The First Sunday of Lent

Preached by The Very Reverend Robert Neske, Dean, at Saint Mark’s Pro-Cathedral, Hastings, February 20, 2010

The temptation of Christ by the Satan has long been one of those particular moments in Jesus public ministry when we get to see our own lives reflected in the life of our Lord. We understand temptation and there is comfort in knowing that Jesus knows what it is to face temptation as well. For Christians in the early Church, the account of Jesus temptation had an even greater sense of immediacy because they knew themselves to be surrounded by all manner of evil and was continually under assault, both body and soul, for their faith. So the temptation to just chuck it all and abandoned the Christian faith and return to one of the safe, approved religions of the empire was never far from their minds. The accounts of Jesus own temptation then became for the early Christians a source of comfort and inspiration.

 For Luke the story of the temptation by Satan in the wilderness is a continuation of the theme of Jesus’ baptism, which is his reception of the Holy Spirit. You will recall that as Jesus is praying following his baptism by John, the “Holy Spirit enters into him to guide and empower him in his new tasks.”  (Danker) The question is, how will Jesus use the power of the Holy Spirit? So the Holy Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness, the place of testing, and the place where according to Jewish tradition, God is not.

 Why does God do this? After all God is all knowing and all powerful; God knows that Jesus is a faithful and true son. God also knows that Jesus will not fail in his righteousness, so why place our Lord in this position at all? For the same reason God sent Jesus into the world in the first place, ‘for us and for our salvation.’ For the very fact that in his humanity Christ must fully know what it is to be weak (thus Jesus’ fasting), and what is to undergo, and be assaulted by the crafts and wiles of the devil; and of course, how Jesus will use the power given to him through the Holy Spirit.

 The Satan may well be both crafty and wily, but this devil is also about as subtle as a train wreck when it comes to temptations: “The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread." This is a pun by the way, the words for stone and loaf in the Greek are almost identical – the devil likes to think he is funny.

 What the Satan he is asking Jesus to do is to use his power for selfish ends. It is after all a reasonable request, we know Jesus is famished and so does the devil. There is also the precedent of God having given the Israelites bread in the wilderness and here is Jesus in the wilderness, so what would be the harm? It is such a little thing, changing the stones to bread, where would be the harm?

 We know about the little things don’t we? The little wants, the small desires, the little hurts and slights, the small discontents that draw us away from the love of God and the will of God. Those little things that keep us from seeing the very real harm that is done, that keep us from discerning the loss of our souls – “Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone.'" 

The Satan then takes Jesus to a high place. This is another presumption as traditionally one goes to a high place to be with God and worship God. But then we need to remember that Satan has these delusions of grandeur. There the devil shows Jesus “in an instant all the kingdoms of the world.” These are Satan’s kingdoms as opposed to the Kingdom of God.

 The tempters ploy is to reduce the action of God in Christ Jesus, the salvation of the world to a conventional power-grab. Jesus has been invested with the Holy Spirit of God, he has more power than anyone on earth, now all the devil has to do is get Jesus to use it for his own ends, not God’s. Power is cool, why not use it? But Jesus is having none of it: Jesus answered him: “Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only…”           

 Jesus and Satan are then in Jerusalem on the pinnacle of the Great Temple. The temptation here is cross itself. “If you are the Son of God throw yourself down from here”, the message being that God won’t let Jesus die, God will keep Jesus safe. But that is the point; Jesus has come into the world to die for the world and God must let him die if he is to deliver humankind from sin and death. Jesus is God’s Son because of who he is; he will accept the will of the Father, to suffer and die as the Righteous one of God that we might be saved. “Jesus answered him, ‘It is said do not put the LORD your God to the test.”

 The problem is that both as individual and as the Church we have so often failed to meet these temptations. Perhaps our deepest failure is that we don’t even recognize a temptation when we see one. The delicate balance of being in the world, but not of the world has been thrown off center, time and time again as we succumb to the values of the world around us. Why, because we have lost our faith in the power of the Gospel to transform both our lives and the lives of others. We think that if we do good, if we are socially involved, or saving the environment, or the whales, that it is the same as sharing the Gospel and doing the harder work of loving our very unlovable neighbor; we worship sex, power and money, without giving a thought to what false gods these are; and we test God, not by doing dangerous stunts, but by denying the existence of evil, by thinking that anything and everything is acceptable when it is not.

 Our agendas and blatant desires for power, whether of the religious right or the religious left, the political right or the political left is not of God, but carries with it the stink of the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world’ to turn a phrase. Whenever the Church or individual Christians seek any power apart from the cross of Christ and the Holy Spirit, we abandon the Kingdom of God for the kingdom of the Adversary and forsake our own inheritance.

 In this season of Lent we have been called once more to turn our hearts and minds to the things that matter most, that we might be shaped and directed by the Holy Spirit, that we might live by the Word of God; offer our worship to God alone, and never dare to put God to the test.