The Devil You Say!

Scripture to be read this weekend serves to remind us (me) that evil continues to raise its head; or, in this case, the temptation to fall out with God is prevalent among God’s Creatures. It’s easy to say, “The devil made me do it”, but this disregards our own responsibility to choose. These readings deal with our proclivity to point our fingers at others/situations–and shun our ownership of our faults. It’s also easy to laugh at the old foibles of persons or groups long ago–but each reading should cause us to evaluate our own lives…

You undoubtedly remember the conversation between God and Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden, GENESIS 3:8-15. God has come inquiring of their health & well-being; but they hid themselves (in clothes?) because they were nakedly transparent. (This is one reason why some folks don’t go to church.) “Did you eat the fruit I told you not to?” “Well…the woman YOU gave me…” “Wait a minute, it was the SNAKE!” And since the snake has no fingers, the buck stopped there. From eons later, we could contrast the disorder of Early Man & Woman to how nice things’ll be in Jesus’ Kingdom. Will we really return to this innocence, this naivete? Or will the Ultimate Kingdom incorporate our experience as The Broken?

The apostle Paul speaks to some of the disenfranchised in his Second Letter to the CORINTHIANS 4:13-18. I had an old Welsh friend who would stop at my office regularly on Tuesdays to join my secretary and me in a cup of tea. His parting speech always would include, “Thanks for the next, I’m sure of this one”. So Paul values the coming days more than the current ones; “because we look not at what can be seen but what cannot be seen…” Not double-speak, but a looking forward to that which Jesus has promised. A body, a tent, a building, a garment. But until then, we wait in anticipation and try to live before God in integrity.

And MARK 3:20-35 ties this together: Jesus seems to be out of his mind in the current milieu, and we are also. The temptations and glitz of the present are not worth comparing to what awaits us in the future. Jesus is neither the Lord of the Flies nor Satan, for a house divided cannot stand. Still, the powers of evil tweak at us, daring us to hurt ourselves and others, maybe even GOD.

My favorite sign is a sticker that my acquaintance affixed to her French horn case: “Spit Happens!” As long as we perform in the arena of the earth we’re subjected to the niddling power of temptation: to be stronger, to be better than, to win at all costs… The person On Their Way is one who knows that pitfalls lie ahead, yet holds onto the vision.

In the process of unfolding, Horace Brown King

It’s OK to share this with your friends. Who knows? Maybe they also will look forward to Tuesdays, when we explore lectionary readings for the upcoming weekend; at horacebrownking.com