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In the summer before I graduated from seminary, I served at Holy Comforter Episcopal Church in Atlanta, GA. Holy Comforter was made up primarily of people who live with some form of mental illness, and connected with their ministry was the Friendship Center which provided activities for these folks.
I learned a great deal about the history of care for those living with mental illness and disability in this country during my time at the Friendship Center. Some of you may remember when people living with severe mental illnesses were institutionalized. As the vast majority of us can agree, Mental Institutions did not do the best job of actually helping those they were supposed to serve. We needed a different system. We needed a different solution.
People went for the obvious and quickest fix to the problem: just get rid of Mental Institutions. On the surface, that might seem like the right direction to go in.
The problem is that those who came up with this solution didn’t actually stop to think about the people they were trying to help. All of a sudden, you had a population of people on the streets who didn’t have the tools to figure out what they needed or where they could go.
That’s when the predators swept in. These were the people who realized they could make some money off of the plights of others. They could provide housing for those living with mental disabilities and illnesses, cash their disability checks, and give these people substandard living arrangements and sustenance, some of which are pretty horrifying to hear about.
A different solution for how to help our fellow human beings living with mental illness or disability was needed. That’s where the Friendship Center came in. They provide food, health clinics, clothing, opportunities for expression in art and gardening, and church services to this population of people. Not only do they help those living with mental illness with their physical and spiritual needs, but they also give them hope.
Doing so is not always easy. It involves living within the mess of reality in a way the world was not willing to. The Friendship Center has to work with the people who provide housing to participants in order to be able to pick them up (which was, incidentally, one of my tasks in the summer I served there) and bring them back to Holy Comforter for church and programming. The policy of the Center was not to report on living conditions for our participants. This policy was a result of experience. When local authorities get wind of predatory landlords, what often happens is that they just move, taking participants with them. That would mean the Friendship Center can no longer serve those people. They wouldn’t be able to provide for their health and spiritual needs. Most of all, they wouldn’t be able to continue to supply hope.
The Friendship Center at Holy Comforter didn’t fall into the same temptation that world did. They didn’t elect for the easy way that, while appearing to serve the “common good”, does not take into account those individuals who make up that common group. They choose the way that speaks to our values and identity as Christians. They provide love, support, grace, and hope to those who are marginalized and those who desperately need it.
Jesus too was tempted with the easy path. That’s what the devil is offering Jesus in our Gospel today. Jesus’ mission was to reveal God to us all and to bring us back to be in relationship with the Lord (Seeing as it is Lent, we might even be tempted to say Jesus came to help us turn back, or repent).
There are two main issues that Jesus faces in this mission: the difficulty of people accepting His authority and the limitations Jesus had by being present only in the backwaters of the backwaters of the Roman Empire. The devil aims to change that.
The devil’s first offer is an irrefutable sign that Jesus is, in fact, the Messiah. If Jesus would only throw Himself off the pinnacle of the Temple, the angels would catch Him, giving proof of His divinity.
The devil also offers Jesus control over all the nations. This would streamline Jesus’ ability to get His message across to the whole world. In fact, He could just command everyone to believe in Him, to believe in God.
But Jesus refuses both these offers because they would make Him less than He was. Throwing Himself off the height of Temple wouldn’t show He was the Son of God. As Jesus Himself states, using, we should note, Scripture that any Hebrew child would be able to quote, it would simply be putting “God to the test.” That’s not what a loyal servant, let alone the Son of God, would do.
While controlling the nations would make Jesus’ life easier, the price would be bowing down to the devil. That again would make Jesus less than He was. He would no longer be God’s servant, but the slave of the sworn enemy of the Lord.
Jesus could have chosen the easy way to get His message across. Instead, He chose to be true to Himself and to His mission. He chose the way that would actually help other people. He chose giving life and grace to others over controlling and subjugating them.
It can be really tempting to act first and think later, especially when our motives appear to be pure. We are, after all, called at the start of the Litany of Penitence, which we prayed together on Ash Wednesday, to no longer be deaf to the call to serve others as Christ Jesus served us. However, we are also called, in that very same section of the Litany, to be true to the mind of Christ as well.
To truly do good in the world means actually acting as Christians. It means taking the time to discern. That doesn’t mean we aren’t called to help others, but it does mean we are called to take the time to make sure our good intentions are, in fact, leading to good. Part of the way we do that is by not just looking for the easy or immediate solution, but seeing how we can best serve humanity by reaching out to those individuals in our community and providing not just spiritual and physical needs, but giving them hope as well. Our mission is to provide hope: hope of grace, hope of transformation, and hope in the Resurrection. When we stay true to this mission, we stay true to who we are and truly enact good in the world, no matter how long it takes or how hard it is to do. Don’t be tempted by the easy way, but remain who you are as Children of God in Christ Jesus.