Deuteronomy 26: 1-11 Luke 4: 1-13
When you hear the word ‘temptation’, what comes to mind? That extra chocolate you know you should resist? The wine you’ve given up for Lent? The unkind or ungenerous word about the person who you find so irritating? A small act of dishonesty or evasion? When we think about temptation, we usually think about things we find alluring but we know we should avoid. ‘I can resist everything except temptation’, quipped Oscar Wilde. It's a moralistic way of thinking about temptation. This morning, as we take our first steps into Lent, I’d like to go deeper into the idea of ‘temptation’ as we find it in the Bible, and particularly the temptation of Christ in the wilderness. The thought I’d like to offer you is this: temptation is not simply about chocolate or alcohol or contempt or greed or lust. It’s not simply about sins, in the plural. It’s deeper – it’s about the struggle or trial at the very heart of our daily lives, in the depths of our souls, to be fully human. It’s something we all experience, in different ways and at different times. To get at that idea – the struggle or trial at the heart of our lives – I’d like to use our first lesson from the book of Deuteronomy in the Old Testament to set the scene.
The passage we heard this morning comes towards the end of the Israelites’ 40 years in the wilderness, during which they have endured countless trials. Many times, they ignored or turned from the God who called them out of slavery in Egypt. They worshipped their own idols, fought bitterly amongst themselves, and even considered returning to Egypt. They were faithless. But now, at last, they are preparing to enter the promised land. What are they told to do? Take some of the first fruit of the land, offer it to God, and tell the story of their calling and deliverance from Jacob’s descent into Egypt to the entry into the promised land. At the offering of the first fruits of the promised land, they are to say with the priest: “So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.” There is a final instruction: “Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.”
What’s going on here? The Israelites are to recall God’s faithful presence with them throughout the trials and struggles in the wilderness. Then they are to receive the promised land and all its fruits as a long-promised gift. The giver of life, God the creator, is always present to call, strengthen, and deliver, even in the middle of deep trials and temptations. The constant temptation for the Israelites was to give up on God. They tried their own god – the golden calf. They tried bargaining with God. They tried to ‘go it alone’ and live entirely within their own power and resources. That was the struggle and trial: forgetting that they were created and called by God, receiving life as a gift, they thought they were gods unto themselves. That trial and struggle went all the way back to the Garden of Eden: “you will be like gods!”, said the serpent. That’s the first trial, the first temptation: to consider ourselves as gods.
When Jesus enters the wilderness for forty days his struggle is similar. Satan tries to get between Jesus and his heavenly Father. As Jesus prays through his trial, reciting ancient teaching from the book of Deuteronomy, Satan lures him with the possibility of power. He can have power over creation and turn stones to bread. This is not to receive food as a gift, as the Israelites did in the promised land, but food as the product of pure wilful power. Don’t we now fail to receive food as a gift, but as the product of our technology and our power over nature? Satan lures Christ with the possibility of power over the nations of the earth. He even lures Christ with the possibility of power over God: throw yourself down from the pinnacle of the Temple and God will have to save you! Jesus answers with words from Deuteronomy 6: ‘It is said, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” ’
Luke ends this scene by writing that Satan departed ‘until an opportune time’. Jesus’ trial or struggle in the wilderness for forty days is only the beginning. The trial will reach its deepest, darkest moment on the cross as the chief priests, soldiers and crowd taunt Jesus: “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him.”
The temptation or trial of Christ is all about power. Can he go it alone, turn from his heavenly Father, claim power for himself? Satan isn’t tempting Jesus with sins. It’s much more profound than that. Satan is battling for Jesus’ soul by getting between Jesus and his heavenly Father.
All of us live through times of trial and struggle – trials with work, trials with our children, the struggles of old age or ill health, the struggle to get the last summative essays finished or the thesis written, the struggle to discern our future, the battle to do the right thing when we seem so often to fall short. We battle our demons. So often in these times of trial we fall back on our own power and resources. We must make the best of it and try to battle through. God might seem absent, and we forget him. To all intents and purposes, we live like atheists. But let’s remember that Christ entered the wilderness full of the Holy Spirit following his baptism. He would not allow this trial, not even the terror of the cross, to turn him from his heavenly Father. He prayed through the struggle in the wilderness and prayed on the cross.
This Lent, I wonder if we might focus not only on sins but also on the temptation to live through the trials of our lives with our face turned from God, as if we were gods unto ourselves. “Return to the Lord, who will have mercy”, said Isaiah, “and to our God, for he will richly pardon.” Return to the Lord and receive life again as a gift, as the Israelites did when they entered the promised land. And know that God is present in the depths of our human trials with mercy and strength. So how do we turn back to God? I can only suggest one tiny first step. Pray with Christ. Pray the Jesus prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”