What does the game of Jenga teach us about Jesus' temptations?

[Lent 1, Year C] As I reflected on our lessons this morning for the first Sunday in the season of Lent, I realized that the game of Jenga, by analogy, provided me a helpful way of understanding and appreciating the good news contained in our lessons. I would like to explain and draw out this analogy in the hope that it will be helpful for you as well.

I discovered this analogy by first considering Paul’s letter to the Romans, and more specifically, his quoting a verse from the prophet Isaiah, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” Paul applies this prophetic oracle to Jesus, and he argues that when we believe in Jesus we have God’s promise that we are resting our lives on someone who will not fail us, someone who can offer us the kind of stable and secure foundation on which we can build our lives by binding ourselves in love to those who share our trust in Jesus and to our neighbors who, like us, are naturally seeking a sure foundation for their lives as well.

When I referred back to Isaiah’s prophecy, the 28th chapter and the 16th verse, I discovered that Isaiah’s prophecy is actually a proper name. “No one who believes in him will be put to shame” is the name of God’s sure and tested cornerstone or foundation stone that he will lay in Zion in order to build a new Jerusalem, because the first Jerusalem is now resting on a shaky foundation sincethe leaders of God’s people have decided that their nation will be more secure if they enter into an alliance with the nations around them, who appear to be stronger and more secure than they are. Isaiah warns his people that their leaders are dangerously misguided, and that following such a course of action will lead eventually to the collapse of the nation and of Jerusalem itself. They must understand that building their nation upon this sure and tested foundation stone named “No one who believes in him will be put to shame” fully and solely is the only way they will ever know total security.

For Paul, Jesus is that sure and tested foundation stone and cornerstone, the stone that both provides the stability from the bottom and holds together like the capstone of an arch or a dome the entire structure. And Paul wants us to know that we don’t have to go up to heaven to look for that stone or go down into the depths of death to bring it up to where we live. It is enough to believe in our hearts and confess with our lips that Jesus has come down from heaven as that unique foundation stone and that God has raised up that stone from the depths of death in order for us to know his salvation in our lives here and now.

Our first lesson from Deuteronomy gives us a clue that this is in fact true when Moses tells his people to do something quite similar when they enter the Promised Land and begin to sow and to reap the produce of that land, a land flowing with milk and honey. They are to bring the first fruits of the land to the priest as an offering to God and confess their belief that it is God who gave them the land and made the land fruitful and productive. In this way they will express their trust that it is not the land that is the source of their life, but God, who is the reliable source and foundation for all good gifts.

And so it is with us who are the new Israel living in the New Jerusalem. When we put our faith and trust in Christ, we can expect that our lives will begin to produce the fruits of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. And we can offer those fruits to God and to others in the assurance that as long as we rest our lives on that foundation stone, as long as we build our lives in such a way as we trust that Jesus, like a capstone, can bear the weight and hold our lives together, we will not be put to shame, our lives will not suffer a shameful collapse.

The temptation of Jesus for forty days in the wilderness by Satan reminds us that Jesus is a tested stone. Isaiah tells us that this stone will be measured by justice and that integrity and righteousness will be the plumb line used to insure that we do indeed have a sure foundation upon which to build our lives. Unlike Adam, Jesus did not fail to trust and obey the one who called him his beloved Son, with whom he is well-pleased, at his baptism at the Jordan River. Jesus’ faithfulness is good news because we finally have someone we can honestly count on who will never fail us.

So where does the game of Jenga fit in? In these ways: First of all, Jenga reminds us that pride is the greatest temptation. Pride suggests that the point of life is to be like God and that being like God means rearranging and reconstructing the person God has created us to be in a vain attempt to improve ourselves, but in so doing, actually weakening ourselves and setting up an eventual fall. And yet we fall for this temptation all the time, thinking that the higher we make ourselves, the better off we will be. Jesus came to show us that the point of life is to be grounded in his love, and that when we are grounded in his love, we are not only totally secure, but our lives produce the fruits of the Spirit, and that that is how God intends for us to grow into the stature of Christ.

You can think of Jesus’ three temptations in this way. Turning stones into bread is the temptation of thinking we can ever substitute the strength and the power of knowing that we are a beloved child of God by adoption and grace with bread or any other thing which God has made. Bowing to Satan is the temptation of believing that removing ourselves from direct and total trust in God and shifting, if ever so slightly, onto Satan’s lies and deceits, especially his lie that doing so will advance God’s kingdom, when in fact acting on such a temptation again makes us infinitely less, and not more, secure. And the temptation to be spiritually reckless, to hurl ourselves off the sure foundation of God’s love, trusting that God will somehow catch us and hold us together, is just that: reckless, and not an act of faith or trust.

The gospel is the story of God teaching us a new game, the best game, the only game that doesn’t lead to shameful collapse, the game where everyone is potentially an unbelievable winner, in which the object of the game is not to build ourselves up, but to build others up by giving our lives away to them, speaking a word of God to them, sharing the fruit of the Spirit with them, thereby reintegrated and strengthening and renewing them just as Jesus did when he gave his life away for us, only to have God raise him back up in glory forever, along with anyone else who turns to him to be saved.

So during this season of Lent, let us give thanks for Jesus, who is a sure, tested foundation stone, flawless, capable of bearing away the weight of the world’s sin, including yours and mine, and of serving as the one who makes the building of his kingdom and the rebuilding of our lives possible as we believe that he is whom Isaiah and Paul said he is, and confess and place our faith in the one and only person who can honestly guarantee us that if we do so, we will never be put to shame. AMEN.