Sermon: 21st Feb '21

The Temptation​

Gospel Reading: Matthew 4: 1-11

Dear Community of Christians,

If I am late for an important appointment, caused by my own typical tardiness, am I not tempted to use traffic, or a phone call, or something as an excuse? Or do I choose to tell the truth and talk about my slothfulness? How many times do we get in such a situation and every time anew we have to decide, shall I speak the truth, or shall I find another white lie? Sometimes the excuses sit so deep within us as a kind of sickness, we don’t recognize our white lie as dishonesty. Here our honest self-reflection is not sufficiently developed. We must become aware of the betrayer working in us. Human intelligence is intensively used by the tempter. The temptation we face today is the possibility and the apparent advantage of speaking half-truths. Since it is not a lie, and it is not the truth, it is a twisting of realities. As individuals we have a hard time seeing through, and are often unable to resist, and oppose, the sickness of half-truths.

Further, human intelligence is today transferred into machines, into electronic devices. And the machine, according to our common thinking, cannot be wrong. They tell us the “truth”, because faults are eliminated in advance. But the machine can not tell us the truth, only facts, as truth is a moral quality. 

What influence on reality does these half-truths and white lies have? How do they penetrate our social and personal lives? Is there a connection to the physical body, to the environment, and to the spiritual world? There must be a consequence.

We have to ask ourselves, what actually happens to these powers of lies that have been spoken daily and received by the etheric world?

We can experience in our social life that lies poison the atmosphere of a community. If we continue to think along these lines, our personal life-forces, our social life, our political and spiritual lives will also be attacked by it and become seriously sick.

​Where is the healing medicine and how can we use it? The medicine is our inner counsellor with a clear voice. If we are willing to listen, we can withstand and bring the forces of truth to inner growth, to all levels that are sick in these times.

Rev. Ute Koenig

The Temptation of Christ on the Mountain by Duccio Di Buoninsegna, 1308