Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Sermons 

Title: Take a Flying Leap!

Text: Luke 4:1-13

this is the first time in your lives – in any of our lives – that we will be celebrating the First Sunday in Lent on a fifth Sunday in February – in other words, on February the 29th – a Leap Year Sunday.

How did I come up this piece of liturgical trivia, you ask? Well, it took some research and the help of data provided by the U.S. Naval Observatory and various guides used for calculating the dates for Easter stretching all the way back to 1582, when the Roman Catholic Pope Gregory the 13th introduced to the Western world what we now call the "Gregorian Calendar".

Easter is a movable feast within our liturgical calendar. To be precise, Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first ecclesiastical full moon that occurs on or after the day of the vernal equinox (March 21st). This means that Easter can never occur before March 22nd or later than April 25th. This year – 2004 – Easter falls on April 11th and Ash Wednesday fell on February 25th, some 46 days before Easter Sunday. In other words, Easter Sunday will come six Sundays after today and will include the symbolically significant number of 40 days in addition to these six Sundays-

Since this is a Leap Year, today is Sunday, February 29th. The last time that February 29th fell on a Sunday was back in 1976, the Bicenntenial year. And the next time that February 29th will occur on a Sunday will be in the year 2032. However, the last time that the Easter liturgical cycle and the Leap Year cycle coincided so that the First Sunday in Lent fell on Leap Year Day was way back in 1852. And the next time will be in the year 2088.

So, I repeat, this is a very special day for all of us. Today is the first (and probably the only time – except for baby Sonia Propst and perhaps Vava Fiase) that any of us will celebrate the First Sunday of Lent – and the Lord’s Supper – on February 29th, Leap Year day. In liturgical terms, today is a "Halley’s Comet" sort of day [note: Halley’s comet has it s perihelion – i.e., comes closest -- to the earth only every 76 years, most recently in 1986 and before that in 1910].

The lectionary gospel text for this special Sunday continues the story of the ministry of Jesus in the Gospel according to Luke. The last time that I stood here in this pulpit to share the Word with you, we were in Luke chapter 3, hearing the story of Jesus’ baptism. Luke inserted some genealogical material after the baptismal story to establish further Jesus’ uniqueness as the son of God (3:38).

This morning’s gospel lesson begins where the baptismal story left off – with the Holy Spirit playing a central role in both stories. Remember? In the baptismal story, the "Holy Spirit came down upon him" (3:22) and here at the beginning of chapter 4, Jesus is "full of the Holy Spirit" (4:1), has "returned from the Jordan" river, and then "was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil" (4:2).

The story goes on to tell the listener (and us, today) that Jesus was tempted three times. First, when he was hungry, the Devil urged Jesus to turn a stone into bread; second, after showing Jesus all the kingdoms of the world in an instant, the Devil promised to give him "their glory and all this authority" (4:6); and, finally, bringing Jesus out of the wilderness and setting him on a pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem, the Devil dared Jesus to throw himself down from that height. In all three cases, Jesus refused the temptation and did so by quoting well-known scriptural texts as the basis for his refusal.

The first refusal was defined by the phrase, "Man shall not live by bread alone;" the second refusal was accompanied by the reminder that "You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve;" and the third refusal was affirmed by the statement, "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test."

Finally, after having completed every kind of temptation, the Devil departed from Jesus until an opportune time (4:13).

Now, if you were take literally this story of the three temptations, you would conclude that – when the Devil gave up in frustration in his efforts to tempt Jesus – Jesus no longer was in the wilderness, but perched on the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem.

Obviously, he did not remain there very long. According to Luke’s Gospel,

Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor" (4:14-19).

Through the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus managed to cover quite a bit of territory as he was led through his temptations and then beyond those temptations to proclaim the "good news to the poor."

What strikes me as peculiar about the temptation story and Jesus’ subsequent return to Galilee and Nazareth is how the Gospel story literally leaps from one theme to the next – from the baptism at the Jordan river to the temptations in the wilderness and at the temple in Jerusalem and then on to the proclamation of the good news to the poor in Nazareth.

A careful reading of the temptation story reveals that the first temptation did not come right away, but waited until the forty days of suffering and hunger had accumulated – a period symbolically equivalent to the forty years that the Israelites had spent wandering in the wilderness before they came to the promised land. In effect, Jesus was softened up and made vulnerable for the first (and easiest) temptation during those forty days. Yet, he still refused to turn a stone into bread to overcome his hunger.

Immediately thereafter, the second temptation upped the ante – from filling a physical hunger to filling a hunger for power and authority over others. All he had to do to fulfill this all-too-common hunger for power and authority was to worship the devil – i.e., something other than the one true God.

The third and final temptation was more subtle and more insidious. The Devil went a step further – in effect, he dared Jesus to prove that God had granted Jesus power over life and death. But Jesus met this challenge as well.

While it may be tempting to draw some parallels between what Jesus went through here and what we might go through in our daily lives, I shall refrain from doing so.

Frankly, it is highly unlikely that any of us in this sanctuary ever will endure forty days in the wilderness without food. It is even more unlikely that we will be lifted up to such a lofty position in this world that we will be tempted to have power and authority over all the world’s kingdoms. And it is extremely unlikely that we will be placed in a situation where someone dares us to face death in order to prove who we are.

But let us move beyond the temptations themselves to what came next. Jesus did not remain perched on the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem. He did not mope around with a "woe is me" attitude about all the suffering he had endured in the wilderness. Far from it!

Instead, "filled with the Holy Spirit, he returned to Galilee" and went to work in his ministry. After all his temptations, Jesus was not focused on his own needs nor did he run away from his responsibilities back in his homeland. He began by going to Nazareth, his home town, and used the text of the prophet Isaiah to "proclaim the good news to the poor – and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor."

Now, this is something that all of us can do. In this Leap Year, we can move beyond the ordinary temptations that come our way and strive to do something far more important. We can proclaim the good news to the poor – and we can proclaim this year of 2004, this Leap Year, as a time of the Lord’s favor for all those who suffer unjustly.

Indivually and as a community of faithful believers, let us commit our energies to making a difference in the lives of others in this Leap Year. And, in the process, we will discover that the Holy Spirit will transform our own lives.

Don’t hunker down, don’t fasten your seat belts, don’t play it safe. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit, and . . . "take a flying leap."

In the name of our Savior, Jesus the Christ, Amen.

© 2004 Robert V. Kemper (e-mail: rkemper@trinitypresdallas.org)