예배안내
“Three Questions for the Christian Life (그리스도인의 삶을 위한 세 가지 질문)”
Dr. Sujin Pak
Luke 4: 1-13 누가복음 4:1-13
I grew up in a strong Christian family. My Korean father is an ordained Methodist pastor and spent his life working as a professor of worship and preaching at Mokwon Methodist University in Taejon, S. Korea. My white American mother met my father as a single Methodist missionary in S. Korea. Moreover, both of my grandfathers were Methodist ministers, and many of my uncles, aunts, and grandmothers on both sides of my family have also served as varying forms of church leaders—whether as ordained pastors and deacons or lay leaders and pastor’s wives. I have fond memories of the time when my Korean grandmother lived with us in our home in Taejon. She would daily attend the 5 am prayer services. She started her day every day singing her favorite hymns in praise to God as she prepared to leave the house for early morning prayer. Truth be told, there were a few years she and I shared a room, and I cannot say that at the time I was so fond of being awakened at 4:30 am! Yet, she was an incredible model of holy faithfulness. Often to my father’s dismay, she regularly welcomed beggars at our door, providing them with simple work in our garden and feeding them lunch. This is all to say, I grew up with many models of Christian faith.
My father often told me that even as a small child I had faith in God. He reminded me that this is a great gift of God, and this is true. So, at this point in my early life, I had a strong, simple faith, taught and encouraged by the examples of my family. Faith was smooth and belief in God seemed easy. In my high school and college years, I found myself often in positions of leadership, especially spiritual leadership. I confess that I at times became quite proud of this leadership, proud of my faith in God, and proud of the gifts and abilities God had given me. I attended college at Emory University, did well in school, and increasingly took on leadership roles. Of course, I had anxiety about getting good grades, and big questions about what I wanted to do for my major or what line of work I would pursue; but overall, my faith seemed solid. But, in the middle of my second year of college, God stopped me in my tracks. I experienced for the first time in my life a profound spiritual wilderness, a profound time of trial.
We see in the first verse of this passage from Luke that Jesus was “full of the Holy Spirit” and was “led by the Spirit into the wilderness.” Oftentimes—as this passage indicates—some of the most severe trials and temptations occur when we feel strong in our Christian walk and secure in our faith—“full of the Holy Spirit.” It is often at this time that we can be most vulnerable to attack or temptation—perhaps because we have become overconfident. Or, it could be that we are at a pivotal point in our journey. Remember that in this passage in Luke 4, Jesus was about to set forth on his public ministry. Jesus was at a critical point in his vocation.
Notice also that the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness. We might like to think that as a faithful person, we would simply be rewarded, and life would be clear. Yet, the call to the Christian life is a radical one. When deeply pursued, it is often not smooth or easy. For example, when God promises in Isaiah 40:4 that God will make the rough places smooth, you might notice that such actually requires that we go through the rough places!
One might understand the wilderness as signifying a time of spiritual dryness, where regular nourishment—food and water—are scarce. Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, enters an environment where the refreshing flow and nourishment of the Spirit are no longer as apparent as they had been. Yet, what appears and feels like an absence of the Spirit is not, in actuality, so. In wilderness times, we cannot rely upon what we see and feel. We may acutely feel that God is absent, that God has abandoned us. We might not see any visible indication of God’s presence. This is a pivotal moment where lived faith is evoked. What need is there of faith, if you solidly feel God’s presence, counsel, comfort, and guidance? It is in these times—these wilderness times—where faith rises amidst deep uncertainty, fear, and loneliness. Faith does not rest upon what we see. Faith itself becomes a form of vision—a way of seeing in the midst of uncertainty—“Faith is the conviction of things not seen” (Heb 11:1).
So, in my Christian walk up to this point in college, I experienced a deep spiritual wilderness. It was as if I was in a room with God, and God was sitting in the corner—present but absolutely and resolutely silent. A part of me knew God was still there, that God had not abandoned me, but God was making me face the several questions that this passage in Luke 4 raises—forcing me to face the idols in my life, forcing me to struggle with central questions of my identity and purpose.
Three questions are at play in the three temptations that Jesus faced. It was these three questions that I came face to face with. It is still these three questions that I ask myself at critical junctures in my life—indeed, I need to ask them every day.
The first temptation, in which the tempter tells Jesus to turn a stone into bread, points to the question: “Where do your nourishment and strength come from? What are you trusting in for your life?” The temptation is that we rely on material things for our happiness and sustenance. Indeed, we strive after them; our focus becomes consumed by them. Material things increasingly become the essence, purpose, and meaning of our lives. These things can seem harmless; they can be essential to our life!—good food, a house, a reliable job, nice clothes, a partner, a good car, family and friends, good health, beauty. And so they increasingly and deceptively take control of our vision, time, and desires. As I asked myself this question—“What am I trusting in for my life?” I realized that at the top of the list were my accomplishments. The other item at the top of my list surprised me—it was not only how I appeared in terms of accomplishments but my actual physical appearance. I came face to face with my own vanity. I was made to see how much my happiness depended upon my accomplishments and physical appearance. This was made even more obvious to me in my struggle with adult acne. I could feel how much this defeated me each time I looked in the mirror. I had to admit to myself these idols in my life and lay them down before God.
Jesus’ response to this temptation of relying upon physical or material things as what we trust for our lives recognizes that these material things are in many respects essential for our life. Yet, his response moves beyond this to a deeper truth: even if we have all the material things we consider essential, it would not be enough because we do not live by the material alone. We live by the Word of God.
But what is meant by “the Word of God?” God spoke a word, and the world was created. God’s word is creative, powerful, transformative, life-producing, life-altering, and life-giving. The Word of God is the source of life itself. It is a living and active Word—it is Life itself. The “Word of God” ultimately points to Jesus. That God chose to become like us—to become incarnate in Christ—that we might have access to the things of God. As John 1 explains:
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, full of grace and truth. … From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. No one has ever seen God. It is Jesus who has made God known.
We do not live by bread alone. We are called to live in growing relationship with God. We are fed by God’s Word—both literally (through reading scripture, church, prayer, meditation) and spiritually, through participating in the grace and gifts offered in Christ.
The second temptation asks the question: “Where does your identity come from?” The tempter offers Jesus glory, authority, and power if only he would bow down and worship him. This temptation appeals to our need for approval and control. It appeals to our need for love and recognition; our need for prestige. It plays on our sense of identity, on the roots of our self-worth. In my own life, I had to face that my self-worth and identity were caught up in my academic success, my accomplishments, my leadership roles, and even my work of ministry. I had become comfortable with being up on a pedestal. My security and my identity increasingly depended upon being in a position of leadership in which I counseled others but in which I myself was not real and vulnerable with anyone.
Now, of course, striving for good grades, doing ministry, and exercising God’s gifts are all GOOD things. The problem was that I was doing all of these things to build up my own self-image and prestige. My identity became rooted in my own efforts, my accomplishments. Moreover, notice the “my” in all of this—I was behaving and believing as if all of this belonged to me, that it was all mine and my own doing. Yet all of life is GIFT from God, and everything I have is actually a gift. When I forgot this, these things became oppressive because I could never have enough, I could never achieve enough, I could never feel like I had “made it”—it was ceaseless—sometimes empty—striving. They had become my idols. Without them, where would I be? Who would I be? My identity was falsely based.
I think such a struggle concerning the core and foundation of identity is quite familiar to Asians and Asian Americans—perhaps particularly Koreans and Korean Americans. The strive to achieve, to be successful, to make your parents proud, to gain prestige and recognition, to honor the hard work of your parents through your accomplishments is a very real pressure. Furthermore, not only these pressures for success, but our Korean-ness itself is a profound identity marker that can also become its own idol, particularly within American society with its various forms of racism, where protecting and nurturing distinct ethnic identities feels—and often is—essential. Yet, when you ask yourself, “What determines who you are most of all?” What is your answer? What is your true, deepest answer?
Jesus responds to the temptation to trust in prestige, success, or even ethnic particularity by proclaiming that true worth and true identity are in God alone.
During those two years of college, I felt like I was being stripped of all the things I had built my identity and security upon—grades, beauty, achievements, self-sufficiency, and personal closeness with God. They had become my idols, but they were shifting sand. They were fleeting and insecure, empty. The process of realizing their emptiness was incredibly painful. Letting go was hard and frightening. But, then, slowly like a healing balm, I began to see myself as I truly am—that even without all of these things, I am still beloved of God. That God loves me not because of these various accouterments and achievements. God simply loves—purely and simply. And then an amazing thing happened. God gave back each of these things I lost or let go of—God gave them back as GIFT, which is what they always were in the first place!
When all praise and recognition are given to God alone, then we suddenly recognize that all is GIFT. And as Gift, there is freedom—true, amazing freedom! As gift, we no longer live to possess, grasp, seize, incessantly acquire, or own and dominate a thing. As gift, we live into it as gift to others and gift to ourselves. And our identity and self-worth are freed from shifting sands, freed from their dependence on changeable, finite, unreliable things.
Finally, the third temptation asks the question: “Of what manner is your faith?” A false faith demands proof of God’s promises. The tempter asks Jesus to throw himself down from the pinnacle of the temple to prove that he is the Son of God. Jesus responds that true faith is of a very different manner—it is to believe something to be so without demanding proof of it. You might also notice that the tempter is even more cunning—quoting Scripture to verify and justify the request, for it did not go unnoticed that Jesus had responded to the prior temptations by quoting scripture. We see, then, that Scripture can be twisted and weaponized in wrongful ways. Jesus knows the text the tempter quotes is true—God can command the angels to protect him—but Jesus also knows that to do so as a testing or demanding proof of God’s faithfulness is a perversion of this passage.
I graduated from college and went on to pursue a master’s and then a Ph.D. at Duke. I had a clear calling from God to teach church history and to be involved in theological leadership for the good of the church and academy. All along the way, God continued to open doors and affirm this calling in my life. But part of me was angry with God because one key aspect of my life was unanswered and empty. I had a clear career path, but I was alone. I had no partner with whom to share my life and live out my hope of having a family of my own. I was thirty years old and single with no prospect in sight. I was thriving in one aspect—in terms of career—but alone and lonely. It was very hard to have faith that God had a plan for this void in my life. I spent many nights in prayer, wrestling, weeping, crying out in anger. But, slowly I came to grasp a faith in things not yet seen.
During this time of wrestling and prayer, I received a promise from God—that someone from my past would come back into my life and he would be the one. I was often tempted to test God’s promise—to ask God to prove it to me and make it clear. But what I learned is that for each step of the way, God asked me to step forward in faith, to believe. To not expect God to just hand me the promise, but to daily take the next faithful step. And, indeed, in God’s perfect timing, God brought a person back into my life: Ken, a son of Presbyterian missionaries to Korea who grew up the first 18 years of his life in Korea, who loved Korea, and whose life and identity are deeply shaped by his time in Korea.
As you look at your life, ask yourselves: Who or what am I trusting in for my life? Where does my identity come from? Of what manner is my faith?
There is no single ‘arrival’ point for these three questions. Even as I struggled with them those many years ago, I continue to struggle with them every day in some fashion. I’m tempted to trust my life to material things. I’m lured to rely on prestige, success, and recognition to buttress my identity and self-worth. Choosing to live a life of daring and authentic faith is always the harder path. If we see ourselves honestly, we will see that we wrestle with hidden and not-so-hidden idols daily. Such recognition is hard, and the path of ridding oneself of these idols is painful—it is a wilderness experience, for it inevitably entails a kind of stripping away. Yet, we must be willing to embrace this wrestling. It is necessary to a deep life of faith. It is a key practice of the life of abundance and freedom that God desires for us—calls us to! Only then might we share our gifts—as gifts (not accomplishments)—and be a gift to others.