“KNOW YOUR LIMITS”

(Psalm 91:1-2, ff & Luke 4:1-13)

The First Sunday in Lent

February 21, 2010

Dr. Fred Seay

First Presbyterian Church, Lake Charles, Louisiana

We Americans of 2010 hate limits!  We are used to instant communication with our Blackberries and cell phones. If we are bored, we can get immediate gratification from our I-pods. Until the economy crashed, many of us were very accustomed to being able to obtain almost everything we wanted, as soon as we decided we wanted it. Psalm 91 appears to promise a limitless type of faith. No matter what we do, or where we go, God will take care of us and save us from any danger, or even frustration. There should be not limits!

There is a problem, though: the Devil quoted this text once.

That happened when Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert.  Talk about limitations. We have a positive view of how the Holy Spirit works in and for us. And yes, the Spirit awakens and strengthens faith. But the Spirit also pushed Jesus straight from the spiritual high of his baptism into the desert. He was out there 40 days and 40 nights, and there are few better places to force a person to grapple with the limitations of being a human being. The desert broke Israel. Elijah, greatest among the prophets, fled into the desert when Queen Jezebel put a price on his head- and had an extended “pity party” until the still, small voice of God sent him back to work. We know next to nothing of a geographical desert here in bayou country, but many circumstances can force us to recognize that we have gone far past our limits.

The devil came along and “tempted” Jesus. The Greek word also means “put to the test”.  The devil came to Jesus- tired, hungry, and alone for many days—and in effect says, “Your daddy could certainly do a better job taking care of you, son!” 

He says, “Why are you putting up with going hungry?  Do something about it—turn these rocks into bread!”  Jesus accepts the limitation of his hunger, and turns the question into a challenge. How often do we try hard to fill our own lives with more and more possessions, to make them ever more secure?  Do we work half as hard to open our hearts to all with which God would fill us?

The devil tries another route. He says, “Why put yourself through the wringer? Take the easy way- don’t bother with taking the ‘form of a slave’ or ‘pouring yourself out’. Forget the ‘death’ part. Serve me, and I’ll put you in charge of everything!” 

Neither route works. So the devil pulls out the most powerful Weapon of Mass Destruction in his arsenal: he quotes Scripture. (He seems to master it better than all too many Presbyterians these days. One wonders how often Scripture ends up being used for destructive purposes rather than for blessing.)  He draws on Psalm 91. He says, “All right, take your Father’s Word for it. See, if you throw yourself off the highest point in Jerusalem, he will protect you!  You won’t even get a bruise!  Everybody will be amazed, and worship you—no pain, all gain!” 

I had a wise teacher of Old Testament who once made an important point about the Bible. “It is not whether or not a Scripture text is true, but HOW and WHEN it is true.”  Jesus responds quickly with a verse from Deuteronomy, about not putting God to the test. The “dueling rabbi” sequence ends with the devil departing—for a time—and Jesus finding himself alone, but with his test over, done, and passed.

He took up humanity with all its weakness and its limitations. The testing in the desert was a crucible, a more intensified distillation of those 33 years he lived among us, a wrapped bundle of human limits. He was hungry. He was thirsty. He was lonely. Those “tests” would not have been true tests had Jesus not felt some pull toward doing as the Tempter urged.

. Psalm 91 has a sort of disclaimer: “He who makes the Most High his refuge…”  Jesus of Nazareth is the only person ever to do that, wholeheartedly, come what may.

To be authentically human, we accept our limits. We cannot have everything we want. Every effort we make will not necessarily be crowned with immediate, obvious success. We will not always get instant gratification of our desires and longings. Still, we believe in God.  If we struggle to trust in the One who is our refuge and shelter, then we hold to Christ who did trust perfectly. We trust in the Christ who conformed himself to the ultimate limitation, that of death. He overcame that limit and did it for all our sakes. And so when we come up against the high walls and feel we can do no more, we take shelter in our Maker, our Savior, and our Shaper.

What about Psalm 91—can it be true for us?  Let me close with the story of one of the many spiritual heroes I’ve met in 20 years as a pastor. Sam Olvera was a member of the Harlingen, Texas, 2^nd Presbyterian Church. He was our self-affirmed, practicing viejito gruñón, or “grumpy old man”. (Sam cheerfully greeted all visitors with that self-introduction, in both languages.)  He had been away from the church for decades. His Army service in WWII entitled him to the GI Bill and Sam attended the University of Texas of Austin and later made a small fortune with an import-export business in Houston. He went home to Harlingen after nearly 5 decades to care for his elderly mother, Eloisa, known to all as “Mamá Locha”.  Sam cultivated a reputation as a skeptic. He delighted in asking questions in Sunday School that horrified the teachers; he glowered, arms crossed, in his accustomed pew corner next to his mother. When she died, no one expected Sam to continue coming to church—but he did.

Sam would share something his mother did the night before he left for North Africa. She gave him one of those little Gideon-issue Psalms/New Testaments (in Spanish) and urged him to read it. But before that, she read the 91^st Psalm. She swore she would read it every night before she prayed for her boy. Sam saw terrible things in North Africa and later in Italy which he did not share until the very end of his life. But he came home safe. His college education filled him with doubts about formal religion, at least as he had learned it in Harlingen. But he would come up to the limits of his higher education where he recognized that somehow, that Psalm he read overseas was tied to his mother’s faithful prayers. Sam never quit asking questions—especially if he could get a satisfying rise out of the adult teachers, or his pastors—but he was willing, more and more, to recognize the limits of his intellectual knowledge. Not too long ago he passed into the realm where we can fully appreciate and experience being “under the shelter of the most high”.

Until we get there—may we know our own limits. And may we too take our refuge and shelter in the One who overcame them for us.