Never Use One, Where Two Will Do

The Rev. Alissa Newton

text: Luke 4:1-13

There is a saying among Organization Development consultants: “never use one where two will do.” I think it is derived from an article called “Rule of Thumb for Change Agents” by Herb A. Shepherd. In the article Shepherd lays out some general rules for consultants coming into organizations to effect positive change. And most of them are something like this saying – rules that help the consultant work with the people in the organization, rules that seem designed to keep the consultant’s desire to be a hero in check. Never use one where two will do – don’t go it alone if there is any way that you can include other people in the change that you want to see happen. There is this temptation in consulting work, in leadership work of any kind actually, to sweep in and solve the problems because that feels like the job. I have felt this in my own consulting practice with other congregations, and at times in priestly leadership. There is a desire to simply move alone to fix a thing – and while sometimes that is the right call, most of the time when I fall into this trap I regret it. When a leader tries to take it all on herself, she robs her community of the opportunity to be part of the change. She makes it all about herself. And then there is the basic truth of working with communities of people – real work and real change doesn’t happen because of one person's solo work. Real work, that sort that transforms people and organizations, it only happens in the context of community. Doing change this way, using at least two even if you could manage with one, is harder, messier, and more complicated than the simplicity of a single person's choice. But that is what it takes, for change to really happen. Man, it’s tempting to try it alone, though.

On this first Sunday of Lent we are given a gospel text that is all about this temptation. Jesus heads out into the wilderness after his baptism and while he is there all alone he is tempted, or tested. The devil tells Jesus to do some things, and Jesus says no to all of them. Yet our text suggests that these were not easy decisions, for Jesus. There is at least a little bit of an implication that these ideas the devil has for Jesus while he is alone in the wilderness tempt him. This makes sense. Jesus is just coming in to his own in ministry, he has just been called Beloved by God and is filled with the Holy Spirit. Filled with that power, it must have been tempting for him to use it. There is nothing bad about the desire to eat after forty days of fasting. Think of all the good Jesus could have done if he had simply used his power to rule the world. And who hasn’t wanted to just jump off a cliff sometime or another, and trust that the God, who calls you Beloved, will catch you?

What I find so interesting about these temptations is not their content, but their context. Jesus is filled with Holy Spirit, he knows who he is and what he can do, and he refuses to use that power to effect change while he is alone in the wilderness. Jesus will, throughout the course of the rest of his life and death, say yes in some way to every temptation that he is faced with in the wilderness. He could have simply cut the whole thing short right then, and saved himself a lot of trouble. It would have been easier for Jesus, and maybe for all of us, if he had just fed the world from the stones of the desert, taken rulership right then of the whole thing, and become the sort of supernatural hero who cannot be harmed by the heights or depths of human experience. But Jesus knew better. Jesus knew that these very good, decent, admirable end results were not the reason he had come to be with us. He didn’t come to do great things alone in the wilderness. Jesus came to be with us. He came to build a community of friends who would be transformed by love, and spread that transformation to others. When Jesus says no to temptation, he is deciding not to use one where two or more will do.

So here we are on the first Sunday of Lent, and I keep thinking about Christmas, about Emmanuel, about God-with-us. That baby who we celebrated just a few short weeks ago may be all grown up now, but the man in this passage hasn’t forgotten the lessons of infancy and childhood. He remembers that no good work is accomplished alone – not the work of birth, or the work of childhood or the work of adulthood. Jesus in the wilderness knows that in order to be truly human he will have to do his work with people, among people, as part of the mess and muck and complication of human life and experience. And being truly human is the work that Jesus has come to do – to transform the world by becoming a part of it, to love creation from the inside out, to defeat death by dying and refusing to let death be the end of the story.

Jesus will make bread – not from stones but from his own body, and it will happen all over the world, over and over again throughout centuries after he no longer walks in the wilderness, or anywhere else. Jesus will rule as king – but not by grabbing power, or dominating human beings or systems. Jesus’ rule will be the sure vulnerability of one who has no need to dominate, no need to control. He will triumph by serving, and by refusing the powers that most of us think run the world. And Jesus will fall to his death, death on a cross. This death won’t be a test of God’s love for him but a response to it, an outpouring of love for the world. Jesus doesn’t need or want to be above or apart from humanity. He came to do life with us.

So I want to be clear today, standing before you in this position where I get to talk and you have to listen, I want to be clear that there have been so many times in my own life – as a priest, as a partner, as a mom, as a friend – when I have given in to the temptation to go it alone, when I have assumed that I have the special skills, knowledge, power, whatever, to do what needs to be done without help, or input. It is especially tempting for me to make this mistake when I am in a wilderness place, when I feel low on energy, resources, food, or love. Choosing community, choosing to acknowledge that I cannot transform my world or be transformed in it without my community can be difficult for me, and maybe also for you. Choosing a life affected by the the care, hope, input, complications, mess, and challenge of other people –it can feel harder. But it is always better, more true, and more real. Our gospel this morning says to you and to me that even in the wilderness we are better together. Our gospel says to us that we are never alone, because the God who could have chosen to be separate from us, didn’t. He came out of the wilderness and built a community, and made his home there. It was a choice that killed him, and liberated all of us. Jesus didn’t come to this world just to do things – he came to do things with us. And this morning we see him sacrifice the ease and perfection of simply taking care of things alone for the mess and complication of being with humanity, affected by us and vulnerable to us. So as we gather at our table this morning, and ask God to turn our stones into bread let’s begin Lent together. It may be messier and harder to do our life and faith this way – with hearts and minds open to God in each other, in new people, in the vulnerable neighbors we feel called to see, love, and support. But we worship a God who chose messy over simple, a God who chose us over being alone.