Our Gospel lesson this week, the first Sunday in Lent, is more famously known as the Temptation of Christ. Most of what you and I associate with the Temptation come from Matthew and Luke, so it is unsurprising that in this year of Matthew, we read Matthew’s account at the beginning of Lent. One of the reasons we read this lesson on the first Sunday is to remind ourselves that Jesus was fully human. We teach and proclaim that our Lord is fully divine and fully human. The latter part is important because it reminds us that Jesus understands our frailties, our condition, our fears, and everything that works to separate us from God in a way that should make Him relatable to us. We also use this Sunday to remind ourselves who He is. Though you and I face particular temptations in life, which are often described in ways that we will talk about His temptations today, I will remind us that His temptations are orders of magnitude greater than ours. Finally, in the midst of all that, we also learn something important about ourselves, something that may cause us to ponder again our Lord’s willingness to walk this path for us, that we might be restored to our Father in Heaven.
The scene begins with Jesus being led into the wilderness by the Spirit to be tested by the Devil. The symbolism is hard to miss. Jesus, who has just been called His Son at His Baptism, just as was Israel in the OT, is lead by God into the wilderness. We should hear and imagine Exodus imagery, in addition to the Garden image from Genesis that we read today, right? After forty days and forty nights of fasting, we are told by Matthew that Jesus was understandably famished. Many of us struggle with the fast on Ash Wednesday or on the three day fast of the Triduum, so we can barely imagine what forty days of fasting would do to us. It is then, at His weakest point, that Jesus undergoes this test.
The first test is how Jesus will use the power and authority given to Him. Satan tempts Him to turn the stones into bread and eat, if He is the Son of God. Will Jesus use His power and authority for those whom He loved and came to save, or will He use it for Himself? Jesus answers Satan from the Torah, reminding Satan and us that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. It sounds like an easy answer, but think about how you feel after a day or three days of fasting. If we had that kind of power, how quickly would we use it to satiate our hunger? And Jesus has been fasting for forty days and forty nights! What must His cravings have been like? Yet He put our need before His own and resists Satan’s temptation.
The second test we would describe more as a test of faith rather than a use of power. Satan takes Jesus to the pinnacle of the Temple and dares Him to cast Himself off to see if the Father will use His angels to keep Him from dashing a foot against the stone. In many ways, this temptation is not unlike the one experienced by Adam & Eve. Can you trust God? Can we? It is hard enough to trust God when things are going well, right? When things are going well we often fall into the seduction that we are creating the good circumstances. We do not need God, so we are not particularly attuned to His blessings. More often than we would like to admit, I think, we like to believe we deserve the blessings. The simplified version is that I am a good enough person that it is no wonder that God chooses to bless me. The corollary, those who are accursed get what they deserve, combine to make some Christians insufferable. We forget it is all grace, that none of us get what we deserve from God. We forget that we are called to be heralds of that grace, and begin to be heralds of something ungodly.
Thankfully and mercifully for our sakes, our Lord returns to the Torah to remind Satan and us not to put God to the test. Jesus knows He is loved by the Father. His circumstances do not describe that relationship, a lesson we too often forget. We allow our circumstances to describe our relationship with God, and too often we fall into sin.
The third temptation, of course, is one of turning aside from the path or way set by God. Jesus knows why He has come down and what He must do. He knows how all this work will end. Satan offers Him an easier way to that glory offered by the Father. Instead of a glory that requires the Cross, Satan simply offers Jesus an easier way. Worship me instead of God, and I will give you everything.
While I have no doubt that Jesus understands that the power and authority offered by Satan is not his to give, Jesus reminds us again of God’s instruction in the Torah. Worship only the Lord your God. No exceptions. No codicils. Worship only God.
Abruptly, Satan leaves and the angels attend to Jesus.
I am sure that as I have described these temptations, the Holy Spirit has pointed out how such temptations have served as struggles for all of us. We have probably had mixed results when confronted with these temptations in our life. Sometimes, we have listened to God; at other times, we have not listened. So we can understand and appreciate Jesus’ success on that initial level.
Of course, His temptations are Messianic. The salvation of the world depends on His success or failure. As hard as normal life for us, whose sins only hurt us and maybe those around us, our failures pale in comparison to what was at stake in Jesus’ confrontation with Satan. Our understanding of ourselves and Him should cause us to appreciate how He stepped into the role of God’s Son, how He succeeded where Israel and we failed.
That testing, of course, points to identities. Jesus truly is the Son of God, and His ability to face these temptations of Satan after forty days and nights reminds of us His faith and His uniqueness. He knows who He is. Notice how Satan uses the “If you are the Son of God” in each temptation. Satan is trying to get Jesus to doubt His relationship and the Father’s love and to prove it by feeding Himself and casting Himself off the pinnacle. Jesus does not need that. He knows the Father loves Him and that this work is for all those whom the Father has given Him, including you and me.
For us, we are reminded that we are human, just as our Lord is fully human, that it was in His image we were created. More importantly, though, we are instructed that we are to find our value in whose we are rather that what we think we are. What makes our identity is that we belong to God, that He sent His Son to redeem each and every one of us. The world, and we by extension, measures by dark values, by values that miss the deep truth. We think in terms like successful or failures, rich or poor, famous or anonymous. But God does not accept those values. Such was our value to Him that, when He could rightfully have left us in our separateness, in our own paths that led rightly to death. But such was His love for us that He came down from heaven and walked this path that leads to Calvary, knowing we would betray Him, knowing we would mock Him, knowing that we would need Him to save us in spite of ourselves. And so we find our value in the One who values us in that kind of love!
So many of those temptations that the forces of evil use to seduce us ask that question whether we can trust God. Can we believe that He loves us, we whom the world ignores, we whom the world mocks, we who know ourselves to be sinners and unloveable? The glorious news in some ways begins today. When our Lord was tempted in His own way to avoid the Cross that was on His horizon, He chose for us, for you and me, that we might be restored through Him to our Father! Reminded of that amazing and glorious truth, we begin the introspection of our Lent, that when we make our way finally to Holy Week and to that amazing Easter, we can celebrate with the joy of a redeemed person in the midst of a redeemed people!
Brian+
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