The Number 40 - The First Sunday in Lent
Mark 1:9-15 The problem with turning 40, as I did just a couple of weeks ago, is that I remember all too well what I thought about those who turned 40 – not so long ago. I recall my aunt’s 40th when I was a teen. I remember all the hubbub (black balloons, banners saying: lordy, lordy, she’s 40, and plates that read: “over the hill.”). And I recall thinking: “I wonder if I’ll live to be that old.”
That proverbial hill looks so large when you’re young. And then you
get to be 40 in a flash, and you stare down the hill and it seems not so large after all.
The bottom is not so far off. It’s just down there. And because I’m getting far sighted
now, I can see it better.
Well here I am. So far I’ve retained most of my faculties. I greatly appreciate all the
cards and notes, and particularly am grateful for those of you who said: “you lucky guy,
life starts at 40!”
In fact I think there may be some evidence for that. I read a study some time ago that
reported that people in their 40s were happier than people in any other decade. The
interpretation was that at 40 you had become more comfortable in your skin, you had become
more settled in your career (or even in your lack of career), and in your 40s there are
fewer health problems than later in life. So, maybe life does begin at 40.
There’s just one dark cloud raining down on this Pollyanna scenario – 40 is a common
biblical number for trial, tribulation, and even temptation. It’s the number of days, Mark
tells us, that Jesus spent in the wilderness. It’s also the number of days of Noah’s flood.
It’s also the number of years that the Israelites spent in the wilderness. It’s also the
number of days that Moses was on the Mountain, and it’s the number of days that Jonah gave
Nineveh to repent.
In the Bible 40 is associated with trial, tribulation, temptation. As we have just started
the 40 days of Lent, we might want to think about this. Lent is the 40 days from Ash
Wednesday to Easter (Sundays aren’t counted, btw). It is the period when Christians of all
sorts, remember and commemorate the temptation of Christ that began his ministry. However, our calling is to do more than remember and commemorate – we are called to imitate Christ.
What does that mean? Let us first ask what it meant for Christ to be in that desert for 40 days, and then nswer what it means for us.
Why did Jesus walk into that wilderness? What was he running from?
The question, is what was he was running to... for as the early Christian hermits pointed
out, the solitude of the desert is not an escape from, but it is an opportunity to focus on
– on your soul, on your inner motivations, on you inner loves, on your prime driver.
And far from escaping from temptation, all alone we often hit it head on – which is why
alone is such a dangerous and difficult place to be.
We heirs of the puritan ethos have heard about the dangers lurking in the flesh pots of the
city… the temptations of the pretty ladies, the lure of gilded things, the enticement of
competing with the Joneses.
All these are real temptations, but ironically often the crowds keep us honest. Someone
asked me this week how many Baptists you can invite to drink beer with you – the answer:
only one, for no two will drink together. Dumb joke maybe, but the point is, in company
there is sometimes hypocrisy and sometimes accountability. And maybe they overlap on
occasion. If you have a drinking problem the easiest place to hang out would be a Baptist
church.
However, as someone once said, your character is what you are when you are alone. Hence the
reason it is important to be alone, to allow God to form you in the innermost parts. Like
the Psalmist of 25: to lift your soul to God, to let God chip away the rough parts, sand
down the edges, prop up the positive, empower the good – teach you wisdom. This happens in
fellowship (as iron sharpens iron… another the sage said), but there is a part of our soul
that only God can reach.
So Jesus steps into that wilderness and spends 40 days – meaning also a compete time, a long
time, a full time – being tempted. Both Luke and Matthew fill in more of the details. They
inform us that there were three primary temptations: to turn stone into bread, To knell before Satan so as to take a shortcut to power, To throw himself off the temple and let the angels rescue him.
These three temptations
correspond to our common weaknesses: there’s the physical lust (bread, sex, money), there’s
the desire for power by illicit means, and there’s the yearning for glory.
Sex, Money, Power… We humans can trace a great many – if not all – of our temptations to
these three. And Jesus met them in the desert.
Nothing wrong with bread or sex; nothing wrong with having great wealth; nothing wrong with
letting God protect you. Temptation is not typically oriented towards obvious evil, but
temptation usually involved using good things for our own ends – without consideration of
others.
This last week we’ve studied the Sermon on the Mount and we looked at that passage which
several years back got Jimmy Carter in so much political trouble. Carter in his first
presidential race said that he had never committed adultery, but he had lusted for women in
his heart. He implied an understanding of Jesus’ statement (in the Sermon) that lust was
tantamount to adultery in the heart. The world laughed about this and many Christians have
struggled with what this can mean.
How can this be! So what does lust mean, then? As our teacher said the other night: the
general rule of thumb (and joke) is that one look is OK, the second is lust. So the wise
boy decides to make the first one last…
We are helped, always, in our interpretation of scripture when we take a teaching, and then
look at the life of Christ. When looking at this passage and then at Christ’s temptation we
see that Jesus is warning us about seeing other human being as object for our pleasure. Of
course the immediate consequences of adultery and lust are quite different. But the
disposition of treating others as mere objects of your pleasure is a character flaw which
might just ruin your life. Was there anything wrong with turning that stone into bread?
The temptation for Christ was to use a good for his own pleasure, when there was another
calling on his life.
Christ went into that wilderness and during those 40 days of temptation prepared himself for
3 years of the kind of temptation I’m sure we’ve never known. But in so doing he formed a
pattern that we seek to follow, for if Christ needs those days of internal sorting, of heart
prioritization, then how much more do we. Remember that Jesus’ ministry started after those
40 days.
We need this, because our inner choices are all that we control. And we are notoriously bad
at determining what is really good or really bad. Only God truthfully knows.
For, if I could control the world, if I had 3 magic wishes, or even one giant one, I would
choose to win the lottery. Particularly that big one of a couple weeks ago. Wouldn’t it be
great to have all that dough – you could do so much good… Now understand I’ve never bought
a lottery ticket, but I still would like to win.
Think of all the great good I could do, of
the lives I would touch, of … or, or, or would I be like…
• William "Bud" Post, who won $16.2 million in the Pennsylvania Lottery in 1988, had a
brother who tried to have him killed for the inheritance. Post lost and spent all his
winnings. He was living off Social Security when he died in January. Or like Billie Bob…
• Two years after winning a $31 million Texas Lottery in 1997, Billie Bob Harrell Jr.
committed suicide. He had bought cars, real estate, gave money to his family, church and
friends. After his death it was not clear whether there was money left for estate taxes.
• Victoria Zell, who shared an $11 million Powerball jackpot with her husband in 2001, is
serving time in a Minnesota prison, her money gone. Zell was convicted in March 2005 in a
drug- and alcohol-induced collision that killed one person and paralyzed another.
• Evelyn Adams, who won the New Jersey Lottery twice, in 1985 and 1986, for a total $5.4
million, gambled and gave away all of her money. She was poor by 2001, and living in a
trailer.
I was struck by these stories I read in last week’s news, and maybe you ask what in the
world do they have to do with lent, or with you who possibly never buy a loto ticket. No
one in this room may ever win the games, but every day of life we win the capacity to
breathe, to do good, to do evil, to love or to hate. Every day we, by no merit of our own,
win hours in which to decide what to do with our freedom. We face an almost infinite number
of choices and options. How are you going to use these winnings? You didn’t deserve this
life, you didn’t ask for it. How are you going to use it?
Lent is an annual reminder that we’ll not answer that question well outside an intentional
relationship with God – a relationship where we get away from the noise of life and seek
God’s strength to fight the temptations of life. It may or may not be true that life begins
at 40. But one thing is true. If you’ll use these 40 days of lent to intently focus on
following Christ, when Easter day arrives you’ll find new life.
-Scott Stearman
That proverbial hill looks so large when you’re young. And then you
get to be 40 in a flash, and you stare down the hill and it seems not so large after all.
The bottom is not so far off. It’s just down there. And because I’m getting far sighted
now, I can see it better.
Well here I am. So far I’ve retained most of my faculties. I greatly appreciate all the
cards and notes, and particularly am grateful for those of you who said: “you lucky guy,
life starts at 40!”
In fact I think there may be some evidence for that. I read a study some time ago that
reported that people in their 40s were happier than people in any other decade. The
interpretation was that at 40 you had become more comfortable in your skin, you had become
more settled in your career (or even in your lack of career), and in your 40s there are
fewer health problems than later in life. So, maybe life does begin at 40.
There’s just one dark cloud raining down on this Pollyanna scenario – 40 is a common
biblical number for trial, tribulation, and even temptation. It’s the number of days, Mark
tells us, that Jesus spent in the wilderness. It’s also the number of days of Noah’s flood.
It’s also the number of years that the Israelites spent in the wilderness. It’s also the
number of days that Moses was on the Mountain, and it’s the number of days that Jonah gave
Nineveh to repent.
In the Bible 40 is associated with trial, tribulation, temptation. As we have just started
the 40 days of Lent, we might want to think about this. Lent is the 40 days from Ash
Wednesday to Easter (Sundays aren’t counted, btw). It is the period when Christians of all
sorts, remember and commemorate the temptation of Christ that began his ministry. However, our calling is to do more than remember and commemorate – we are called to imitate Christ.
What does that mean? Let us first ask what it meant for Christ to be in that desert for 40 days, and then nswer what it means for us.
Why did Jesus walk into that wilderness? What was he running from?
The question, is what was he was running to... for as the early Christian hermits pointed
out, the solitude of the desert is not an escape from, but it is an opportunity to focus on
– on your soul, on your inner motivations, on you inner loves, on your prime driver.
And far from escaping from temptation, all alone we often hit it head on – which is why
alone is such a dangerous and difficult place to be.
We heirs of the puritan ethos have heard about the dangers lurking in the flesh pots of the
city… the temptations of the pretty ladies, the lure of gilded things, the enticement of
competing with the Joneses.
All these are real temptations, but ironically often the crowds keep us honest. Someone
asked me this week how many Baptists you can invite to drink beer with you – the answer:
only one, for no two will drink together. Dumb joke maybe, but the point is, in company
there is sometimes hypocrisy and sometimes accountability. And maybe they overlap on
occasion. If you have a drinking problem the easiest place to hang out would be a Baptist
church.
However, as someone once said, your character is what you are when you are alone. Hence the
reason it is important to be alone, to allow God to form you in the innermost parts. Like
the Psalmist of 25: to lift your soul to God, to let God chip away the rough parts, sand
down the edges, prop up the positive, empower the good – teach you wisdom. This happens in
fellowship (as iron sharpens iron… another the sage said), but there is a part of our soul
that only God can reach.
So Jesus steps into that wilderness and spends 40 days – meaning also a compete time, a long
time, a full time – being tempted. Both Luke and Matthew fill in more of the details. They
inform us that there were three primary temptations: to turn stone into bread, To knell before Satan so as to take a shortcut to power, To throw himself off the temple and let the angels rescue him.
These three temptations
correspond to our common weaknesses: there’s the physical lust (bread, sex, money), there’s
the desire for power by illicit means, and there’s the yearning for glory.
Sex, Money, Power… We humans can trace a great many – if not all – of our temptations to
these three. And Jesus met them in the desert.
Nothing wrong with bread or sex; nothing wrong with having great wealth; nothing wrong with
letting God protect you. Temptation is not typically oriented towards obvious evil, but
temptation usually involved using good things for our own ends – without consideration of
others.
This last week we’ve studied the Sermon on the Mount and we looked at that passage which
several years back got Jimmy Carter in so much political trouble. Carter in his first
presidential race said that he had never committed adultery, but he had lusted for women in
his heart. He implied an understanding of Jesus’ statement (in the Sermon) that lust was
tantamount to adultery in the heart. The world laughed about this and many Christians have
struggled with what this can mean.
How can this be! So what does lust mean, then? As our teacher said the other night: the
general rule of thumb (and joke) is that one look is OK, the second is lust. So the wise
boy decides to make the first one last…
We are helped, always, in our interpretation of scripture when we take a teaching, and then
look at the life of Christ. When looking at this passage and then at Christ’s temptation we
see that Jesus is warning us about seeing other human being as object for our pleasure. Of
course the immediate consequences of adultery and lust are quite different. But the
disposition of treating others as mere objects of your pleasure is a character flaw which
might just ruin your life. Was there anything wrong with turning that stone into bread?
The temptation for Christ was to use a good for his own pleasure, when there was another
calling on his life.
Christ went into that wilderness and during those 40 days of temptation prepared himself for
3 years of the kind of temptation I’m sure we’ve never known. But in so doing he formed a
pattern that we seek to follow, for if Christ needs those days of internal sorting, of heart
prioritization, then how much more do we. Remember that Jesus’ ministry started after those
40 days.
We need this, because our inner choices are all that we control. And we are notoriously bad
at determining what is really good or really bad. Only God truthfully knows.
For, if I could control the world, if I had 3 magic wishes, or even one giant one, I would
choose to win the lottery. Particularly that big one of a couple weeks ago. Wouldn’t it be
great to have all that dough – you could do so much good… Now understand I’ve never bought
a lottery ticket, but I still would like to win.
Think of all the great good I could do, of
the lives I would touch, of … or, or, or would I be like…
• William "Bud" Post, who won $16.2 million in the Pennsylvania Lottery in 1988, had a
brother who tried to have him killed for the inheritance. Post lost and spent all his
winnings. He was living off Social Security when he died in January. Or like Billie Bob…
• Two years after winning a $31 million Texas Lottery in 1997, Billie Bob Harrell Jr.
committed suicide. He had bought cars, real estate, gave money to his family, church and
friends. After his death it was not clear whether there was money left for estate taxes.
• Victoria Zell, who shared an $11 million Powerball jackpot with her husband in 2001, is
serving time in a Minnesota prison, her money gone. Zell was convicted in March 2005 in a
drug- and alcohol-induced collision that killed one person and paralyzed another.
• Evelyn Adams, who won the New Jersey Lottery twice, in 1985 and 1986, for a total $5.4
million, gambled and gave away all of her money. She was poor by 2001, and living in a
trailer.
I was struck by these stories I read in last week’s news, and maybe you ask what in the
world do they have to do with lent, or with you who possibly never buy a loto ticket. No
one in this room may ever win the games, but every day of life we win the capacity to
breathe, to do good, to do evil, to love or to hate. Every day we, by no merit of our own,
win hours in which to decide what to do with our freedom. We face an almost infinite number
of choices and options. How are you going to use these winnings? You didn’t deserve this
life, you didn’t ask for it. How are you going to use it?
Lent is an annual reminder that we’ll not answer that question well outside an intentional
relationship with God – a relationship where we get away from the noise of life and seek
God’s strength to fight the temptations of life. It may or may not be true that life begins
at 40. But one thing is true. If you’ll use these 40 days of lent to intently focus on
following Christ, when Easter day arrives you’ll find new life.
-Scott Stearman
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