But he took the form of a human being and underwent all the trials, as one of us, that we must face in our lives.   For he shared fully in our humanity.

      Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness, which Donna read in our first scripture reading, best illustrate the types of temptation Jesus faced and we face too.   In the first temptation, the tempter chides Jesus, saying  “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”   Here the tempter has no question of Jesus being the Son of God.   So we know the tempter means,  “Since you are the Son of God and since, of course, you are hungry, having been in the desert 40 days without food, you have the power to change these rocks into food.   Why don’t you do it?”   And Jesus’ reply comes from Deuteronomy (8:3):  “One does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”   He means that people live not because of the food that exists but because of the life that God gives us.   One can have all the bread in the world and not be truly alive.   Life comes from living, spirit to Spirit, with God.   It is the close relationship to God which characterizes Jesus, not self-gratification.

       But, in one sense, this was a unique temptation for Jesus.   For changing stones into bread would not be a temptation for those without the power to do it.  It would not be a temptation for me, for instance.   Sometimes I can turn quarters into candy bars, but I’ve never been able to turn rocks into bread.   But Jesus could.  This was a unique temptation for Jesus to use his power as God when he got into a jam, rather than meeting the situation as a human, as one of us, to experience hunger as we do.   Here in the wilderness Jesus decided to lay aside his divine power, to meet testing as we must, as a human being.   There’s the message of Hebrews again.   Jesus is not an unsympathizing savior but one tempted in every way as we are.   He knows what we go through!   He knows exactly what you are going through in your life right now.

       The second temptation was to get a huge following by jumping off the pinnacle of the Temple, knowing that God would rescue him.  Here the tempter is trying to show that this way of trusting God will certainly bring the people to Jesus and give him immediate recognition as the Messiah.   But Jesus quotes Deuteronomy again (6:16):   “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”    What he means is that by doing this he would be testing God, because, by deliberately incurring danger to prove your trust in God, you are not really trusting God at all but actually distrusting God.  Anytime you put the word “prove” in front of “faith” or “trust,” you’re not really trusting.

      Recently I read about some people in Arkansas who were out to prove their faith in God.   So they let themselves be bitten repeatedly by rattlesnakes, claiming that God would be impressed with their faith, destroy the venom in their systems, and keep them alive.   Some became critically ill and a few died.   And the first thing that came to mind in reading that article was this verse:   “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”   For this is exactly what they were doing and exactly what Jesus is tempted with here—not proving faith but testing God’s faithfulness and therefore not really trusting God at all.

      But this too was a unique temptation for Jesus.   For it determined whether he would get a following by amazing the public with his miracles, wowing them in, so to speak, or whether he would leave it to them to see God in his life.   You remember that he did do many miracles, of course, but he always warned against believing in him just because of those miracles.   He did them out of his compassion for the people and knew that belief based only on impression of the spectacular would not last.

      The third temptation was that he could have all the kingdoms in the world if he would only worship Satan.   In other words, by the wrong means he could get the right ends.   Isn’t that what Jesus wanted, the kingdoms of the world?   In fact, he would send apostles into the world to do just that, to make disciples, to put the kingdoms of the world under God’s rule and mercy.   But taking his obedience away from God was not the way it should be done.   His reply, again from Deuteronomy:   “Worship the Lord, your God, and serve only him.”   Jesus here affirms his allegiance to God.

       How are these temptations like our temptations?   We also are tempted to gain bread for ourselves out of stone, not literally but figuratively--- to use selfishly whatever powers or gifts God has given us.   The person gifted with charm will be tempted to use that charm “to get away with anything.”   The person gifted with the power of word will be tempted to use her or his command of language to produce glib excuses to justify conduct or to manipulate.   The person gifted with a great mind and forceful personality will be tempted to become the master of people and not the servant.

      We also are tempted to cast ourselves down from the pinnacle, to gain popularity cheaply in wrong ways.   We are tempted to put God to the test, to prove God to ourselves and others.   God’s rescuing power is not something to be played and experimented with as it seems to be in so many places today.   It is something to be quietly trusted in everyday life instead.

      We are also tempted to worship Satan for the kingdoms of the world, to subscribe to the doctrine that the end justifies the means, that as long as we reach the goal, the way we get there doesn’t matter.   We are often tempted to gain what we want by force, underhanded deals, little white lies, or sometimes by just keeping our mouths shut when we should be speaking up—instead of treating people with patience and grace, honesty and love.

     Yes, Jesus has been tempted by every type of temptation we have.  He has shared fully in all our experiences of temptation.   So he can fully sympathize with us in our weaknesses.   Because Jesus became one of us and went through all that we must go through, he understands us.  What a profound belief—that God understands us!

       William Foster came into his home one day in the early 1940’s to find his daughter in tears.  He asked her why she was crying.   She handed him the newspaper and the headline read:  “London Bombed.”   Most people in this country read that with a faint feeling of regret.   Statesmen may have read it with a sense of grim foreboding.   But to most people it didn’t make much difference personally.   Why, then, was Foster’s daughter in tears?   Because she had been born in London.  To her London was a house, a school, friends, beloved neighbors.   The difference was that she had been there, had lived there.   When you have been there, it makes all the difference.   And there is no part of human experience of which God cannot say,  “I have been there.”   Our God is sympathetic.   Our God has been here in Jesus.

       Our God is able to help.   God knows our problems because God has come through them.   God has trudged through that snow over Dead Man’s Pass and come out on the other side, leaving tracks for us.   They point the way and will keep us on the road.   That is part of the meaning of this table before us.  In the presence of the bread and wine, we may, as the scripture says, “approach the throne of grace with boldness, knowing that our God understands our weaknesses and sympathizes with us in our struggles, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

                                                                      AMEN