Hushing the Devil to Hear the Desperate
The First United Presbyterian Church
“Hushing the Devil to Hear the Desperate”
Rev. Amy Morgan
March 10, 2019
Exodus 1:8-14; 2:23-25
8 Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.
9 He said to his people, "Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we.
10 Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land."
11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh.
12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites.
13 The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites,
14 and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.
23 After a long time the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their slavery, and cried out. Out of the slavery their cry for help rose up to God.
24 God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
25 God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them.
Luke 4:1-13
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness,
2 where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished.
3 The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread."
4 Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone.'"
5 Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world.
6 And the devil said to him, "To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please.
7 If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours."
8 Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'"
9 Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here,
10 for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,'
11 and 'On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'"
12 Jesus answered him, "It is said, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'"
13 When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.
In my first college acting class, we were given a simple assignment. Enter a room. At first, it was just that: walk into the room. Then, we had to pick a number. 1 was the most powerless, pitiful creature you could imagine. 10 was pure, unadulterated power. We were told to walk into the room embodying the number we’d chosen. Sometimes we were given a line to deliver when we walked in. And the class would have to guess our number. If they didn’t guess the number we had in mind, we had to do it again. And again. And again.
The most difficult number for all of us was a 10. My classmates and I blustered and stomped into the room. We strutted like peacocks and bellowed our lines. We made our spines straight and our voices loud and low.
And every one of us got it wrong. Again, and again, and again, we tried to be a 10, to be the most powerful person we could imagine. But each time, our teacher sent us back, telling us we’d gotten it wrong.
Finally, he stopped us, told us all to sit down. He walked into the room. He stood there. He didn’t say a word. His presence was magnetic. Not because he had good posture or puffed out his chest. He just stood there, almost casually. But in a way that made us fear and love him in equal measure.
And then, in a voice so quiet it was almost a whisper, he said, “Remember this: the king never has to shout. Class dismissed.”
I learned a valuable lesson that day, not just about acting and character development. But about power. True power. When true power enters the room, the world will be silent to hear what Power has to say. Power never needs to speak above a whisper, it never needs to shout, because it already knows that everyone is straining to listen.
It was that kind of power that silenced the Israelites for a generation. A powerful Pharaoh, powerful taskmasters, powerful oppression, silenced their groans of suffering and cries for help. Pharaoh didn’t shout over them, and their taskmasters didn’t drown them out. The Israelites were silenced by the power of their oppressors. Pharaoh never had to speak above a whisper.
Only when the powerful Pharaoh dies, when he leaves the room, can the Israelites release their voices and call upon God to help them.
In the desert, Jesus faces a similar power, an oppressor like Pharaoh. It doesn’t shout. It doesn’t stomp. It didn’t strut or bellow. It entered the room, the space set aside by God for this encounter. As Jesus fasted and prayed in the wilderness space, the devil entered the room. It came to silence Jesus before he begins his mission of healing, teaching, salvation and redemption.
Now, the devil is always a hot topic in scripture. At the middle school retreat at Highlands last weekend, Satan was mentioned exactly once, but it was one of the things that stuck in my son’s memory. Our ears always perk up when someone’s talking about the devil.
Because the devil is a 10, no doubt about it. True power. The devil never needs to shout. We are always listening when the devil is in the room.
So let’s talk about who or what the devil is. First, the word “devil,” in Greek, literally means “the accuser” or sometimes “the slanderer.” The Hebrew name “Satan” means “the adversary” or is sometimes translated as “the Evil One.” In the Gospel of John, Jesus calls the devil “a liar and the father of lies.” Paul warns the Ephesians about the “wiles of the devil,” suggesting that he is a sneaky scoundrel. For the ancient Hebrews and early Christians, the devil was the personification of the power that sought to subvert the will of God on earth. Whether you picture this devil with a pitchfork and pointed tail is entirely up to you. If personifying evil bothers you because you don’t believe in that kind of stuff, fine. The devil is whatever force, whatever entity, whatever part of ourselves, even, that diametrically opposes God’s good intentions for creation.
John’s Revelation depicts the ultimate demise of this powerful, deceptive force. But this scene in the wilderness is the beginning of the end. Because here, the one who uses the power of lies and deception to attempt to silence the Lord of heaven and earth finds that there is now a power on earth that will not be silent, that will not submit to oppression without a fight.
In Acts, Peter preaches about how Jesus “went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil.” And the first letter of John states that “The Son of God appeared for this purpose, that He might destroy the works of the devil.” Here, in the desert, Jesus begins the fulfillment of his sole reason for existing. He comes to silence the silencer. And in doing this, he releases the voices of all those who have been oppressed by the devil, by the power of lies and deception.
And who are those people who have been oppressed by the devil? Look at who Jesus ministered to. Who his friends were. Who he healed and forgave and restored to community.
He freed from the devil’s oppression people like Matthew, a tax collector silenced into complicity by the power of the Roman Empire. People like Nicodemus, silenced by the power of the religious authorities so that he had to sneak in to see Jesus under the cover of darkness. Jesus freed women silenced by men’s power over their bodies and men silenced by society’s rejection of their illness or disability. Everywhere he went, Jesus hushed the devil so that he could hear the desperate.
But in doing this, he also freed the community who believed the devil’s lies and used those lies to oppress others. They were experiencing a different sort of oppression. But the lies they were told and the lies they believed were oppressing them, diminishing their fullness of life. Lies about a person’s worth being determined by their physical or mental abilities, or their state of religious purity, or their conformity to societal norms. Every time Jesus healed and forgave and restored people to community, he proved, not just to that person, but to the whole community, that the devil is a liar.
The devil is a liar, but the devil is still a 10. When the power of lies and accusations enters a room, we are silent. When it tells us that God isn’t real, isn’t powerful, doesn’t care, we are silent. Maybe we don’t believe the devil. But we still listen. We don’t interrupt. We don’t kick those lies out of the room.
Because the lies the devil tells us aren’t explicitly about God. The Liar will enter the room. And just stand there for a minute. Making sure we are paying full attention. And then the devil will speak, in a voice just above a whisper, about hunger, and suffering, hopelessness and fear.
The homeless children in Loveland: you can donate to Kids’ Pak, and you can collect clothes, but you can’t really help them. You can’t change their situation, their family life, their future. And what is God doing about it? Nothing.
The addict you see talking with his demons just down the street from the church: you can open a mental health facility, vote for more funds for addiction recovery efforts, open your church to keep them safe and warm. But you can’t really help him. That drug is going to win every time. And what is God doing about it? Nothing.
The global immigration crisis: you can advocate for compassionate treatment of immigrants and work for peace and economic security in their home countries. But you can’t really help them. The scale is enormous. You can’t possibly make a bit of difference. And what is God doing about it? Nothing.
Where is God when children go to bed hungry? Does God even care about people suffering from addiction? Is God even able to do anything about violence and poverty?
The devil never has to mention the name of God to feed us lies about God.
This is the game the devil plays with Jesus in the desert. “If you are the Son of God” – if God cares about you, if God is real, if God is powerful – then prove it. Turn stones into bread, solve world hunger. Bow down and worship true power and see if God does a thing about it. With the world at your command, surely you could fix all its brokenness. Is God really in control? I don’t think so, says the Devil. “If you are the Son of God” - would God disrupt the created order to save you? Does God care what happens to you? Can God do anything about your suffering?
This is a dangerous game, and the Devil is good at it.
But God has an ace in the hole. Because God isn’t up in heaven, sitting back and observing the situation apathetically. God is right there, in front of the Devil. And if the Devil is a 10, God is at least an 11.
And if a 10 never has to shout, an 11 doesn’t even need to speak. Jesus doesn’t come up with anything original to say to the Devil. He quotes scripture. Old words, ancient truths. He doesn’t resist temptation, lies, oppression with sheer willpower. He’s not frightened by eternal damnation or making a deal with the Devil. He doesn’t have clever rhetorical arguments. He doesn’t even bother pulling out a confounding parable. He just knows the truth. He remembers the truth. Oh, yeah, and, as we read in the Gospel of John, he IS the truth.
You want to know where God is when children go to bed hungry at night? Look to the word of God. Where it says, over and over again, to care for the most vulnerable in our society. To share bread with the hungry. Where it says God will fill the hungry with good things. Where Jesus experiences hunger in the desert so that those children know God is right there with them and the Spirit is working in the world to not just feed them but to change the systems of injustice that keep them hungry.
You want to know where God is when the addict is shooting up on our doorstep? Look to the Word of God. Where it says, over and over again, that God releases the captives and sets the prisoners free, whether they are in slavery in Egypt or in exile in Babylon or imprisoned by addiction in Loveland. Where it says Jesus cast out demons that drove people to all kinds of destructive behaviors. Where Jesus refuses to give power to anything other than God in the desert so that addicts might know there is a power in the universe stronger than the drug that is destroying them.
You want to know where God is in the masses of displaced people, risking their lives to escape violence and poverty? Look to the Word of God. Where it says, over and over again, that each person on this planet is created, and loved, and cherished by God. Where we are commanded to care for the sojourner. Where it says Jesus and his parents sought refuge in Egypt to escape genocide. Where it says Jesus came to bring abundant life. Where Jesus didn’t test God with foolish risks in the desert because he knew there was real peril to contend with in this world and God would have plenty of opportunity to protect and care for him.
In Jesus, God is present with hungry children and addicts and refugees and anyone else who is suffering, oppressed, lost, thirsty, vulnerable, or marginalized. God is an 11. But God became a 1. So that all the Ones would know that the Devil has been hushed and their cries can be heard. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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