Beloved Members of St. Martin’s,
Our gospel reading for this weekend, Luke 4:1-13, gives us Luke’s account of Jesus’s temptation in the wilderness after his baptism. And so it might be good to reflect on exactly what temptation is, and how Jesus being tested reflects his solidarity with us. We live after all, in a time when temptation is everywhere. Wanna buy something? It’s just a click away. Temptation is often also how scammers and grifters work: a common ploy is to tempt their victims with deals too good to be true.
Temptation is testing. There are some famous points in the Bible that deal with temptation, the most obvious being Adam and Eve in the Garden. Now what’s interesting is that in Luke, right before this reading we have this week, Luke lists the genealogy of Jesus, and it ends with Adam. How did Adam deal with temptation? He failed, decided he knew better than God, and was expelled from paradise. One of Jesus’s scriptural titles is “the new Adam;” but Jesus is not going to fail, and through this victory, humanity is going to be redeemed.
So why were each of these three things the devil trotted out before a tired, famished Jesus so tempting? After all, a temptation only works if it is something we would actually be able to do. Jesus COULD turn stones into bread. Jesus COULD have seized power as an earthly ruler—and in fact, that’s what many of his disciples, including possibly Judas, expected him to do—and they were gravely disappointed when he refused the role of political revolutionary against Rome. Jesus COULD have done tricks with the expectation that God would save him from harm.
Those three temptations the devil is going to present Jesus with are three alternative histories or paths, shortcuts which would appear to be capable of being used to achieve great good. Feeding the hungry by making loaves of bread pop up out of the stones scattered about? Having God’s son exercise political power and drive out all oppressors with their false gods? Having God prove Godself, once and for all? Wouldn’t all of these things be amazing?
But these are not what God has planned. God’s kingdom on earth will be established through different means—not according to what WE would want, but by establishing that “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
The devil gives up temporarily here, but not for good. As we enter Lent, we remember that temptation is all around, and seduces by offering the easy way, the shortcut. It’s not the big things that usually tempt us—it’s the little ones. We are tempted most when we rationalize taking a shortcut as a way to make things easier for ourselves, even if others would be hurt. All it costs us is a little piece of our integrity. All it costs us is deciding that we know better what is good for us in the short-term versus sacrificing now for the sake of the long-term. Lent calls us to trust God to be God—and to know that God is with us through trials and temptations.
Especially as we are just starting out on our Lenten journey of devotion and attention to Jesus’s journey toward and beyond Calvary, we will hear and probably experience times of temptation ourselves along with our brother and teacher, Jesus.
Deliver us from shortcuts; but may we emerge from the time of testing stronger in faith than ever.
In Christ,
Mother Leslie+