On the Wilderness Journey
Sermon for Sunday, February 21, 2010 (Year C, Lent 1)
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit… was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. (Luke 4:1-2)
Traditionally, Lent begins with an account of the Temptation. Few stories are as familiar to most Christians as this memory of Jesus in the wilderness. Here the devil encourages him to turn stones into bread, urges him to throw himself from the pinnacle of the temple so that angels will bear him up, and offers him authority over the kingdoms of the world. In exchange, all Jesus has to do is shift his loyalty from God to the Tempter. As we know, Jesus refuses. In the end, the devil throws in the towel, at least for the time being.
That’s the story as Matthew (4:1-11) and Luke (4:1-13) have it. Mark’s account (1:12-13) is quite brief, just two verses, and notes simply that Jesus was tempted in the wilderness for forty days, surrounded by wild animals and tended by angels. With all this intriguing detail — bread, temple, kingdoms, wild beasts, angels — we may neglect to note two elements that the three gospel writers agree on: that this event took place in the wilderness, and that it lasted forty days. It is these two elements, I think, which help unlock the meaning of this story.
Clearly, the Temptation could have taken place anywhere. Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth would have been an appropriate setting. So would Capernaum, which soon became the base for Jesus’ ministry. Jerusalem would have made an excellent backdrop, as would the shore of the Sea of Galilee or any one of the little villages scattered across the Galilean landscape. But this story is set in the wilderness — in an area unmodified by human activity. Here Jesus wanders alone, with no food and (we assume) little water. So, why the wilderness?
And, clearly, the Temptation could have taken place within the space of an afternoon. The devil didn’t need a full forty days to make his case unless, perhaps, he was counting on hunger and thirst to weaken Jesus’ resolve. So, why forty days?
Placed at the start of Jesus’ ministry, located in the wilderness, and lasting forty units of time, this story draws an intentional parallel with the Exodus, the story of Israel’s beginning as a nation. Note that the Hebrews are elected to be God’s people, God’s children, while Jesus is God’s Son. The Hebrews are brought up out of Egypt, while Jesus and his family (at least in Matthew’s gospel) escape from Herod by fleeing into Egypt, returning to Galilee after Herod’s death. The people of Israel sojourn in the wilderness for forty years, while Jesus is in the wilderness forty days. Israel is tested in the wilderness, as is Jesus. Their time in the wilderness prepares Israel for the work that lies ahead. His time in the wilderness prepares Jesus for his public ministry and sacrifice.
These parallels extend, in my view, to the nature of the temptation that both Israel and Jesus face in the desert. For Israel, it was a bad case of buyer’s remorse. As one commentator puts it, “The people are a tiresome and faithless lot during their long and arduous journey. They murmur, whine, and rebel constantly, blind to God’s favors and signs.” (Carol A. Redmount, Oxford History of the Biblical World, p. 60) The God of Moses doesn’t deliver as expected, so the Hebrews make a god of their own, the notorious molten calf, and worship that instead.
In the case of Jesus’ temptation, the devil’s goal is to seduce Jesus into worshiping him instead of God. To this end Satan offers our Lord the opportunity to dominate and manipulate others by control over the necessities of life, symbolized by food; by control over their spiritual lives, represented by a “trick” performed from the temple roof; and by political control, symbolized by the kingdoms of the world. If Jesus will simply worship the devil, all this and more will be his.
Why was this memory included in the three gospels? I suspect that Matthew’s, Mark’s, and Luke’s communities saw themselves as “the new Israel,” elected, brought up from bondage, and sent off on a journey. Perhaps their road was proving more difficult than expected. If some new Christians were pining away for “the fleshpots of Egypt” — that is, for the bodily and spiritual comforts of the old ways — and were returning to paganism, it may be that those who remained faithful needed reassurance that their hard road would eventually lead to “a land flowing with milk and honey.” (Deut. 26:9) If Jesus in the wilderness could remain obedient to God’s will, then they could too.
And why should we care about Jesus being tempted? Well, consider that we are beginning, too — or perhaps I should say, beginning again. God has called us away from the usual daily grind to make our annual journey to Easter. We call this journey Lent and, not by accident, it lasts forty days, from Ash Wednesday to sundown on Holy Saturday. By custom it became for the Church a time to prepare for celebration of the Paschal Mystery. We believe that by his death and resurrection, Jesus brought us up from slavery to sin and death, and won for us a place in God’s eternal kingdom.
But these are ideas not easily grasped! The problem is, most of the time we don’t feel filled with new life… we don’t feel free from the grip of our shortcomings… we know that death will some day claim us… and this world of ours sure doesn’t look or feel like a celestial kingdom. But that is because we are so tied up with the busyness of our own lives, so burdened by expectations and routine, and so spiritually short-sighted that we cannot see God’s “hand at work in the world about us.” (Eucharistic Prayer C, BCP, p.372) Therefore, in her wisdom Mother Church has provided us these few days — these forty days — for a spiritual “wilderness journey.”
Now, many Christians have been taught that Lent is a time to take an accounting of our sins. And so it is — but no more in Lent than any other time of the year. Lent invites deeper discernment about our weaknesses and the strength we have in our Lord.
The “official” definition of sin, as provided in the Prayer Book’s Catechism, is that sin “is the seeking of our own will instead of the will of God, thus distorting our relationship with God, with other people, and with all creation.” (BCP p. 848) We seek our own will because we like the feeling of being in control, but in this world our ability to control situations, institutions, and other people is more illusion than reality. Nonetheless, like Israel in the wilderness, we are prone to be stiff-necked and rebellious, and our willfulness leads us astray.
Specific acts of sin, the fruit of our willfulness, may be great (such as murder and mayhem) or small (not putting money in the parking meter), but all forms of sin are alike in that they disfigure our relationship with God, other people, and the world.
Sin is also cumulative. The burden of sin builds up over time, rather like sedimentary rock. We carry around the memory of these errors year after year, and add new layers, and in time the structure becomes so heavy that it threatens to crush us. As the old form of confession in Rite One puts it, “…the remembrance of [our sins] is grievous unto us; the burden of them is intolerable.” (BCP p. 331)
Let me cite you an example. In the late 1950s my father worked for a restaurant company in Philadelphia. His boss was man who, in all charity, was the most arrogant, mean-spirited, and morally bankrupt person I have ever encountered — a git, as the British might say, a foolish and worthless person. In Philadelphia at this time the vending machine business was controlled by organized crime, and my father’s boss cut a deal with these people to skim money from a couple vending machines in one of his restaurants. The process was simple. When the coin in the vending machines was counted up, proceeds from two of the machines were diverted into a private bank account for my father’s boss.
Unfortunately, Dad’s boss required that my father handle this transaction personally. In demanding that he do so, he made my father part of this illegal skimming — the bagman, so to speak. Now, my father was an ethical man. He had also spent his childhood in Chicago during the heyday of the mob. My father could certainly have refused his boss’ demand, but he felt he had no choice. He had a wife and four young children to support and protect. Had he objected, his boss would have put him on the street without a second thought, and who knows what the mob goons might have done.
Consider what it means to be “enslaved by sin” — either your own or someone else’s. This little weekly cash caper was a crime, contrary to every moral precept Dad had learned at his parents’ knees. His involvement was a serious moral failing. Yet he was trapped. Thankfully, the arrangement ended after a few months. And just for the record, years later, after my father retired, his former boss went bankrupt and died penniless and unlamented. Yet I believe my father carried the memory of this episode with him for the rest of his life, and managed to shed its weight only a few days before his death.
I said that Lent was a time for deeper discernment not only of our shortcomings, but of the strength we have in our Lord. What my father for so long failed to see, and what so many Christians fail to see, is that we do not have to carry the burden of our errors from one end of life to the other. By his obedience to the Father’s will, Jesus has set us free! In the Letter to the Hebrews we are told that, “…we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.” (Heb. 4:15) I take this to mean that Jesus knew every need or feeling or urge — every temptation — that any person may experience, but he did not act sinfully. Christ can sympathize with us, because he himself personally knew all that you and I struggle with. Moreover, our Lord can and will free us from that burden, because he loves us with a passion beyond anything we can imagine.
In turn this means that as members of his Body, you and I may call upon Christ to supply what we lack — if possible, to avoid yielding to temptation and straying into sin, or when necessary, to seek and receive forgiveness so that the burden of past error may be lifted from our shoulders. With God, it’s not “three strikes and you’re out.” Rather, as Psalm 51 puts it, “The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” (Ps. 51:18) God’s readiness to forgive is constant. We simply have to ask.
During these forty days of Lent, let us create for ourselves — in some small way — a wilderness place in our daily routine where we may encounter the Lord in honesty and faith. In that wilderness place let us candidly recognize both our weaknesses and the strength we have in Jesus Christ, so that we may know and feel the grace which sets us free. Amen.
— The Rev. John E. Laycock, Interim Pastor
Readings for Year C, Lent 1: Lesson — Deuteronomy 26:1-11 • Gradual — Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16 • Epistle — Romans 10:8-13 • Gospel — Luke 4:1-13
Collect for Lent I: Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan: Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.