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every time we pray, the way jesus taught us to, we ask God not to lead us into temptation, but why we might ask, it doesn't seem like the kind of thing God would do,

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does it to lead us into temptation? Doesn't God protect us from temptation? Isn't that supposed to be what God is up to? We wouldn't be the first to ask this question. Why that line in

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the Lord's Prayer, we wouldn't be the first to worry about what this could possibly mean. I chose this topic before I learned that the pope recently changed the words to the Lord's prayer. This particular line

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, he was worried just as we are about what it might say about God and God's character. He wanted the prayer to make more sense. So he hired a group of scholars to re translate it and

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they came up with an alternative. Instead of lead us not into temptation. The Pope wants us to ask God to and I quote, abandon us not when in temptation is the change line, abandon us

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, not when we are in temptation. I kind of think of this as the Psalm 139 version of the Lord's Prayer. Even when we're down in the depths of shale being tempted, God is with us

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. We are not alone now. I really do like the Pope. I do like the Pope. I like his resistance to brocaded robes. I like watching him reach out to those who are divorced and

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offering them communion. But I don't like this change he's made to the Lord's prayer. I don't like it because it doesn't seem to take into account the biblical stories where people of faith are led by God

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into temptation. Consider Abraham in Genesis 22, who is tempted by God on Mount Mariah. And then there's job who for 42 straight chapters holds God to account. Even as he's tempted by God's own emissary

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, that satan, there's paul who seems tempted in some ways, I think by this thorn in the flesh, he's tempted to despair. And then there's our passage for today, jesus our representative, being

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driven by the spirit driven by the spirit immediately after his glorious baptism. Driven by the spirit to be tempted by satan, I can't help but know that this is alarming. It's alarming to think that this

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spirit is the one who drives jesus into the wilderness to be tempted. This is the same spirit, presumably that we like to call comforter. The same spirit that scripture teaches in the Book of romans,

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intercedes with groans and murmurings too deep for words when we cannot pray. Perhaps she lost track of her job description. Maybe just the opposite. Perhaps she noticed that her job wasn't only to comfort us,

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but also to push us to challenge us, not only to reassure, but to knock us out of our complacency and inter courageous confrontations with the Principalities and powers that are the undoing of this creation God so

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loves. But leading us into temptation doesn't seem to be the same work of this spirit as pushing us to do justice. It seems like a different thing to me. What is it all about? What

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does the spirit dr jesus into the wilderness to be tempted? Why does the spirit dr jesus to the wilderness? Because the fact that it happened to jesus mean, it might also happens to us, or

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did jesus kind of take that on? I hope so, that we don't have to little substitution eri temptation of all for it. Perhaps you have a chapter in your own holy story about when you were

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tempted and how God saw you through and how God took care of you in the process. I think I might be at the start of my own chapter in my life on this subject, which is no

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doubt why I chose this kind of odd subject to preach on this morning. What I'd also like to figure out is how we know when it is the spirit who's driving us into temptation and when we've gotten

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there ourselves, what kind of temptation would the spirit lead us into exactly what would be its purpose? Remember as a kid hearing my dad respond to an elder from the congregation who had a bad track record

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at showing up at session meetings, my dad asked him if he would be at the session meeting this coming Tuesday night at seven and the man responded, I'll be there if God is willing and the creek

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don't rise. My dad responded to him by saying Mr Anderson, I know for a fact that God is willing. If you don't make it to the meeting, I'm going to blame you and not God

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. I certainly don't think every temptation we experience comes from God. Certainly we find a lot of temptations all on our own. But in the context of this series titled Holy Spirit, Holy stories are reflecting

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on something I don't believe I've ever considered before very recently in my life, that is the holy stories in scripture about the spirit leading us into temptation. In this prayer we pray that asks God to spare

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us or at least to deliver us from evil. It's kind of funny, lead us not into temptation , but if you must deliver us from evil, right? I think these stories, these holy stories

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may have something important to tell us to tell me about what it means to live before God and in relation to one another. What they tell us, I think is this that when God tempts us,

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the specific purpose of this temptation is to remind us of our creature leanness, so we can be free to live as the glorious, finite and beautiful creatures . We are. We've been thinking about some cool

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things in the poetry and theology class. One of the explorations has been apathetic theology, the v a negative to the negative way. How does the spirit shape us by way of our experience in the wilderness

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? We've been asking, Or when we feel covered by darkness or when we are stuck in a place marked neither by belief or unbelief? A place where we're capable neither of proclaiming God's goodness nevertheless, nor

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of cursing God and dying. A place where the poet, christian women says we have no sense of equanimity. One way or the other. What do we learn about relationship to God when we have the

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stamina? For none of the above spiritual responses? Perhaps you would want to cheer me up at this point by suggesting I turn right over to Matthews version of the jesus in the wilderness story. Man,

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he took satan out, didn't he? That was really something to see how bold he was, how fully divine quoting scripture with pure and utter confidence, and not for one second in any way threatened in

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this particular period of my life, I'm needing marks less triumphant version of this story more than Matthews version . Maybe because I hope to believe that because Jesus struggled with temptation. He therefore understands me like he

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did later and get so many. I imagine jesus sweating drops of blood, wondering why the spirit has driven him out there, feeling all alone and hesitant about what lies ahead, but willing to submit to

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the hand of God all this. And we are still at this point in the Gospel of Mark, just a few verses in right between jesus, dramatic baptism and the dramatic start of his ministry. Maybe

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the spirit drives jesus into the wilderness as preparation for ministry. And you thought your preparation for ministry was hard For 40 days and 40 nights, Jesus is tempted by Satan. What I like about the gospel

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of mark is that we don't have any superhero sounding stories about Jesus Outwitting over quoting or out believing satan . All we are told is that he was with the wild beasts and the angels waited on him with

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the wild beasts like Adam and Eve. In the new Creation waited on by angels like when Elijah ran away from Queen Jezebel in Second Kings Chapter 19, Angels seemed to me to mark God's ubiquitous but particular

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presence, I think, where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence ? If I go up to the heavens, you're there. If I go down to the depths of

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shale, you're there. If I travel to the furthest limits of the sea, even there, your hand will guide me. Your right hand will hold me fast. Even the darkness is not dark to

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you. After the 40 days, Jesus comes out of the wilderness and immediately mark loves the word, immediately begins his ministry. He has survived the temptation . He has been delivered from evil to proclaim the

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good news that God's kingdom has. Indeed come. The temptation when we are driven into the wilderness is to try to overwhelm it, to capture the wild beast, to kill them, to eat them.

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To turn stones into bread. As in Matthew's version of this story, to outwit the Principalities and powers like Katniss in the Hunger Games or a contestant on survivor. Keep your angels to yourself. Thank you

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. I am fine on my own. What this holy story of jesus teaches us, I think, is that when the Spirit leads us into temptation, it's for a very specific purpose and so we might

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come to terms with who we are before God. This is what Jean Corbett said to me in a conversation yesterday that we had about this text and I think she's right baptized were claimed as God's Children.

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And then the fun really begins. The spirits job is to help us know and live into this identity as God's Children, to know ourselves as creatures, to realize we are not capable of defeating the Principalities

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and powers are diseases and our deaths are mortalities and are in aptitudes. We are of course attempting to try the Spirit herself tempts us, but always with a cadre of angels accompanying her to take care of

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us. Along the way, to resist the temptation to ward off our creature leanness is to submit to being who we are as creatures, real finite, beautiful beloved creatures who are strengthened by angels and called

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to new ministries as the frail but powerful creatures. We are. Wait a minute. Did I say angels? What does that mean? Angels seriously? Maybe I did. You know. It was an

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angel that kept Abraham from moving the knife into his son, stabbing his son, delivered by an angel . Abraham was it was angels who came and nurtured , jesus in the wilderness so he could endure and

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be strengthened and not just survived the wilderness but come out centered and ready to proclaim the good news. The angels remind us of the inescapable itty of God who hems us in behind and before and knits us

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together in our mother's wombs. My wonderful dad died 17 days ago. It was fairly sudden and it was rough. I'm still trying to figure out how we let this happen, but he was just covered

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with tubes and infusions, pumps. I stopped counting after a while because it got too depressing to count the number of them. Uh, I thought all the beeping would drive me out of my mind.

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You're in the hospital for days and days and beeping and alarms and beeping and alarms. Once we removed the intubation, he died in a few minutes. Within a few minutes. Remember bob Shelton? Uh

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This is Shelton Chapel named after him. Bob Shelton once told me that when your parents die, there's no longer any buffer between you and your own mortality . You realize that you're up next. I think

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you was telling me at the time of my father's death, I was already feeling pretty mortal because in the weeks just before, over this past summer, I had a lot of medical testing trying to figure

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out the pain and weakness many of you know that I've had on my right side. We wound up going to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and I now have an amazing doctor with superlative care, really great

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care. But from the end of June to August seven, we were living with an incorrect diagnosis, a diagnosis that would have meant a very short lifespan for me and terrible suffering for myself and my family

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. So in these days I've never been more aware of my own mortality and never felt more attempted to find ways to override it, to beg God to remove the thorn, to pray for the courage to

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shut down satan's insidious whisperings. Instead, I find myself asking God to deliver me from such evil, to use this time in the wilderness to help me settle into being precisely who I am as gods created

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creature to know what paul meant, when he realized that power is made perfect in weakness, to trust that God's angels who up to now in my life , I have never taken seriously will care for me

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and those I love. The Spirit leads us into temptation so we can know ourselves in relation to the God who made us and continues to make us. And my holy story is teaching me that as we

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truly come to know who we are, the chains fall off and we are delivered from the burdensome evil of trying to be more than what God created us to be, which would actually be a whole heck

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of a lot less than God made us to be . Anyway, praise God, the psalmist says, for we are fearfully and wonderfully made precisely as the mortal beings we are. As we come true,

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It is as we come truly to know this. I believe in hope that we can enjoy the angels constant ministrations toward us through which God will prepare us for our next ministry. Our new ministry are sharing

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of the Good News. Holy Spirit Holy Stories.