This psalm does pose a theological problem.  Are those who “adhere to” or “love” God to expect to be protected from all harm?  I think the answer is obviously not.  Bad things do happen to believers.  I believe that we are expected to live confidently and not to fear evil around every corner.  In a society where a terrorist lurks in every school and in every public bus or street no community can be established.  Knowing that bad things do happen once in a while, we must act on the presumption that the street we are walking down is safe and that the people we will cross on the sidewalk are well-meaning people.  FDR said famously, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”  As believers we must reject the reaction of many, leaders and not leaders, to the lamentable attacks on the World Commerce Towers and the Pentagon, a reaction that urges us to live in constant fear and to trust nobody.  Instead of looking for terrorists under every stone, couldn’t we better ask why these presumably reasonable people attacked these public symbols of U.S. economic and military power?  Let us not demonize the enemy but trust that God will protect us from harm if we treat all with the respect they deserve as creatures of God, even those called “terrorists” by fearful people.

Romans 10:8b-13
Chapters 9 to 11 of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans is a long section on the eventual incorporation of the Jewish nation into the Christian community, an eventuality that Paul felt guaranteed by the promises to Israel.  The portion assigned for the First Sunday of Lent centers around the central concepts of Paul’s theological argument in this epistle:  Faith, justification (dikaóõ, to make just), and salvation.  In order to properly place this whole argument about Israel it is useful to remember that the emperor Claudius (who governed 41 to 54) had expelled the Jews from Rome, meaning that the Christians in that city were no doubt still in the late 50s predominantly Gentiles.  As the Jews return, Paul wants them to be received well by their Gentile brothers and sisters, knowing that they are the recipients of promises from God.

From Rom 1:18-32 it is clear that Paul believes that the acclaimed Roman law is impotent to make people just, in their conduct toward others and in God’s eyes.  The justice of God is revealed in the faith of Jesus, which we have seen manifest in the story of the temptations, as it communicates with our faith.  Faith is also revealed in Abraham’s willingness to leave his land for an unknown promised land (Rom 4).  It is this faith that enables humans to become just as they release control over their justice and believe that God will make the outcome right.  In Rom 10:9 the content of faith is belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  The first to believe was Jesus himself, who gave his fortunes over to the Roman soldiers in confidence that God could and would raise whatever the soldiers left to full life.  We do not know what exactly happened on Easter Sunday, but God did one way or another vindicate that Jesus whom the authorities had crucified as a subversive.  We believe with Jesus that God can and will give new life where life has been denied.  In a globalized market like today’s that denies to most people life in its plenitude while granting to a minority ridiculous sums of money that they cannot ever use, one can easily lose heart and give up.  To follow Jesus is to believe in his resurrection and that of our poor world.

But Paul proposes a second step:  “For with the heart one believes for justice, but with the mouth one confesses for salvation” (Rom 10:10).  One becomes just only by believing.  If we give up believing that God will give new life to this exhausted world we shall no longer have the energy it takes to challenge its structures, to be just.  But when we believe and act justly in accordance with our belief we must not keep our faith to ourselves but must proclaim it.  This is the witness or public confession we saw in Deut 26 and Ps 91.  Whoever believes will not be ashamed.  This we should proclaim and gain more who are willing to struggle against the dominant current of our times on behalf of life for all, Jew and Greek (and Vietnamese and Iraqi and Zimbabwean).

All who publicly call on the name of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen from the dead, “will be saved (sosthesetai)” (Rom 10:13).  Saved from what, we may and should ask?  Paul’s answer is, “from the wrath that is coming” (1 Thess. 1:10).  What is the wrath that is coming?  We do not know exactly what Paul had in mind in the mid-First Century, but as we begin the Twenty-First the nature of that wrath is frighteningly clear:  Global warming, oceans polluted with mercury and other toxic substances that kill Eskimo babies in the Arctic, countless plant and animal species that disappear forever, in general an ecological catastrophe of proportions we cannot really calculate.  And right now, not tomorrow, millions of babies are undernourished and condemned to live short lives with few of the foods and shelter that sustain full human life.  This is the coming wrath that is already upon us.  The Resurrection means that there is salvation from this wrath.  We who believe are called upon to bear witness to a God who created and continues to create and sustain life where humans and nature itself seem to condemn it.  If we live in the justice enabled by faith and proclaim to all the life-giving possibilities that God offers, there is indeed hope of salvation.  This is a message worth proclaiming this Lent of 2004!

Luke 4:1-13
This story of the temptations of Jesus is best read as a model for us as disciples, followers that is of Jesus.  Like the baptism, the temptation at Gethsemane, the cross on Calvary, and the resurrection, these are stories to be studied as guides for our living. In this one the devil makes his appearance. The devil is a very infrequent presence in the stories of Jesus. Unlike the Satan of the book of Job, who is an accuser, or the dragon who is the devil or Satan in the Revelation of John, who is a persecutor and evil-doer, the devil here is a tempter.

Somehow we are to understand that Jesus’ temptations are also temptations we face.  This is perhaps clearer in the Gethsemane story, where Jesus knows the danger he faces and is tempted to hide or run away.  Hiding or running from the enemy can always be justified.  St. Cyprian did it during the terrible persecution by Decian in 251, in order to lead his flock from the protection of his hiding place.  Jesus surely had a better excuse. His disciples had shown on the way to Jerusalem that they were not ready to face danger, and his continued presence could surely have strengthened their resolve.  But Jesus understood that the time was ripe for him to face down his enemies and the enemies of the Jewish people, the Jewish and Roman authorities in Jerusalem.

This temptation story comes early in both Matthew and Luke (and in the short account in Mark).  Literary critics would say that the hero must be tried before he sets out to rescue the princess held by a giant in a castle.  Jesus has no followers as yet.  He has just been baptized and heard the voice from heaven declaring him to be God’s chosen son.  This is his trial before the devil in his incarnation as tempter.

The most important temptation is without a doubt the second one.  The devil “led him up” (to a mountain top? Or perhaps to heaven?) and showed him all the kingdoms of the world.  If he will worship the devil he may have all of this for himself.  This can only be the temptation to storm the world by might.  It is Mao’s adage that power comes from the barrel of a gun.  It is the idea behind the “National Security Strategy of the United States” released by the White House in September of 2002.  It is the megalomania of the document prepared by a special commission chaired by Donald Rumsfeld on the “United States National Security Space Management and Organization” of January, 2001. The latter proposes to give the United States the military technology to deny the use of space to all other nations and to enable the United States to devastate any land on earth without the need for staging bases in nearby countries.  This is Mao to the Nth power.  To this temptation Jesus answered, “Worship the Lord your God and serve only him” (Lk 4:8).

The rabbis tell a story of how when the Israelites were dancing and carousing on the other side of the Red Sea seeing the utter destruction of the Egyptian army and their salvation by the outstretched arm of YHWH.  The angels came to the Lord and said, Why don’t we celebrate the salvation of your people also here in heaven?  The Lord answered, How can I celebrate when countless Egyptians my creatures were drowned in the Red Sea?  God who created all living beings and enjoys each and every one down to the humblest worm or beetle cannot wish the destruction of any, even those labeled “terrorists” by the greatest military machine on earth.

The only right way to carry out his ministry was by doing what was right, regardless of its power in the short run.  Jesus rejected the temptation of the short cuts offered by power, whether military, political or economic.  Should we not, individually and as a nation, follow Jesus and reject the temptation of the devil?  This can only be done when one has faith, faith that God wishes the best for us and for all of God’s creatures.  Jesus proved his faith before the devil in the desert and showed it in a powerful way in Gethsemane as his show-down with the authorities approached.  This is the faith we his followers are to imitate.

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