Choices. We all make them. Sometimes they are the result of temptation like in the case of four high school boys who couldn't resist skipping morning classes. Each had been smitten with a bad case of spring fever. After lunch they showed up at school and reported to the teacher that their car had a flat tire.
Much to their relief, she smiled and said, "Well, you missed a quiz this morning, so take your seats and get out a pen and paper." Still smiling, she waited as they settled down and got ready for her questions. Then she said, "First question--which tire was flat?"
That rings a bell. Here I was an “A” student in Latin for all four years of prep school and in my first year of college divinity school I find myself nearly failing Latin—all because of temptation and the choices I made. In my case it was Grunning’s in South Orange, New Jersey, a place that made the best burgers, homemade potato salad and hot fudge sundaes. A few of my weak-willed classmates with empty stomachs and I, too often decided it was a better place to be at 12 noon than Father O’Sullivan’s Latin class. We paid the price for that!
Temptation is a well-known commodity. It’s part of living and there’s no way to escape it. Irish playwright and novelist Oscar Wilde famously suggested that the only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it.
But temptation nearly always means making choices and choices fill our lives. Every day we make choices that will determine our day, our health, our relationships, and our futures.
Some choices seem simple –whether to have a ham sandwich or a salad. Although even this seemingly small decision, depending on our circumstances and how often we make that same choice, could end up affecting our future health. We make hundreds of small decisions like this every single day.
We also can face tough decisions, ones that can be either life-affirming or life-shattering, depending on which road we take. And sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference between the “good” or “bad” of our available choices. Some circumstances can delude us into thinking we have no choice.
In the wilderness, Jesus too was forced to make choices. Forty days and forty nights he faced three huge temptations and the choices that they evoked. The wilderness for us is not necessarily a desert. The wilderness can be a lonely, scary circumstance. I’ll bet it’s a place with which most folks are very familiar. Maybe the doctor’s examination room awaiting a test result or the parking lot where a person wandered in a fog after losing a job or a bar where someone sat and ruminated about what went wrong in a relationship that just ended.
Wilderness places come in all sizes and configurations. Sometimes the only way you become aware that you’ve landed there is that you look around to see who can help you find your way out and you come up empty.
We may think that this Gospel narrative about the devil and Jesus brings bad news for us knowing the loneliness and anxiety that our own wilderness experiences have involved. But wilderness places in life aren’t about becoming more remorseful so that God will draw nearer to us. I think the wilderness is a place for growth and clarity. I think it is where we discover how to live fully by the grace of God alone and not by what we think we can supply or achieve on our own. And when we find ourselves there, it usually means making choses.
What did that long dry spell in the wilderness do for Jesus? It freed him from all the devil’s shots to distract him from his real purpose in life, from craving for things that had no capacity to give him life, and from any illusion that God would make his choices for him. After forty days in the wilderness he learned that he could trust the Spirit who led him there to lead him out again.
In our wilderness, we may be tempted to doubt to God’s dream for us, to compromise our integrity, forgetting that we are God’s own beloved and to question, God’s enormous, unfailing love for us just as we are—warts and all.
Choices –they fill our lives. Every day we make choices that will determine our day, our health, our relationships, and our futures. Some choices seem simple –whether to go to Latin class or Grunning’s for a great lunch. We make hundreds of decisions like this every single day.
Ultimately, in any situation we face, we have to choose. We have to pick a path. And most of the time, we cannot go back to try the other way. We must choose our direction, start walking, and live out the consequences of our actions.
What choices may we be faced with now? How may we be tempted to avoid them? Maybe you’re there—in a wilderness time of life and facing some decision-making. Maybe my preaching has raised this awareness for you.
Our choices, no matter small or large, define who we are and where we are going. I learned that the hard way back in Latin class 1966—and several times since then. In all of it, and in spite of any poor choices, I’ve survived by the grace of God. As have we all. As will we all.
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