Scripture: Luke 4: 1-13

February 29, 2004

Linda Herold, Certified Lay Speaker

I am so happy to be with you today, and as I look out, I see so many faces that are familiar to me. Some of you were in the congregation of churches that my husband has served here in the county. Some of you I see I have met through the Senior Chorus, and through the Senior Center, and through the water exercise. And my druggist is here, and the flower out here today is because he is a new grandpa. Congratulations.

I grew up in this county and in one of the country churches, Mt. Zion. And of course during that time, we country churches always felt so little and you were the high and mighty church up here on the hill here in town, and so I feel it a great honor to be able to come and speak to you today. It really is a blessing for me. And when John called me, I hesitated for a while, and I thought —you know, he called on Friday — and he said, “You know the Lectionary says that...” and then he said, “Oh, let’s forget about that.” He said, “You just talk about Jesus, whatever.” And I said, “Well, I will do my best. I will fill in for you.” But then when I came and picked up the bulletin, and saw what the scripture was, I decided I would stick with it and I would do my best with whatever the topic was, and that’s what I aim to do today.

The scripture lesson today is taken from Luke 4:1-13, and it is the temptation of Jesus.

What on Earth am I here for? That subject that John was going to talk on — I don’t know what he had in mind to say — but I have something in mind. I have asked myself that question too. What on Earth am I here for? And I bet you’ve asked yourself. And today you say, “Well, you’re not John and you’re not Marietta. What are you here for?” Today is a special day; it is the first Sunday in Lent; it is Leap Year. It is the fifth Sunday in February. It’s a special day, but what am I here for? Well, I’m here because I’m a Certified Lay Speaker. I was called to be a Certified Lay Speaker by God and I answered that calling. And in our training, we are to go and fill in when there is a need, and I am your district coordinator for filling in Certified Lay Speakers when they are needed in your county. You have some Certified Lay Speakers in your church that I have called on, but today I am filling in for myself. You could be a Certified Lay Speaker by going and taking training, and the training sessions are each Spring and they are usually in Wilkesboro. This year it is the last Saturday in April and the last Saturday in May — two Saturdays that you would have to give up to get your training to be a Certified Lay Speaker. As a Lay Speaker you go in and spread the word of God, give your testimony, if nothing else, your life as being a Christian.

I’m going to attempt to work on the scripture that I read today. The scripture lesson today was about the temptations of Jesus while he was fasting in the wilderness. Forty days and forty nights without food. Now that can make a person vulnerable. It would me. Just fasting for a day to have surgery or to have some kind of test made — oh, I am so hungry when it is all over with, and it doesn’t take much to tempt me.

Now Satan was out there and said to him, “Why don’t you just take that stone and turn it into bread?” But there was another reason that Jesus was there. Jesus knew a lot about these people. He knew how many there were who had little to eat, who might be anxious, often for bare substance. He never forgot man’s nature. He was to teach His disciples to pray: Give us this day our daily bread. He knew that He could gain a quick following of the people if he gave them what they most instinctively wanted: better conditions of life, some relative abundance instead of poverty.

But Jesus answered Satan saying, “It is written that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.” Jesus knew where His emphasis had to fall. He could not take the short road to popularity and turn that stone into bread and turn popular, and suddenly He was a hero. He needed to teach the people about their souls. Their souls were more important than the bread for their bodies. He must help men, most of all, to hunger for God.

I want to stop here and share a personal testimony with you about my own life and what I have to share with God. As a young child, I felt the calling to go into some type of ministry. And when I was a young child, there were not female ministers like there are today, so I didn’t know what my calling really was. But I felt like God was calling me to minister in some way. And I prayed and I prayed. I had a special place. We lived out in the country and we had well water to draw. We didn’t have a pump that pumped it into the house. And one of my chores, as a child, was to go to the well and to carry buckets of water back to the house. And so, when I would go to the well, it was away from the house. It was a private place. It was my private place to talk to God. And when I was there, I would sit down by the well and I would talk, just as though He were right there. And He was. “God, what do you want me to do? I don’t think I can be a preacher, but what do You want me to do?” And then, it came to me: You can sing! And I could. God gave me a talent to sing. And I said, “OK I will sing for You. I may not be able to preach, but I can sing.” And I have fulfilled that dream and that life for me. I have been singing ever since then, and everywhere that we have served I sing, and I still sing, and now I am director of the Senior Chorus and we go every week to a rest home here in the county, singing. I just love to sing. God gave me the talent to sing. I grew up in a singing family; the whole family sings. And I thought, I can sing, and I can share my message through song.

But then I thought — as a teenager, I came up here to different district meetings we had, and I saw that you had a Director of Christian Education person here — ah, that’s a female; maybe I could do that. And so that was my aim when I left home and went off to college — to become a Director of Christian Education, hoping while I was doing so, I might run into some eligible guy who was going into the ministry and become a preacher’s wife.

You know, it didn’t happen that way. That didn’t follow through as I had planned. And I came back home from school and I went to work, helping to support the family because, I am one of twelve kids. And during my time of dating, my parents were very strict and they said, “If you date so and so, they’ve got to go to church with you.” Well, that usually turned them off. They didn’t want to go to church with me. But when I met John Herold, it was in the cruising days. You know, we used to have cruising days uptown. We would drive around the square and back down to the depot and around, and I met him there, and we starting dating. He wasn’t in church; he wasn’t even a Christian, but he did go to church with me and he became a Christian while we were dating. And after we were married, he joined my church and we were planning to build a church here in Lenoir. I had that house plan so vivid in my mind that anytime you asked me about it, I could just draw you out a blueprint.

And then he goes to Hickory to apply for a new job to make better money so we could get a loan, and he comes home and he says, “I’m not going to take that job. I’ve decided that I am going to take our savings and go back to school and go into the Ministry.”

Whooa. That house plan just went spoof. I no longer saw it, because that was my dream. I now was going to be married to that Minister that I wanted to be married to. So I helped him everyway that I could. I was the one who went to work and put food on the table while he went to school. And I was successful with that. He was successful in getting scholarships and getting help to help get him through. And when we left Lenoir to go to Emory University where he took his seminary training, my father thought, “How crazy those kids are.” See, he took an appointment before he went to seminary. While he was in undergraduate school, he was serving a church, and we lived in a parsonage, so we had a home and we had a salary. But when he went to Emory, no salary, no home, no place to live. And my dad said, “You are crazy.” But we went on faith.

Now, I had been working here at the Register of Deeds Office in Caldwell County and when I got to Emory I thought I’d be able to get a job down there without any problem at all. Well, it wasn’t that easy. We were lucky in that there was a lady helping with support of college students, who said, “I know someone who needs a housekeeper for the summer, and you can live in her house free of rent, just to take care of it while she is away for the summer.” We did that, and while we were there I searched for a job. I searched that Atlanta Constitution, which was so thick, every day and I went place to place and applied and applied. Nothing. Time was running out. It was getting time for the lady to come back. We still didn’t have a place to live. I still didn’t have a job. What were we going to do?

One day we were driving into Decatur and all of a sudden, there was the Court House, right in front of us. And I said, “I hadn’t thought about that. Let’s stop and see if they have anything at the Court House.”

So I went in and they directed me from that building to a new building and from that building on to another building to take a test so that I would be classed at a certain level for my salary. My husband was sitting out front, waiting for me to come back, and I never came back. What happened to her? I got that job because I had had some experience working in the Register of Deeds office and so, I helped put him through Seminary. Put Hubby Through. That’s the degree I got. But I enjoyed every bit of it.

And just before he graduated from Seminary we had our first child and I was able to work up until almost to the time for her to be born, and she was two months old when we came back to Western North Carolina Conference. And he served Western North Carolina Conference for thirty-five years and retired two years ago. And all of those thirty-five years I was by his side, supporting him in whatever ... (tape change)….. and doing whatever I could for the church. I loved working with children, so I usually had a children’s choir wherever we served and I loved cooking, and so I was always in the kitchen. And when you’re talking about food, we Methodists love to eat, you know; you can tell that about me. But wherever we served I was always in the kitchen helping with those fundraisers, and we had a lot of those in our thirty-five years. But I feel like God had a place for me. I thought that I could do it by myself, but I couldn’t. And when I had given up, He came along and filled my needs. He supplied my need.

Now I’m ready for the second temptation. Now the devil didn’t stop with that temptation. He took Jesus up onto a high mountain and he showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and he said, “I will give you all this if You will worship me.” Here again, the temptation was great. This would give Jesus the Messiah-ship that His people were looking for. They were looking for a man on a horse with the sword of deliverance in His hand, for the oppression of Rome rested heavily upon their bodies and their souls. And they wanted to be free. And if He goes in with Satan, He could dethrone Tiberius and help the oppressed people within the Roman Empire.

You know, we had such a man here: just after World War I, Adolph Hitler. He was so incredible. He followed his vision of imperial conquest that he came within a hair-breadth of being the ruler of all Europe and having supreme control of the whole world. But the difference between Jesus and Hitler was a great gulf. It was as different as night and day. But underneath both is the fact which gives its meaning to that second temptation: they could have had limitless power at the price of others.

And Satan was saying, “You can have all this if you will just bow down and worship me.”

And what did Jesus say back to Satan? “You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.” For Jesus was to teach us to serve God first, then we would receive our rewards.

I just finished reading Bruce Wilkinson’s book, The Life God Rewards. I have read three of his books now, and this book is great. And I believe in rewards. I believe God rewarded me for being a servant of his. I think that my life has been fulfilled. It’s been fulfilled today, just being here and able to speak to you. It has been sort of a dream of mine — to come to First United Methodist Church in Lenoir, the house on the hill that I always looked up to.

Well now, I am going to talk about Mel Gibson and the movies. Of course, you know that has been the news. Last night I was watching the previews on TV and I have been reading about it in the papers. The Charlotte Observer had several interviews yesterday. And I believe there are going to be some rewards from that. I believe that it is going to make a difference. I believe that there is going to be a great turning around. And I am hoping that non-Christians will come to know Christ after seeing this movie. I haven’t seen it yet but I do plan to. It comes at a good time for us Christians as we are celebrating Lent, and as we learn more of why Jesus had to suffer the way that He did for our sins.

Dawn Hand, who was writing in our Christian Advocate, interviewed Charles Kyker, the minister of Christ United Methodist Church in Hickory and one of his lay persons and I want to read to you just a little bit of what he said.

DAWN: Do you think the movie is going to have a major impact in religious and secular society in the U. S.?

CHARLES: Yes. You can count on its having a major impact, especially in people thirty-five and younger. This is no smoke and mirrors presentation of the Gospel. It is real and it is right. There is nothing flip or pretentious about The Passion. This movie will offend people. Skeptics will be moved to reconsider and it will challenge any scholar who takes Jesus of Nazareth seriously.

And then Michael Bell, whose Lay Person’s remark to that same question: Yes. It has already. As expected, the secular press has claimed the film will elicit anti-Semitism sentiments. The film accurately portrays the Gospel account that Caiaphas wanted Jesus dead and Pilate allowed this to be carried out, although he thought Jesus was innocent. However it convicted me that my sin is what put him on the cross. It connects Holy Communion with the crucifixion and it teaches that the blood sacrifice of the alter in the Old Testament with the picture of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Now comes the third temptation.

Consider what had happened here. Jesus had made two absolute choices involving two great renunciations. He had determined that He would not seek an easy following by ministering only to the people’s temporal needs and wants. Neither would he buy devotion by appealing to man’s emphatic passions. He would take a longer and more difficult road. That road led him to the cross. His answer to Satan: Thou shall not tempt the Lord Thy God.

I was reading another review of the movie, The Passion, and this is one of the quotes that I would like to read to you that I read from that. After reading the preview, a newspaper writer wrote:

So what on Earth am I hear for? I would like to share with you a hymn from our hymn book that answers that question for me. Hymn number 269, “Lord, Who Throughout the Forty Days.”

Lord, Who throughout these forty days
For us didst fast and pray,
Teach us with Thee to mourn our sins
And close by Thee to stay.

As Thou with Satan didst contend,
And didst the victory win,
O give us strength in Thee to fight,
In Thee to conquer sin.

As Thou didst hunger bear, and thirst,
So teach us, gracious Lord,
To die to self, and chiefly live
By Thy most holy Word.

And through these days of penitence,
And through Thy passiontide,
Yea, evermore in life and death,
Jesus, with us abide.

Abide with us, that so, this life
Of suffering over past,
An Easter of unending joy
We may attain at last.

What on Earth am I here for? To serve God; to do my best to serve God in the way that I feel He has called me to serve Him, so that I can have that Easter of unending joy. Let us pray.