Resisting Temptation

Rev. Jeffrey Symynkywicz, October 18, 2009

            A woman was married to a real cheapskate. He wouldn’t let her buy anything at all. One day, she told him that she was going out—but just window-shopping. “Okay,” he said, “you can look—but don’t buy anything.”

            A couple of hours later, she came home—with a brand new dress.

            “What’s this?” the husband said. “I thought I told you to look, but not to buy.”

            “Well,” the wife replied, “I saw this beautiful dress. It looked so nice. So, I thought I’d just try it on, and when I did, the Devil said, ‘It sure looks good on you.’”

            To which, her husband replied, “Then you should have told him right then and there, ‘Get thee behind me Satan!’”

            “I did,” she answered. “But when he got behind me, he said, ‘It sure looks good from the back, too.’”

            “I can resist everything except temptation,” Oscar Wilde once said. Sometimes, we don’t resist temptation just because we don’t want to. So, we try to find someone to blame: The Devil made me do it… Or, if we don’t really believe in the Devil, we find another scapegoat. Something in our background is to blame; it’s our parents’ fault. Or our spouse’s. Our our children’s. Reason is a wonderful human gift, but rationalization is dangerous to our spirits. Rationalization is sort of reason’s evil step child. It’s amazing what we can rationalize away sometimes, and how quickly:

            “I deserve that cookie,” I’ll tell myself. (And the second… and the third…) “I’ve worked so hard today. I got up so early. I’m such a decent person—usually. I give up so many things. I don’t make as much money as Dan Brown, and I write just as well as he does…”

The whole flood of rationalizations ushers forth, drowning whatever willpower I might have had; drowning reason’s voice telling me, “Lay off the cookies, Tubby.” Drowning, indeed, the voice of God in my soul, that reminds me that it is my spirit  that is hungering and needs to be fed.

            So it’s not the Devil that causes us to give in to temptation. It’s our own individual choices. The choice we make in that instant; in that moment. None of which says that our lives are not complicated, or that many different influences have brought us to that moment, and inform our choices. None of which denies that, sometimes, we have been more sinned against than sinning in these lives of ours, and that the pain and hurt of the past impacts how we perceive the present.

            But ultimately, we choose what we will do, how we will act. As Dumbledore tells Harry Potter at the end of The Chamber of Secrets, “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” Our life is the sum total of the choices we have made, and that is always a two-edged sword.

            Which brings us back to King David.

            When we last heard from David (in last week’s sermon) the Judge, Samuel, was just about to anoint him king over all Israel. “Rise up and anoint him, for this is the one,” the Lord tells Samuel, and Samuel does.

            And a great king David will be. He defeats the Philistines. He levels Goliath. He conquers vast territories. He builds up a great and powerful kingdom.

            But like other pretty good leaders since, David faces his share of temptations. And as with some other pretty good leaders since, those temptations seem to have been of the sexual sort; he had this thing for the ladies, it seems.

            One woman in particular: Bathsheba.

The book II Samuel in the Hebrew Bible tells us:

“In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.

                ^“One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, ‘Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?’ Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her… Then she went back home.”

            Oh, if David had just had a fondness for Chips Ahoy! instead!

            But we all choose our own poison. We all have our own “Pink Cadillac” that entices us, even if it takes different forms. In spite of the fact that he already had a whole harem back at the palace, and multiple wives, David couldn’t resist the temptation of the beautiful Bathsheba.

            So he gives in to his temptation. In the face of his lust, his reason falls away. All that wisdom that was within him. All that skill as king, and warrior, and artist, and poet. All of that greater self that was within him. It all falls by the wayside because that voice within tells him, “You deserve this. You’ve worked hard for Israel. You’ve given up so much in service to your people. What harm will it do?”

            So David does not resist temptation. He gives in. And as is so often the case, it seldom stops at one cookie. Our “sins” (of I may use that sort of old-fashioned word) have this way of reverberating. They take on a life of their own. They spin out of our control.

            Guess what? Bathsheba gets pregnant.

            And we know the baby isn’t Uriah’s, because Uriah has been off with “the whole Israelite army” fighting David’s war for him.

David has a scandal on his hands. He needs to cover it up.

So David pulls some strings (he is the President, I mean the King, after all). He summons Uriah back to Jerusalem, chats with him a bit about the military situation, then tells him, “You can go now. Go home, and be with your wife.”

But, good soldier that he is, Uriah won’t go. “My men are still on the field of battle,” he says. “Israel is still at war. How would it look if I go home now and mess around with my wife?” No, to the righteeous Uriah, that would be the equivalent of going AWOL.

The days pass, and Uriah won’t leave David’s side. He sleeps at the entrance of the king’s house, with all of the king’s servants. He won’t leave. David even tries to get him drunk, so that he’ll stumble home to Bathsheba. But when he gets drunk, Uriah passes out in the palace, and spends the night with the servants again. Finally, David gives up, and sends Uriah back to the front lines.

But he’s still got this scandal on his hands. It threatens to undermine his entire presidency, I mean kingship. What’s David going to do?

He hatches a plot. He’s going to have Uriah killed. He has Uriah stationed at the front of the line of battle, and then provokes a fight with the armies of Joab. But when the Joabites attack, David makes sure that his armies retreat—all except Uriah, that is. Uriah is killed in battle. After a decent period of mourning, David takes Bathsheba for his wife, and she bears him a child.

So what began as a simple roll in the hay soon degenerates into deceit and mayhem and even murder. So often, in political life and in private affairs, it’s the cover-up that causes worse crimes than the original transgression.

Waist deep in the big muddy
You start out standing but end up crawlin'…

            Once we give in to what we know is temptation, we’ve given up the pilot’s chair to forces outside of ourselves. We’ve abdicated control over some important aspect of our lives. And we’ve launched an attack against our own character and integrity.

            But it isn’t temptation itself that is the problem. There’s nothing wrong with us if we face temptations in our lives. They come with the territory of being human, of being alive. Indeed, being able to recognize a temptation for what it is, really, a sign of our spiritual and moral health.

            “Yield not to temptation,” an old gospel hymn says, “for yielding is a sin.” Being tempted isn’t the sin. Yielding to it is.

            Very often, temptation is a by-product of faith. After his baptism by John the Baptist, Jesus retreats into the wilderness. What’s the first thing that follows him there? Temptation. If he turns his back on God, that voice tells him, he could have riches—power—fame—anything.

            “Come on, Jesus,” the ways of the world say to Jesus. “Just give in. You deserve it. You’ve worked so hard. You’ve given up so much. The way of faith is too hard. Why bother? Give in to me. Give in to temptation.”

            As the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “Temptation is a concrete happening which juts out from the course of life.” It’s a barrier between us and our Higher Power, a distraction that draws our attention away from the road the Spirit wants us to take. As another minister has put it, “Temptation is a kind of spiritual novocaine which deadens the sensibilities of faith to the demands and needs of the [spiritual] life.” Temptations are all those dead end roads that seek to lure us off the course of our spiritual pathway. Indeed, temptation is faith’s proving ground.

            Which sort of reminds me of a scene from an old episode of I Love Lucy, which I saw a hundred years ago, I think, but which I’ve never been able to forget. (And maybe now, at last, I’ve figured out what Lucy was trying to teach me.)

            Lucy and Ricky and their friends, Fred and Ethel Mertz, have decided to take a long car trip across country. So they drive and drive and drive, way out into the middle of nowhere. By the time they decide to stop for the night, it’s too late. They’ve passed all the motels and restaurants, and it’s pitch black. They’re in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to do but plow on.

            It’s Lucy’s turn to drive, so she takes the wheel. The maps say the next town—the next pit stop, the next hotel, the next place to rest, the next decent meal—is hours away. It will take her almost all night to get there. So she drives and drives. The others fall asleep, one after another. Finally, it’s just Lucy herself, nodding off, with the long dark highway, and several more hours of tedium and hunger, stretching out before her.

            But then, Lucy spies a lit-up sign by the side of the road. It says “Hotel/Diner 1 Mile” and there’s a big arrow, pointing down a dark dirt road. But there’s no such road on her map, and no such “Hotel/Diner” in her AAA book, so what is Lucy to do? Should she take the shortcut, or should she resist temptation and drive on through the night?

            Guess which she decides. She takes the shortcut, of course! (Lucy was no better resisting temptations that I am resisting Chips Ahoys! or David resisting Bathshebas.) She drives down the dirt road. And it goes on—and on—and on. Twisting and turning all the way. The longest (maybe funniest) mile in television history. But finally, triumphantly, she gets there. She reaches the “Hotel/Diner”.

            It’s as seedy and ramshackle as you can imagine. A real dump. The Ricardos and the Mertzes are probably the first customers the place has had in weeks!

            But now that they’re awake, and they’re there, there’s nothing they can do but get out of the car, and walk inside, with visions of bacon and eggs and flapjacks dancing in their heads.

Except none of these things are on the menu. Indeed, nothing’s on the menu. The restaurant is out of everything except some old, dry cheese sandwiches—which the grouchy old owner charges them an arm and a leg for.

          The room they are given in the hotel is right next to the railroad tracks. The center of Fred and Ethel's bed is sunken in so badly that Ethel has tie Fred to one side of the bed, to stop him from rolling into the middle. In the middle of the night, vibrations from a passing train makes Ricky and Lucy’s bed vibrate across the room; then, another train comes by from the opposite direction, and the bed travels back to where it was originally.

          By this point, Ricky and Lucy and Fred and Ethel have decided they’ve had enough. They try to sneak out in the middle of the night without paying. But the owner has a burglar alarm wired to their car. They complain that they have been cheated and aren’t satisfied and don’t want to pay the $16 hotel fee (this was 1955). The owner agrees to refund their money. But when Lucy and Ricky and Fred and Ethel try to leave, they realize that the steering wheel to the car is missing. The owner just happens to have a spare steering wheel that he is willing to sell to them for-- (you guessed it) $16.

Temptation seems to offer us so much:

A chance to feed our addictions—whether it’s food or sex or shopping or alcohol or what have you. We human ones can get addicted to anything, it seems.

Temptation offers us a chance to feel good, for a little while. To get a little something for ourselves. To awaken our senses. And with so little effort. Just a mile down the road…

Life seems so hard at times. It’s often like a long, tedious drive into the darkness of night, with the next town miles and miles away, and us tired and hungry and needing a place to rest.

            The spiritual road can seem to demand so much. Just discipline, and confusion, and sacrifice, and sweat and tears.

But it is the one true road we are on.

Usually, if we swerve off that roads, we find ourselves in a bigger mess than if we’d just kept driving—like Lucy and Ricky back in that ramshackle hotel room.

So may we build up our strength in union with the Spirit—in union with all of that which true and good and wise within us. May we put on the armor of our better selves—the poet, the warrior, the king and queen and prophet that is within us—that is within our souls, that is our deeper self. And armed with these deeper powers—with truth as a belt around our waists and our innate goodness as our breastplate and our connectedness to all life as our birthright—may we find it within ourselves to resist temptation, wherever it may jut out along the course of our journeys, and live out the blessed gospels of the lives that we are truly called to live.

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