When Satan Chants Your Psalm

Peace to you in the name of Jesus, who when tempted to drink from the cup of dominion...chose instead the cup of salvation…when tempted to dine at the banquet of power…fasted in the wilderness of humility.  Be our brother and guide today, Jesus.

Let’s pray.

Well, I would imagine we’ve seen enough Jesus inspired film productions to conjure up a few images after hearing the story of Jesus being tempted, more like manipulated and abused, in the wilderness.  

Satan…sporting a black Armani suit…a subtle set of horns…ominous sunglasses…

Jesus…in a white religious garment, at this point tattered and worn, he’s sleepless, emaciated, dirt and tears caking his face… 

And in this series of temptations, this person, whom God, has just bellowed forth as “my Son, the Beloved, in whom I’m well-pleased” as Jesus takes a holy plunge into the Jordan River.

This Jesus, gets pushed to the limit...

In case it didn’t pop out to you immediately, an Old Testament reference, Psalm 91, has nestled itself right in a New Testament story, Luke 4.  A poetically rich, empowering, uplifting Psalm uttered in a moment with Jesus.  As a student of the Scripture, I love a good testamental crossover like this one.  They make this big thing called the Bible feel like it has tentacles and strings…which link it together…in mysterious ways…

But this one doesn’t feel so beautiful or empowering or uplifting.

It feels…well…evil. 

Can we take another glance? 

Hear these words from Psalm 91.  “For he [i.e., God], will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.  On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.”

Amen.  That’s a word. 

That’s a word for you. 

That’s a word for the church. 

That’s a word for spirits that often feel as though they are dangling above death’s pit… a mere thread away from annihilation and despair.

Fear not.  Angel’s very hands will lock themselves under your shoulders…and bear you up.  I mean, that’ll preach.

But will it preach if Satan preaches it to you? 

Will it preach if someone reads it to you with the intention of dismantling what you know to be true about yourself and about God? 

 I guess that begs a few more questions, huh. 

Who is Satan?  And why does Jesus resist the Psalm Satan quotes?  

Ok.  Let’s start here. 

Who is Satan?  Well, lucky for me, we have communion this Sunday, so I suspect that means I’m allowed a shorter sermon, yes? 

Some call him the advocate…the insinuator…the challenger.  The trial lawyer who pushes God’s buttons.  Who asks the important questions…but then…turns those questions inside out until we can’t remember what the point was in the first place.  Or better yet, Satan personifies the choice we all carry within us…the choice to be powerful…to believe that our own strength is enough to sustain us and make us immortal.  Or better yet, Satan is the best second guesser there is…in the universe and in each of us…the second guess that tells us that depending on God…really might mean…depending on ourselves instead.

That’s a lot of definitions.  Which leads me to believe that it might not be too easy to define Satan…though I think some of us in an effort to delineate good and evil are prone to do.  I’d rather not today.    

Because personifying the voice of evil makes it too easy for us to quiet and ignore its grip on us.  Maybe that voice has placed us at temple pinnacles far too long…recited Scripture to us…and told us what to be and how to act…all in the name of God… 

Maybe that voice…turns out to be a whole lot of voices…within us and around us.

Satan, in this moment…is the power that seeks to draw Jesus away from himself.  To pull Jesus into another reality…one that no longer calls him Beloved…but twists him into a Master of his own Domain.

So why is Jesus resisting the Psalm?  I mean, it is an encouraging one. It’s a beautiful one. It’s a sustaining one.  And as he’s standing at the temple’s high-point, I suppose it’s an appropriate one.  It’s good to know that God will catch you if you fall.   Unless of course, God’s never asked you to fall in the first place.  

It is understood that Hebrew temple practices called for priests and liturgists to chant the Psalms outside the temple.  They chanted them in order to remind the people of the God they worshipped.  Songs, words wedded to rhythms, have a way of teaching us and forming us, don’t they?  So…Satan is Jesus’ priest here…his liturgist.  And he’s chanting God’s love-song.  One of protection and safety and security. 

He is calling Jesus into the collective memory of the community…and telling him…

Remember this Psalm? 

Isn’t it beautiful? 

Isn’t it TRUE and GOOD and RIGHT? 

Don’t you think this is true about God?”

And in this moment, like a flash of light, we get a glimpse of God’s own identity crisis in the person of Jesus. 

Am I Love?  Or am I Power? 

Am I Vulnerability or am I Might?

Will people know that I’m God’s Beloved based on the Mighty, Powerful things I do?

So, if we can free ourselves a bit from worrying too much about personifying Satan, about making this character the landfill where we dump evil like this week’s trash, maybe we can see what this moment in Jesus’ life says about God and about us.  And what it says about our Lenten journey, our journey in the wilderness, our journey towards Belovedness.

See, Satan uses the sacred text…the stories and songs we base our lives on…and in an effort to re-orient Jesus away from the intimacy he has discovered with God…sings to him words that are true in a moment that is altogether false. 

Let me say that one more time.

Satan uses the sacred text…the stories and songs we base our lives on…and in an effort to re-orient Jesus away from the intimacy he has discovered with God…sings to him words that are true in a moment that is altogether false. 

Let me clarify something important here, though.  It isn’t the Psalm that’s the problem.  The Psalm is true…it is good…it is beautiful. 

It’s the intentions that beckon the Psalm in this instance, it’s the manipulation of the words in the face of someone’s sheer vulnerability, it’s the use of it to rip Jesus away from the intimate work God was doing with him in the wildnerness.

But Jesus saw this. He smelled it a mile away.  And while his belly ached with insecurity and this Psalm could have filled him up again, he knew that it would not last long enough.

For Jesus, on his way into a 40day fast as the story begins, was full of the Holy Spirit.

And so, Jesus refused Satan’s Song to him. Jesus would not be fooled by Satan’s solid exegesis, Biblical prowess, or narcissistic authority.

Have you ever been fooled this way? 

Have you ever used the Bible against yourself?  

Has anyone ever done that to you?  

Even with what seems to be…the best intentions.  

Even when they are doing nothing more than “telling you the good gospel truth.” 

Let me tell you, as a woman married to a woman who is also pastor seeking to follow Jesus all the while wedged inside the Christian Church in America, I bet you can guess what my answer to that question is.

Uh, maybe once or twice now in my life, someone has used Scripture this way against my body, my life, my story. And they’ve done at some of the most vulnerable moments of my life.

And I know that I’m far from the only one.

For those of you at this weekend’s retreat, think about the conversation we had on manifest destiny, on the idea that it was God’s will for the American landscape to stretch from east to west, no matter who was “in the way.”

There were Scriptures that built that argument, too.

Joshua 24:13. I gave you land on which to had not labored, and cities which you had not built.

Genesis 1:26-28. Be fruitful and multiply and full the earth and subdue it and have dominion over every living thing. 

Can you sense the crisis here for Jesus? The identity crisis here.  

What does this book say about me?

What does this God say about me? 

And Jesus…with the force of his Belovedness behind him, proclaims…

“I’m not putting God to the test like that.  I’m not gonna poke God’s sides just to see what might happen.  God’s already told me who I am.  And a bungee jump off the temple isn’t going to confirm that any further.  I am Beloved.”

And Jesus does his own Bible-quoting in response. He says back to Satan,  “It is said, Do not put the Lord God to the test,” a reference from the good old book of Deuteronomy. And like two good Rabbis, Jesus and Satan are engaged in a textual dialogue, both using Scripture, and both for different reasons.  The significant thing to note is that Jesus’ interpretation points him back to and not away from his relationship with God.

Jesus resisted his tempter’s chant…because…he carried a song much deeper than Satan’s interpretation of scripture could give him.

Jesus resisted the tempter’s chant because he carried the whisper of the Creator…the tune of the Sustainer…the melody of the Redeemer.

Jesus was able to call this argument what it was. Not just agreeing to disagree, or simple differences of opinion. Jesus knew that this argument was about his Life.

See evil, at its core, is a distortion of truth. And even if the words are true, when their context is untrue, when their context is violent, when their context diminishes human thriving, then they are evil. 

Jesus exposes this reality, and frees us to be obedient, not to those who challenge our Belovedness, but to God who ensures it.

So, I say this with all the humility I can muster up.

If someone, even if their words carry Biblical heft, says them to you with the intention of throwing you off the temple, tempting you to believe you need to do something spectacular to prove God’s love for you, that who are you already, even the you that’s hungry in the wilderness doesn’t quite cut it for God… 

Don’t you dare listen to them.

Say to them, with all the love you can muster…Get behind me, Satan! 

You do not know who I am. 

You do not know what I have been made for. 

You do not know and I cannot convince you on my own.  

Because real power is not in your Scripture reference. It is in God’s calling.  

When Satan chants your Psalm, trust that God will see you through it and that you’ll have the Power and Grace to sing back something old, something new, something borrowed, maybe something with a little blues…

And before you know it, even smack dab in the wilderness, you’ll hear the song erupting within you….

“Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells Me so…” Yes, Jesus loves you. Yes, Jesus loves you. Yes, Jesus loves you. The Bible tells you so.