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Psalm 91:9-16 9 Because you have made the Lord your refuge, 10 There shall no evil happen to you, 11 For he shall give his angels charge over you, 12 They shall bear you in their hands, 13 You shall tread upon the lion and adder; 14 Because he is bound to me in love, therefore will I deliver him; 15 He shall call upon me, and I will answer him; 16 With long life will I satisfy him, and show him my salvation. |
Temptation
In The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare notes that even the devil can quote scripture. Perhaps what the bard had in mind was the story of Jesus’ temptation, told in detail in Matthew and Luke’s gospels. In those accounts, there are three temptations. One of those temptations comes as the devil tells Jesus to cast himself down from a high precipice, to trust that God will save him.
To get Jesus to do this, as in the other two temptations, the devil quotes from the Bible, in this case a verse from the psalm printed above, a psalm you may have heard in church yesterday. According to that psalm, God will give angels to protect, no matter what happens. Jesus doesn’t go for it, battling scripture with scripture and saying: Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
As a church, as followers of Jesus, we are guided by the canon of scripture. That includes 66 books that the church deemed authoritative. But I suspect we each have a canon within the canon, those scriptures that we turn to because they agree with what we already think, or support us in what we’re doing, or help us argue a case, or get us off the hook. All of that causes me to think about the ways we interpret scripture and our tendency to use it to serve our own purposes.
Years ago, I was working with a young couple in preparation for their marriage. They were lovely, interesting people. Smart as could be. Smarter than this priest. They were not persons of faith. They thought religion made no sense. Especially organized religion. So we had interesting conversations. At the end of our time together, they gave me a gift, a book called THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO: The Uses and Abuses of Scripture.
One gets the point of the book with a look at the Table of Contents. One chapter was about the ways scripture was used to support slavery. The next was about the ways scripture bolstered the case of abolitionists. One chapter spoke about the ways scripture prohibited leadership by women in the church. The next spoke about ways scripture opened the door for that leadership. You get the idea. The upshot: we have to think about the ways we read scripture, and what will be our guiding principles. Scripture has power. Power can be used well or not so well.
In its entirety, the psalm before us this morning is a promise that God will be with us in the challenges we face. It’s a beautiful, reassuring message. The devil picks out a little bit, proof-texting in hopes of trapping Jesus. But as Jesus told the devil in the desert, that doesn’t mean we are free to put God to the test. That’s what I think this particular temptation is all about. The temptation to imagine that we are in a position to say to God: Prove it. The temptation to imagine that God needs to answer to us, to see if God really knows what God is doing. The temptation to think that we are the ones running the show. Human history indicates that we get into trouble when we enter into that mindset.
So let me ask again: What are guiding principles as we read scripture? While I’m excited that the church has selected an amazing person, Sean Rowe, to be our next Presiding Bishop, I will miss Michael Curry. I will always be grateful for his spiritual gifts as communicator, or in church language, as evangelist. I hope he’ll continue to let his voice be heard.
I’ll never stop relying on this quote from him: If it’s not about love, it’s not about God. That succinct bit of wisdom covers about all we need to know. It provides a lens for our reading of scripture, which in its diversity is really a story about God’s love for us, love from which we can never be separated. It’s a story about our call to reflect that love in relationship with all our neighbors.
Think this week about how scripture informs your life of faith, and how you can view its many voices through the lens of love.
–Jay Sidebotham
