Prayer: Come Holy Spirit, come.  Take my lips and speak with them.  Take our minds and think with them.  Take our hearts and set them in fire with love for you.  In Christ’s name, we ask it.  Amen.

Anybody heard of Saint Expeditus?  Surprisingly if you ask officials at the Vatican, they’ve never heard of him either.  Nonetheless St. Expeditus is quickly becoming the most popular saint in Brazil—a country that has 125 million Roman Catholics.  Some people have suggested that he was an Armenian Christian martyr.  According to one account, his relics were sent in a crate from Italy to a French convent in the 19th century.  When the nuns saw the crate labeled “spedito” which is Italian for “sent off,” they thought it was the name of the saint, so they translated it into Latin, expeditus.  The Wall Street Journal reports that all over Brazil there are billboards, makeshift altars and Internet sites with depictions of Saint Expeditus.  Pictures of the saint show a Roman soldier holding a cross inscribed with the Latin word hodie, which means “today.”  “Expeditus is the saint for real-time solutions…[problems being solved today],” says a religious studies professor at Catholic University in San Paulo, Brazil.

That’s why a Brazilian homemaker needing a real-time solution to a serious problem turned to St. Expeditus.  Unable to count on support from her husband’s business after a brutal economic downturn, Maria hit the streets in search of a job—only to receive a pile of rejection letters after weeks of looking.  So Maria went out on a limb and lifted up a prayer to Saint Expeditus, looking for an immediate solution to her urgent cause.  Well in no time at all the phone rang—an import shop needed a salesperson to start right away.  Maria was convinced that her prayer to St. Expeditus had been answered.  The word got around, and soon a friend accompanied Maria to the Saint Expeditus Chapel to pray that she would be offered a job she was interested in at a local shoe store—and she did.  Today worshipers at the chapel’s Sunday Mass are overflowing onto the streets.

Now you don’t have to be Brazilian or Catholic to be drawn to this patron saint of urgent causes and real-time solutions, because we’ve all found ourselves in desperate situations that need quick resolutions.  We’ve needed an infusion of cash to pay a bill...a new brand of medication to control our anxiety or some other illness...a healthy relationship to save us from loneliness...a new direction in life when things seem to be spiraling out of control.  We all have needs.  And, from time to time we all cry out desperately for help.

In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus finds himself in a pretty desperate situation.  The very personification and incarnation of evil sets at Jesus’ feet three very tempting offers.  The devil offers Jesus material comfort something we all desire.  He offers Jesus unimaginable fame and influence, and he offers Jesus the power to rule the world—tempting indeed.  However, in his hour of need, Jesus doesn’t call upon St. Expeditus or even the angels of heaven to get him out of a jam.  Jesus chooses an altogether different strategy to take the devil head on.  When tempted, Jesus turns to the written word of God.  And his tactic seems to work quite well.  Three times Jesus is tempted and three times Jesus rejects the offer with words from the book of Deuteronomy—the fifth book of the bible.  Clearly scripture is profoundly important to Jesus as he makes his way through the trials and tribulations of his earthly pilgrimage.  And scripture should be just that important in our life as well.

“Put on the whole armor of God,” recommends St. Paul to the Ephesians, “so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.”  This armor includes a belt of truth, a breastplate of righteousness, a shield of faith, a helmet of salvation, and—in line with what Jesus used in his time of temptation—“the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”  I actually have a student who recently graduated from UT who only half jokingly refers to his bible, at times, as his sword.  I’ll never forget one year on our Spring Break mission trip when he asked if anyone had a “sword on them” because he wanted to look up a verse in one of Paul’s letters.  Now personally I am a little uncomfortable referring to the bible as a weapon.  Nonetheless, scripture is “living and active,” says the writer of Hebrews, “sharper than any two-edged sword.”  The fact is one of the best ways for a person to resist the devil and draw near to God is to immerse oneself in Holy Scripture.  We all know this, and there’s probably very few conscientious disciple of Jesus who wouldn’t agree that the bible is incredibly important to understanding and living our lives.

But I think it is important to ask the question: What exactly gave these scriptures power when Jesus cited them?  Was it a case of simply finding the right scriptural weapon and lobbing it at the devil like some sort of biblical bomb?  Was it like, “Okay, he’s throwing the fame and power temptation at me, where’s that Bible verse that conquers the desire to be famous and powerful?  Oh, yeah Matthew 19:30, ‘The last will be first, and the first will be last.’  Now I’m all good!”  Is that all it takes?  Perhaps you have been given one of those extensive lists of scripture references for people in times of need.  My mom once gave me one called “Emergency Phone Numbers”—when you are in danger call, Psalm 91—when you are lonely and fearful, call Psalm 23—when you are going through temptation, call James 1:12-16.
 
Don’t get me wrong all of these passages are worth reading, marking and inwardly digesting.  But do you think the temptation an addict confronts to abuse alcohol or drugs will simply vanish because he or she read the bible this morning?  Do you think that your life will be picture perfect if you only memorize more scripture?  Do you think that health, wealth and happiness will be yours—someday—if you just improve your attendance at weekly bible study?  The verses in Holy Scripture are not magic formulas. They’re not incantations. They didn’t “work” for Jesus like a magic charm.  So where’s the power?

Notice that Jesus was in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights in prayer and meditation before the battle royale with the devil began.  Here’s a thought that will probably not be particularly surprising to you.  But if you spend 40 days and nights praying and fasting in the wilderness, meditating on the word, spending time with God, you should be in fairly good shape to handle whatever life or the devil throws at you.  The devil tried to use Jesus’ material needs, in particular, his hunger to try and tempt him.  The devil tried to tempt Jesus with the two biggies of fame and power that still consume the hearts and minds of so many in our world.  The devil even tried to manipulate Jesus with the bible’s own words.  None of it worked.  Jesus had been praying and fasting in the wilderness for 40 days.  He was more than prepared to take the devil on.

The power of Scripture lies not in the words on a page.  That’s just ink.  We can’t expect to use the bible as some sort of garlic to ward off some demon.  Rather, the power to resist evil and do good resides within the person for whom the written word becomes a source of spiritual nourishment which we return to immerse ourselves in often.  The bible becomes a bed-rock in our lives when it is read and studied humbly, prayerfully, often, and within the context of the Christian life in its entirety.  Reading and studying the bible is important, but it must be complemented by many other aspects of the Christian life if it to become a spiritual bedrock in our lives.   Our reading of scripture is informed and enriched by worshipping God regularly, participating in a community of faith, setting aside time for prayer, and reaching out to those in need with arms of love.  Alongside reading and studying scripture, if we will commit to these disciplines, we are postured to take on life, no matter what come our way, with healthy hearts, healthy minds, and healthy spirits.
 
Jesus turned to Scripture in his hour of temptation because he was accustomed to turning to Scripture in his hours, many hours, of service, prayer and worship.  It wasn’t quoting scripture that saved Jesus in his wilderness battle against the devil.  The devil can even quote scripture—quite well in fact.  It was the 40 days of prayer, fasting, and meditation on God’s word prior to the battle that enabled Jesus to come out on top 

Last Wednesday, with the imposition of ashes, we began our Lenten pilgrimage.  Lent is the church’s annual call for all disciples of Jesus Christ to recommit ourselves to taking our spiritual lives seriously.  And so today, as the church has done for centuries, I call each of you to the observance of a Holy Lent—by reading and meditating on God’s holy word, certainly, but also by being committed to worship, to prayer, to participating in the community of faith and by offering hospitality to the stranger especially the stranger in need. 

No offence intended toward St. Expeditus, but, rather than turning to him when looking for a quick fix to an immediate problem, it might be more helpful if, instead this Lent, we model our whole lives on Jesus’ example of a complete spiritual life in the wilderness.  That alone will prepare us to face our own trials and temptations.  Amen. 

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