“Yes, Dan’l Webster’s dead—or, at least, they buried him. But every
time there’s a thunderstorm around Marshfield, [Massachusetts,] they say you
can hear his rolling voice in the hollows of the sky. And they say that if you
go to his grave and speak loud and clear, ‘Dan’l Webster—Dan’l Webster!’ the ground’ll begin to shiver and
the trees begin to shake. And after a while you’ll hear a deep voice saying,
‘Neighbor, how stands the Union?’”
The story, The Devil and Daniel Webster, written by Stephen Vincent Benét is about
a poor New Hampshire farmer, Mr. Stone, who, after years of barren land, big
rocks, and bad luck, remarks, “It’s
enough to make a man want to sell his soul to the devil!”
Soon thereafter, the farmer meets a
stranger named Mr. Scratch, the devil himself, who proposes a deal. Long story
short, after a number of good harvests, the devil soon comes to get his due,
and Mr. Stone calls upon Daniel Webster, famous orator, lawyer, and politician,
to defend him.
Of course, as the story goes, Daniel
Webster defends Mr. Stone and with his quick wit and oratory power, and saves Mr.
Stone’s soul.
There’s another story whose roots are in another part of Appalachia, and it found in Charlie
Daniels’ song, The Devil Went Down to
Georgia, where a fiddler named Johnny outplays the devil on the fiddle and
wins the devil’s golden instrument.
Our literature and music are all
full of these stories. They remind us that evil is real. The world is not
perfect. Evil wants our souls — our very identities. Evil tempts us to go back
on everything, to abandon who we are, to betray all that we love, usually to
gain something or save ourselves.
That is part of what is broken about
us. We even love imperfectly — we are sometimes willing to sell our
souls even for “good” reasons. Often, we are willing to argue that seemingly
positive ends justify destructive means. We have a tendency to go back on our
principles — especially in extreme situations.
You know, like not having eaten for
forty days. Or living in divided times. Or watching a war unfold before in real time.
In the Gospel story today, Jesus
contends with the devil, and we’re tempted to think that this tale is just like
all the others — one where someone contends with Satan and defeats him.
There are similarities, after all:
someone is offered everything from what he immediately needs (food) to world
domination and great power, in exchange for Jesus’ going back on everything he
is. In an act of desperation, the devil even offers Jesus a chance to put the
doubters to rest once and for all by defying gravity in front of scores of
worshipers at the temple in Jerusalem. If the ends really do justify the means,
the devil certainly gave him an opportunity.
The devil tempts Jesus, in effect
saying, “You can do this the hard way, or you can do it the easy way. You don’t
have to starve out here. You don’t have to contend with the religious
authorities or the Roman empire. They can certainly kill you, and if you anger
them enough, they will. And if they kill you, what? You’ll be just another dead
Jewish rebel.”
Jesus, of course, resists the
devil’s temptations, quoting Scripture right back to him, and gets rid of him.
Jesus refuses to sell his soul, metaphorically speaking, and unlike other
characters, he doesn’t even have to trick or outperform the devil.
It’s tempting to celebrate Jesus’
victory over temptation here as an end in itself, wishing-- or even believing!-- that we could resist
evil as well as Jesus did. We are tempted to think this story is like all the
other stories — one to emulate.
But as Daniel Webster and Johnny
prove, it’s never been impossible to outsmart or outmaneuver the devil. Oddly enough, we tend to get very proud when we resist temptation, which kind of works in favor of Old Scratch. Still, the devil is always a very
defeat-able character. And frequently, the devil comes back for another try after being turned
away the first time.
As Luke tells us in today's Gospel, “He departed
from [Jesus] until an opportune time.”
It’s not hard to figure out when
that opportune time would be.
It will be that next time when things will get really desperate for Jesus: when he is arrested by the authorities. When that happens, some of the disciples will draw their sword, knives, and clubs to fight the Roman soldiers but Jesus stops them. And defying all expectation, Jesus submits to their authority.
In the Passion, it looks as if the Evil One has finally got Jesus just where he wants him! Look at the choice he's presented: In the Garden, if Jesus refuses "the cup," as he calls the upcoming ordeal, evil wins. If he goes to the cross and dies, evil wins... or so it thinks!
The choice in the Garden makes the choices presented in the Wilderness seem like a piece of cake! In the Garden, Jesus will refuse the easy ways out but instead go to the cross and die, only to be raised again and in so doing defeat death forever!
While we humans can resist
evil on our own, we also have a distinct tendency not to — especially when
we’re desperate! We
react out of fear when we are threatened, and we refuse to do good to others
because of that fear. We think we know how to outsmart, out-talk, and defeat
evil, but too often, we don’t, no matter how many times we re-read this story
and analyze Jesus’ strategy.
We don’t tell this story of Jesus’
victory over Satan in the wilderness to mourn our own defeat. We tell it
because Jesus did so much more than Daniel Webster or guitar Johnny or a lifetime of
resisting temptation ever could.
Jesus didn’t just outsmart evil, he defeats evil! In the midst of human failure, Jesus defeats evil once and for all through his incarnation, the cross and resurrection; and in so doing, he set us free from the claim that death has on us.
Jesus’ story is different than ol' Dan'l Webster, because it doesn’t matter how often you
defeat the devil, you are still bound to die. And even if, like Daniel Webster, you can
out-debate Satan himself and become a legend — you can even be the most
moral person who ever lived, in the end they’ll still bury you just like everyone else.
This is why Jesus’ story is
different. On the night he was betrayed, while humanity stood outside giving in
to evil and to fear, Christ gave himself for us in his death on the cross, and in that death, he not only outsmarted the devil, he defeated evil and death once and for all. Jesus was raised from death and is alive now so that we
would not, no matter how many times we outsmarted the devil, be forever buried,
with only fiddles and thunderstorms by which to remember us. We resist evil and
do good not to become legends or win back our souls, but because Christ resisted
evil first.
So, we continue in the journey of Lent, following after Jesus, knowing that while our Lenten disciplines and our outsmarting of evil for a time may make us feel a little safer, even a little virtuous, it is Christ, not we and our penitence, doing the real work… and through the grace of the Holy Spirit, our Lenten journey joins with Christ’s work.
We start our Lenten journey recalling Jesus' temptation in the wilderness because it isn’t just
another story of the devil’s defeat in a divine debate. No, we start here because this is our story of redemption, and example to us about how we might daily put aside temptation, defeat sin, and live resurrected life, which is our chief sign that evil has been defeated. The difference is that instead of resisting temptation solely to defeat the Evil One, our resistance is now, through our faith and baptisms, a positive act of aligning ourselves with Christ.
We know that today, defeating evil is more challenging and more important than ever. The invasion of Ukraine is just the latest and most extreme example that evil, human greed and arrogance, human lust for power, believes it can win because evil is the under the illusion that goodness is weak, that ethics is for chumps, and that love is mushy.
Evil is always surprised when
good people, loving people, and people of character stands up to it. Evil is always
astonished and even offended when it is held to account. Evil people always
justify their actions as if they are in the service of a greater good. And the
temptations that Jesus’ faces are the same the temptations we face whenever
evil attempts to manipulate us into the convenient, the comfortable, the simple
solutions to intractable or complex issues.
Evil, though, is a sore loser and has an inflated sense of self-importance. It can't take "no" for an answer, and assumes every defeat or set-back is someone else's fault.
Putin and his crew apparently believed
that they’d be welcomed into Ukraine with open arms and cheering crowds, and
that their own citizens would rise up in patriotic fervor. Well, they did but not in the way the Russian leaders expected. They resist, they fight, they pray, and even the refugees show a singular courage. And even back home have come out to protest. So, in their astonishment, they have resorted to making dissent illegal because that's better, to them, than real accountability.
What’s true in geo-politics is true
in real life. Whether the evil is global or personal, when we give in to it, we
don’t want to hear the objections, we cannot hear about the evil, hurtful, unethical aspects of our choices, and often, we’ll
pass off the critique as “their issue,” not mine; or their “naivete” as opposed
to our self-made wisdom.
Notice the connection between these
behaviors and the temptations facing Jesus: in each case Jesus is tempted to
make it about himself, about me, about what is right for me!
His response is always to turn it
back to God, and—in a surprising turn—towards God’s care for all of humanity
and creation. By making our concern bigger than us, by directing it outward, we
start finding practical, useful ways to defeat evil by living in love. When we
walk the way of Jesus-- when we live sacramentally, make loving our neighbor the center of our ethics-- we aren’t running away from evil, we join with him in evil’s
final defeat.
The story of The Devil and Daniel Webster ends, “They say that whenever the devil comes near Marshfield, even now, he
gives it a wide berth. And he hasn’t been seen in the state of New Hampshire from that day to this.”
Because of Christ, evil gives us a
wide berth. Because has Christ defeated it already.
+ + + + + + + + +
Here is a link to the bulletin for the First Sunday in Lent, Year C, March 6, 2022.
Here is a link to a video of the liturgy at St. John's Episcopal Church, Clearwater
Here is a link to a video of the sermon.
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