March 1, 2009

This morning in our liturgy for the first Sunday in Lent, we have heard the name of a heavenly being called out four times.  It’s a name that engenders suspicion, fear, skepticism and general unease.  We do not know what to make of this entity and we would prefer to avoid dealing with his existence and his effects.  Near the very beginning of the Great Litany we prayed earlier, we asked for deliverance from the crafts and assaults of the Devil.  A few lines later, we prayed for release from all sinful affections and deceits of the world, the flesh and the Devil.  In the appointed Collect for this Sunday, the prayer that gathers and collects our thoughts and centers our focus on the theme of the day, we asked God to “come quickly to help us who are assaulted by the many temptations of Satan.”  Finally, in our Gospel passage from Mark, we hear that immediately following his baptism, the Holy Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness to contemplate his destiny and, while he was there, he was accosted and tempted by Satan.

Who is this tempter, this evil one, this force to be feared and avoided?  In the Christian life there are four basic understandings of the Devil.  There is the Old Testament view, the New Testament view, the medieval church view and the post modern view.  All are relevant and all reveal something of God’s providence and human nature.  In the Old Testament, Satan is the English translation of the Hebrew word used to describe the heavenly body that causes suffering, disease, frenzy, pestilence, even national calamity.  Satan is a member of the heavenly court responsible for inflicting and prosecuting sinners before the bar of divine justice.  He is single-minded in his charge.  He is zealous and a rigorous legalist.  He tests the pious.  He comes after humanity and puts their faith on trial.  His earliest appearance is in the garden where he inhabits the form of the serpent and urges Eve to eat the one fruit God has set aside from human consumption.  He uses guile and deceit to test her loyalty and obedience to her benevolent creator. 

In another early appearance, Satan is undone when God praises the steadfastness and righteousness of Job.  He answers the Lord, “Skin for skin!  All that people have, they will give to save their lives.  Just stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh and he will curse you to your face.”  The Lord allows Satan to put forth his test.  Satan inflicts Job with loathsome sores from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head.  Job takes a shard of pottery to scrape himself.  His wife is so disgusted, she asks, “Why do you persist in your integrity?  You should curse God and die!”  We see in the Old Testament, Satan is disruptive and an adversary to humankind.

In the New Testament, “the Devil,” the English translation of the Greek word referring to the same entity as Satan, is much more sinister.  Here in the later scripture, the devil is the supernatural enemy of God.  He strikes mightily to divert the pious from the path of obedience to God.   He works fast and furious to break the bonds between God and his beloved children.  The devil’s ultimate aim is to disrupt and destroy believers’ faithfulness and trust in God.  In the New Testament, the devil is the Ruler of the World.  He stands behind and directs all nations who oppose God’s elect.  He is powerful.  He has minions – many who do his bidding.  He is active, strong and vigilant.  The Devil is effective because he lies while disguising himself as an “angel of light.”  He uses cunning arguments to convince people that what they think God has commanded them to do, or where he has told them to put their trust cannot possibly be true or really of God.  If his deceits don’t work, the Devil brings afflictions and persecutions out from his arsenal. 

We see Satan at work early in the ministry of Jesus Christ.  Before he ever begins his mission, Satan comes to Jesus in his solitude and tries vigorously, relentlessly to dissuade Jesus from God’s plan.  He tempts him with power, wealth, acclaim, fame, comfort and ease.  When he fails in his attempts, he leaves and immediately begins assaults on would-be followers.  He enters their consciousness and “possesses” their senses.  We recall the stories of Jesus’ encounters with demoniacs.  Later, then Jesus sends a larger group of disciples out to spread his message, the Devil infiltrates their resolve and erodes their confidence so that they abandon their mission.  Jesus warns about the ill effects and consequences of the Devil’s work in several of his parables.  The Devil’s activity and frenzy escalates as he seduces Judas, luring him to betray his leader.  He is also effective in eradicating Peter’s faithfulness, at least for a while.  “The rock” crumbles under the Dark One’s pressure and he denies his Lord once, twice, three times in the hour that Jesus most needs his friend

Satan, the Devil, is a formidable enemy.  The Bible tells us that he has supernatural powers.  And, he is not consigned to hell.  He moves freely in both earth and heaven.  He has sway on earth.  This is his dominion.  The Kingdom of man, this world which we inhabit, is absolutely affected by Satan’s presence and activity.  The Bible also assures us that the Devil is not outside God’s control.  The Devil is a creature of God and, therefore, under God’s hand.  Even in his most deviousness, God makes good come out of Satan’s disruptions.  This powerful being is no match for the Almighty, and Holy Scripture promises that some day Satan will be vanquished by a divine agent.  His work will end.  He will be restrained by either God’s messiah or God himself.

From the references in the Old and New Testament, the early church fathers made assumptions about the nature and function of Satan.  They interpreted him to be an angelic being hostile to God, in essence a “fallen angel.”  They calculated that in his fall from grace, he became the supreme embodiment of evil.  There was debate in the beginning church over the cause for Satan’s bad turn.  Some believe he was envious of God’s love for humankind and, felt as an angel, he had been displaced in the creator’s affections.  Others believe his failure was the sin of pride, that he wanted special blessings from God because of his own talents and powers, not acknowledging that they came from God in the first place. 

This view says that Satan had an immoderate love of his own excellence.  What all early church leaders affirm is that the Devil, Satan, Lucifer, the Tempter, the Prince of Darkness, the Antichrist, whatever name he is given, he was created good by God and became evil by his own will and on his own accord.  They are also assured that at the final judgment, he will be defeated forever.  He will be set in hell, never to reappear.

It is interesting to note that there are no descriptions of the Devil in the Bible.  The images of a horned figure with a tail and pitchfork came out of medieval Christian mythology.  Today, these depictions seem antiquated, irrelevant, perhaps more comical than menacing.  These portraits, along with the idea of evil, rebellion and chaos residing in a personified being, appear contrary to reason in some post modern minds.  Many believers today see the Devil as a metaphor, rather than an external entity alive and present, moving at will over the face of the earth.  They see evil and sin as an internal reality, a deficit, a brokenness residing in every human soul.  They would say as a result of exercising our free will poorly, we have inherited a corrupt weakness which pulls us away from steadfast faith and draws us to disobedience, cruelty, and foolishness.

Whether as modern day Christians we accept Satan as a powerful external reality or evil as an interior condition, we must acknowledge the truth and presence of sin in the world and in our lives.  Whether from an outside agent, beguiling, bedeviling, seducing us, or from an internal weakness, we are assaulted daily!  We are led astray.  We do those things we ought not to do.  We do not do the things we ought to do.  We fail and falter in both our private lives and in our corporate lives.  Too often, we are complacent in our communities.  We allow others to make decisions on our behalf that we know deep in our souls are probably contrary to God’s intent.  We become scared or overburdened and we find it easier to let those entrusted to keep us safe have free reign to make important decisions.  We turn aside when we ought to speak out.  As fine a nation as we are, our history shows incidents when we ought to have spoken up and said, we want to be safe, but this is too high a cost.  This policy is deceit masking as truth.  Detaining Japanese American citizens after the attack on Pearl Harbor is an example.  Torturing political prisoners is another. “One nation under God” is better than that.  We were beguiled.  We were swayed by evil, either from within our own psyches or from without, by a powerful tempter.

In our personal lives, our falls can be just as insidious and often more subtle.  We don’t start out oblivious to God, or determined to act contrary to his good plan for us.  We just allow ourselves to be convinced what we heard wasn’t really what God meant.  We succumb to the devilish ploy.  God didn’t really mean I give you 100% of your treasure, live on 90%, give 10% back for the care of my kingdom on earth.  God didn’t really mean take care of all my children, even the ones you think may be lazy and rude.  God wasn’t serious when he said come to me in prayers every day.  He knows I’m busy raising a healthy family.  God understands if I forget to claim that benefit on my taxes, after all, I gave a lot to charity this year and corporate greed deflated my stocks, so I’m entitled to a break.  Ah, this is the work of the Tempter.  One knows one has fallen under his grip when the rationalization begins.

It is no accident that on this, the first Sunday in the season of repentance and return, we come face to face with the existence of evil and deceit.  Now is the opportune time to take notice and make peace with the forces that draw us away from God.  These forces are the reason Christ came for us and died for us.  As we travel with our Lord all the way to the cross, let us be vigilant in our self-examination and strong in our denouncement of all things that draw us from the love of God.  With Christ on our side, with faith on our minds, Satan has no chance with us.  We are safe and we are saved.

For this awareness, and for our resolve, we say, “Get behind me Satan!”  And then, “Thanks be to God” that behind us he goes.