A Place in the Wilderness
There are two striking features about the Temptation of Jesus as reported in the Gospel of Luke. It happens immediately after His baptism. As baptism is a defining moment for us, His baptism was a defining moment for the Lord. It marked the beginning of His public ministry. And He was led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit. To some extent, I suppose, the Lord needed to experience what it was like to be truly human, with all human frailty. The Temptation of Jesus helps us to understand the nature of temptations that befall us and insight into how our temptations are overcome.
Today is Valentine’s Day, and, in case you have missed it, Valentine’s Day doesn’t focus so much on St. Valentine as it does on love. I would suppose that mostly it focuses on a romantic love as portrayed by the cards in the supermarket or drugstore display. It is nice to be loved, to have someone who truly cares for you. But we also know that love can become self-centered and even twisted. And it is that temptation, that curving in upon ourselves that the Gospel lesson leads us to consider today.
This past Wednesday, Ash Wednesday, marked the beginning of Lent. This is a penitential season in which we need to shatter the shell that we present to other people and see ourselves as God would see us—to see ourselves with all of our faults.
The Gospel lesson today tells us that Jesus was led into the wilderness. There are two striking factors. It takes place immediately after his baptism and he is led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit. Baptism for us is a defining moment. We are baptized in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We are marked with the sign of the cross in token that we have been redeemed by Christ the Lord. This is who we are, the baptized children of God, and it is out of our baptism that we will live our lives of faith. For the Lord His baptism was also a defining moment. This marked the very beginning of the his public ministry. To some extent, I suppose, he needed to understand what he was up against—what it means to be truly human—to experience the frailty that is part of our existence. The Holy Spirit leadd him to this place—this place which was to become a test—a place in which he would come under attack. He was isolated. There was no support group surrounding him and he had no food to sustain himself for a period of forty days.
As Luke describes the situation, the first attack is at the point of vulnerability. He was hungry. Why doesn’t he simply use his power to feed himself? Here, turn these rocks into bread. It’s silly to torture yourself? Isn’t that the most common and easiest form of temptation that any of us experience? Identify the weak point and launch the attack there. All of us have vulnerabilities. Think of the things that concern you the most. Are you afraid of running out of money in your retirement? What would happen to you then? Is there a way that you could fence a bit of money—some additional expenses to claim so that you don’t have to hand over so much to the government? Do you have health problems? Will you reach the point that your body will no longer function and you will not be able to do the things that you want to do? A friend, a senior Air Force officer, carefully concealed an erratic heartbeat from the flight surgeon so that he wouldn’t be taken off of flight status. There are so many ways in which we are vulnerable and so many ways to shave a bit off here and there to protect ourselves. The Lord had a Scriptural answer: “Man does not live by bread alone.”
The second temptation appears to be more blatant—a temptation to greed, to power. As we read the text our immediate thought is “what makes the devil think that he has ownership of all of the nations of the world?” And then we stop and think about all that is going on in all the nations of the world, and decide that maybe he has a point. Certainly the Lord is not going to worship the Devil. But maybe the temptation is more subtle than that. As God, Jesus could certainly assert his own authority over all creation. The temptation then would not be to the Lord’s vulnerability, but to his strength. He is, after all, God. It is so easy for you or me to take on an assignment at something that we know that we are good at and then fail, or do a slap-dash job because we have taken on too much. We want to be important and recognized, but sometimes our need for recognition itself gets in the way. Once again the Lord had in his case a Scriptural answer: “Worship the Lord our God and serve only him.” Maybe the lesson on our part is that service takes precedence over recognition.
The third temptation was a blatant attack on who he was. Go to Jerusalem, climb to the highest point on the Temple and cast yourself down. Don’t the Scriptures say that God will send his holy angels to protect you—to bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone? The question was “how much do you trust God?” Neither you nor I can foresee the future. We have hopes and dreams—there are things that we would like to see happen—but each day really is a launch into the unknown. We live in a real world and the future holds both good things and heart-rending things. There is a prayer at the end of the Evening Prayer service that I think of as the pilgrim’s prayer: Lord, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us. We are not called upon to put God to silly tests, but rather to follow him faithfully into the future and trust that he will care for us—even in the hard times.
The Lord wasn’t invited into the wilderness to play games. He had to face what it meant to be human. He had to be tested to the limits. His vulnerability had to be exploited. His strengths had to be an opportunity for entrapment, and his trust in God himself had to be tested. The temptations that we face aren’t whether or not to keep the coins we find in the return slot of the drink machine. The temptations that we face are those which challenge the very heart and soul of our being. And it is these failings of which we need to become aware in this season of Lent. We have to understand the depth of our own sinfulness. In each element of the Lord’s temptation in the wilderness his very mission as the Christ, the Promised Messiah was called into question, and it wasn’t over. The last line of the text says that the Devil departed from him until an opportune time, and that opportune time came as the Lord prayed on the Mount of Olives and languished on a rough hewn cross.
Why does the Lord let us be tempted? Why are we put to the test? How can we withstand those temptations to which we are subjected? There is a tree in the midst of the desert in the southern part of the island of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf. It stands on a little hillock. I wish that I could show you a picture of it. There is nothing growing anywhere around it. To the people of the island it is known as the Tree of Life. It is blasted by the sun and the desert wind. It has stood there for over four hundred years. It must have an incredibly deep root system, for somehow it finds the moisture to sustain its life. Yes, you and I are battered by the winds of temptation that befall us, but we are sustained, and forgiven, because our roots are deeply embedded in the suffering and death and resurrection of our Lord. As long as our roots are tapped into him, we will not simply survive. We will thrive.
