Scripture | Story | Prayer

Saint Joseph the Carpenter oil on canvas, 1645 Georges de la Tour, France Musée Du Louvre, Paris, Gift of Percy Moore Turner, 1948

Jesus' Sister

Scripture | Story | Prayer

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit,
returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness,
where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.
He ate nothing at all during those days,
and when they were over, he was famished.
The devil said to him,
“If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.”
Jesus answered him,
“It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”

Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant
all the kingdoms of this world.
And the devil said to him,
“To you I will give their glory and all this authority,
for it has been given over to me, and I will give it to anyone I please.
If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.”
Jesus answered him,
“It is written, ‘Worship the Lord you God, and serve only him.’”

Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him,
“If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written,
“He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you”,
and
‘On their hands they will bear you up
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”
Jesus answered him,
“It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
When the devil had finished every test,
he departed from him until an opportune time.”

Luke 4: 1-12

Scripture | Story | Prayer

Jesus’ Sister

How many of you have a brother or a sister? How many of you have ever felt that one of those siblings was better than you - smarter, more talented, more pleasing to your father and mother? My older brother was Jesus who came to be known as the Christ. Most disciples don’t think about the fact that Jesus had a family, grew up in a family, but he did. There were four brothers (including Jesus) and then there were all of us – the sisters. We were a handful for our parents but Jesus, for all his goodness, was the most difficult for them to handle. Our father once said, in one of many exasperated moments, “No one is able to rule this child except God alone.” 1

Jesus was always wandering off. He would make our parents, especially our mother, sick with worry. One year, when we went to Jerusalem, he was missing for days and when they finally found him in the temple, he acted as if we were all supposed to know where he was, as if we were mind-readers. Even when his feet were firmly planted on the earthen floor of our home, his mind would wander off. Our mother once said, “It is more difficult for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is to get into that boy’s mind.” Although we all lived in the same house, Jesus lived in a different world

He was my brother but I always knew he was more than my brother. Sometimes he would look at a total stranger and say, “She is my mother,” or “He is my brother.” I learned not to take these comments personally for this was how his mind worked. He wasn’t suggesting that I wasn’t really his sister. He wasn’t trying to hurt or offend me. He was simply reminding me that his family, our family, is bigger than blood. Even if you have not a single blood relative in the world, the spirit of God can give you sisters and brothers and mothers and fathers. I learned this from my brother, Jesus.

Jesus was always a teacher, even when we were children. Therefore, he was a very impatient student and sometimes drove his teachers to despair.2 But I think we, meaning the women in his family, had some things to teach him too, especially our mother. Our mother did a great job of helping us Jesus understand that God blesses men and women, calls men and women, has great work for men and women. Jesus, then, welcomed men and women into his circle of friends and disciples.

But I’d like to tell you about something that happened before there were any disciples. Jesus wandered off again, this time into the desert. He brought nothing and no one with him. He took only his faith in God and his questions about his future. Our father, Joseph, had hoped Jesus would follow in his footsteps and become a carpenter. Jesus was a good carpenter, careful, creative, dependable. But we all knew his vocation was larger than carpentry. By the time Jesus wandered off that day, our father, Joseph, had been dead for many years. There was no longer anyone to encourage his skills in the carpentry shop. Jesus was spending less and less time considering how to construct with wood and more and more time consumed by thoughts of building the realm of God with love and justice.

I think there are two things you need to know when you consider what happened to Jesus out in the desert. The first is that it really wasn’t that unusual for great leaders of faith to journey into the wild to do what you would call soul-searching and to test the depth of their faith. Jesus did not invent the wilderness experience. Moses did. And Jesus knew it!

The second thing you need to know, (and as his sister, I am uniquely qualified to remind you of this): Jesus was a human being. He was fully human. If he knew what was going to happen all along, if he knew he would be tempted and that he would handily resist temptation and that he would be comforted by angels afterward, then, as far as I am concerned, what happened is meaningless. If you know the results of a test before you take it, what is the point of taking the test? Please understand that he was thoroughly human, did not know what he would face out there in the desert, and, even with his profound faith, he could not have known whether or not his strength would sustain him.

His confrontation with temptation took place after many days of fasting. When you fast, you realize just how much you hunger for God and how easy it is to try to fill your hunger for the spirit with the things of this world. Jesus was very hungry and very hungry for God when the first temptation shook his resolve. He was famished, exhausted, certainly in no condition to face the powers of evil. And that is exactly when evil chooses to rear its enticing head - when we are most vulnerable.

In this weakened condition, the voice of evil filled his head, saying, “To prove you’re God’s son, order this stone to turn into bread.” I’m sure that, at the mere mention of bread, fresh, yeasty, warm from the oven, the taste of it was in his mouth. But he held the high ground,  responding with these oft-quoted words from Moses: “Human beings are not to live on bread alone.”3

Next the voice of evil filled his head with thoughts of ruling the earth, “all of the empires of the civilized world”. All Jesus had to do was bow to the powers of evil and all the world would be his. But Jesus responded with more Moses: “You are to pay homage to the Lord your God, and are to revere him alone.”4

Then the spirit of evil took Jesus to the holy city, to Jerusalem, and set him on the pinnacle of the temple. Imagine Jesus perched on the top of your steeple and you get the idea. The voice of evil filled his head once more, telling him to prove his holiness by jumping off. Then, as if to preempt another dose of Moses, the voice of evil itself quoted scripture, offering up a Psalm of David5. Evil whispered, “Jump! And heavenly messengers will protect you, catch you so that you will not even stub your little toe on a stone.”

Let me say two things here. The first is obvious. The powers of evil, the powers of hatred and abuse, know how to quote scripture. Just because someone can quote scripture doesn’t mean they are right or that they are to be trusted. Far too easily can scripture be manipulated to hurt others. However, and I think this is equally obvious, scripture is a great gift, a level foundation, a source of inner strength. Holy scripture committed to heart is what helped Jesus to fight temptation in the wilderness. Jesus came right back with, “You are not to put the Lord your God to the test,”7 again, right out of Moses’ own experience in the wilderness.

These words from the scroll of Deuteronomy and so many others are among the words we memorized as children. In your day, you have largely given up the practice of memorizing holy scripture but to know any of the holy word of God by heart is to carry with you a treasure chest from which to draw when other resources have failed you. It is to have with you at all times an emergency sack filled with healing balm and encouragement for times of pain and discouragement. Although Jesus took nothing with him into the desert, into the wilderness, because he carried holy scripture in his head and in his heart, he had Moses with him.

This battle with temptation was a huge event in Jesus’ life. He came home from it filled with God’s spirit and energized for his work in the world. He had faced the desire for earthly things, the desire for earthly power, and the desire for earthly security. Freed from these temptations, he emerged from the desert empowered to do God’s work. And you know, I think the joke was on the devil here because what Jesus did in feeding the 5000 with 5 loaves was far more impressive and meaningful than turning a rock into a single loaf for his own consumption. And when Jesus rode into Jerusalem and that holy city gave itself to him voluntarily, that was a far more compelling and powerful victory than any forced takeover of Jerusalem could ever have been. And the resurrection was a far greater gift to the whole world than any flock of angels could have offered by protecting Jesus from being hurt had he succumbed to the temptation to fling himself from the pinnacle of the temple.

My parting advice to you this morning is threefold:

1. Remember that Jesus was fully human and subject to every temptation you have ever faced or will ever face in this world.
2. Remember that all the things of this world and all the power and security in this world will never satisfy you for you belong to God and only the spirit of God can give you a truly abundant life.
3. Remember that Jesus had a real flesh and blood family but that he cracked open the meaning of family so that, in divine love, we may all be brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, to one another.

In your daily lives, as you face temptations of every kind, may God bless you with strength, the strength of faith, the strength of hope, the strength of love which I have experienced through my brother, your brother, Jesus.