Let me tell you about Montgomery. No, not our fair city. Uh, no, not the man the city is named for, not even the man the county is named for. Yes, I know they're different. If I'd meant any of them, I'd have said Montgomery, not Montgomery.
This Montgomery was from South London. He was raised in the Church of England Parish where I was a member many years later, and that sent me off to be ordained. His father, in fact, had been the parish priest and he named his son Bernard. Bernard Montgomery. He's better known by his military title Field Marshall Montgomery, or Montgomery of Alain, or just Monty.
Monty led the Allies campaign in North Africa in the Second World War, and historians identify him as one of the shrewdest military minds of the 20th century. A great tactician who eventually defeated the equally brilliant field. Marshall Irvin, Rommel, the Desert Fox. Now the key to Monty's success lay not in his knowledge of conventional battle strategies.
In this respect, he was no more or less talented than any other field Marshall. No. What set him apart was his attitude towards his opponent. Monty spent hours every day studying Rommel. Apparently the two never met, but they had an uncanny and deep respect for one another. In fact, Monty hung a signed photograph of Rommel on the wall of his caravan, and he'd study it every morning.
For Monty, the most important question each day was, what will Rommel do? And he could only answer that by knowing his enemy.
Well, as always, the lectionary for the first Sunday of Lent calls us to ask us the same question. What will our enemy do? And as usual, we've read about Jesus encounter with that enemy in the desert. Of course, his adversary and our is not flesh and blood. It is not human, but it inspires. The worst humans can do it is by nature violently and ruthlessly, and opposed to the entire human project.
Men and women, girls and boys are the pinnacle of God's creation and the apple of God's eye. The best way to hurt God is to hurt humans, and that explains the enemy's motives, forgiving us a hard time. I don't like talking about the devil, Satan, the accuser our enemy, because there are so much better things to talk about.
Beautiful, pure, lovely things. I'd rather focus on that. Frankly, any Christian who enjoys talking about evil probably needs help. But as with Monty and Rommel, or with any sports rivalry, it is helpful to know one's enemy. And this Sunday does give us the chance to learn what strategies are used against us in our life, in Christ.
Jesus faces three pieces of clickbait. His algorithms know him well. My algorithms know me well too. They bombard me with clickbait. They hit me with one this week that I could not resist. 21 dumbest things we keep spending too much money on. Many of you know I dislike wasting money and other resources and so this ad at the side of a webpage was kryptonite for me.
I had to click on it. There was another one. You won't believe this: Dog's Dance Moves. You must click on that. Mustn't you. I don't care who you are. You have to see that dog dancing. I did resist some click bait this week. Like when you read these 19 shocking food facts, you'll never want to eat again. Top Doctor, if you eat eggs every day, this is what happens.
Yeah. Brady Bunch secrets that will leave you speechless.
Click bait one. Turn stones into bread and end your pain before it has done its job. Click bait two. Throw yourself from the top of the temple and go viral. Click bait three. Worship the devil in exchange for all power and glory. In other words, the urge to cut corners, the temptation to take matters into my own hands and the lure to seek God in the wrong places.
If Jesus were physically present in Montgomery today, he would be right at home because we live with these same three urges. Don't. The urge to cut corners instead of taking the long route of self-control and integrity, the urge to take matters into our own hands instead of waiting for God. Because if I don't take control of people and situations, then bad things will happen because other people can't be trusted to do things right, and God can't be trusted to work through the messy details, to make sure there's a good outcome and the urge to seek God in all the wrong places.
It's God we're looking for, you know, we and the whole earth, but we think we'll find him in the new relationship, the new job, a new hobby, a new possession, a new pay raise, a new look, but we won't. That stuff in life that we become attached to are painkillers. We medicate our way through life with whatever it is, entertainment, substances, activities.
The call to follow Christ is the call to face the world as it truly is. Without the anesthetic, without the props we usually rely on to help us make it through the day. Barbara Brown Taylor says, I am convinced that 99% of us are addicted to something, whether it is eating, shopping, blaming, or taking care of other people.
The simplest definition of an addiction is anything we use to fill the empty place inside us that belongs to God alone.
On this first Sunday of Lent, I always talk about the clickbait that Jesus faced, but there's more clickbait in the story of Genesis, the temptation of Adam and Eve. So let's do a Monty and learn something of the enemy's strategy. The first thing the accuser does is to twist God's words. Did God really say that you must not eat from any tree in the garden?
He says, well, no, actually, uh, he didn't. This is a mischievous, malicious misquote. What God really said was, you can eat of any tree except the one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Can you see the strategy? The tempter misquotes God to make our father seem harsh, I mean a real killjoy. God doesn't want you to eat any fruit, all this great stuff he says, and you can't touch any of it.
The tempter wants people to think that God is a tyrant who demands unreasonable obedience. If he can persuade Eve to think that God is cruel and extreme, then his job of leading her and Adam to disobey the one instruction he truly gave will be much easier. The lie that God's call is unreasonable, unfair, or impossible is at the heart of much temptation.
God is an ogre. He doesn't have your best interests at heart, so why follow his call?
Then the tempter lies about the outcome of disobeying God, it will be great. He says, click on the click bait, eat the fruit, and you'll be just like God. Now that's some powerful click bait being like God, having no restraints, no accountability, no higher power. You must yield to human pride. People will obey you, adore you, and love you.
So they declare Independence Day in the Garden of Eden. We are Gods now. We can do it all by ourselves. We are smart enough, resourceful enough, moral enough, hardworking enough, creative enough. We don't need God. I can do it by myself. I can achieve wealth and status or fame or whatever on my own, through my own hard work and good judgment.
Why do I need God?
The third click bait promises satisfaction, but leaves us hungry. When the woman saw that the fruit was good for food and pleasing to the eye, she took some and ate it. The temperature takes. What is a gift? Something that is good for good for food, and pleasing to the eye and perverts it. What starts as longing for the beautiful, the holy, the true ends up destroying our union with God and our relationship with others.
Take any sin and dig down deep enough and you'll discover that it started as a good and God-given desire. So my desire for the beautiful makes me envy someone's car, and I lose my peace and my soul is poisoned, and I resent God's generosity to other people and grow unhappy with what I do have. And it all started with an appreciation for beauty.
I desire justice. That is a holy and beautiful thing, but then I get judgmental. That person deserves to be unhappy for what they have done. They should suffer the way I have, and I get self-righteous and callous, and I end relationships. And it started as a hunger for the purity of justice. I desire love.
There can't be anything better than that, but in my longing for it, I will go along with whatever people say. I will give in to peer pressure. I'll become obsessive about the way I look. I'll try and manipulate people so they won't think ill of me or leave me. I'll do and say anything that will make people like me and admire me.
And soon I'm depressed, angry, shallow, ashamed. And it started with a good desire, the best desire to be loved. And to love powerful click bait, you click the link and instead of telling you 21 ways you can use your money, you find more adverts, more frustration, and you realize you've been played by a clever advertising company.
If people are making money by grabbing your attention, be suspicious. Now, we've seen the glint in the serpent's eye because we too have stood by the tree admiring the fruit, but we can see the clickbait consume this, and you'll be like, God, consume this and you'll be satisfied. Consume this and you'll be free.
But God has a plan behind the fire of the clickbait. He won't let us be tempted beyond what we can endure and it will make us stronger. When the Union Pacific Railroad was being constructed, an elaborate bridge, uh, was built straddling a large canyon out west. When the construction was finished, the builders assembled a train with double the usual number of rail cars and loaded them with more cargo than would ever be carried, and then drove them to the middle of the bridge, and there they parked it for the rest of the day.
One frustrated worker lamented. We spent all this time and money building this bridge and now you are trying to break it. No, the manager replied, I'm trying to prove that it won't. God leads us into deserts not to see if we will snap, but to prove that we won't. Amen.