The First Sunday in Lent      February 10, 2008

Genesis 2:4b-9, 15-17, 25-3:7

Psalm 51:1-13

Romans 5:12-21

Matthew 4:1-11

The first Sunday of Lent always features the story of Jesus’ time of testing in the wilderness. His hair is still wet from his baptism by John. No sooner did he come up out of the water, then the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove lit on him and then turned aggressive.  According to Mark’s Gospel, the dove drove Jesus out into wilderness, somewhat akin to the way a momma bird drives a cat away from the nest. In Matthew and Luke, the Holy Spirit is a bit gentler, in that they say that the Spirit “led” Jesus. Which ever, the purpose is still to try and test and temp Jesus.

The words from the Father must have been ringing in His ears: “You are my beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Then bang, the really hard times begin.

I’ve often thought that this is a tough way to treat your kid, but I’m reminded of a conversation I had with an apple orchardist out of Yakima, Washington. He said when you put the little apple tree saplings in the ground, you need to tend them very gently and lovingly. 

You give them plenty of water and fertilizer and make sure that they are protected from disease and hungry critters: rabbits and deer in particular are fond of baby apple trees.

Then when they get to be a few years old you literally take a big stick and beat on those young trees. It increases their yield of fruit considerably.  They react to the shock by growing more apples rather than just growing pretty leaves and more limbs.  After the initial beating, the tree produces the first significant crop. Then one does extensive yearly pruning.

He said that the initial beating is the key. The guy knew what he was doing because he was a third generation orchardist and was very successful.

The correlation is that this time in the wilderness was meant to strengthen Jesus.  It is really important to note that although Satan did the actual tempting, it was the Spirit of God who either led or drove him there. God himself doesn’t tempt, but he will see that we are tested to try our mettle. The difference between Satan’s tempting and God’s testing is not always clear to us, but the motivations are polar opposites: Satan wants to destroy us and God wants to build us up, not only for our own sakes, but to toughen us so that we can be useful for the kingdom. Let’s look at this passage more closely.

Note in the first verse that the Spirit led Jesus “to be tempted by the devil. And he fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was hungry.” This is the hyperbole of understatement: 40 days and nights without food makes one more than hungry. I see a kind of grooming, a preparation if you will to make the temptations more powerful.  I refer again to HALTS. It’s the acrostic that tells us when we are most vulnerable to temptation.

Hungry

Angry

Lonely

Tired

Stressed

Jesus was obviously hungry. Was he angry? I would have been. Was he lonely? Of course he was. Was he tired and stressed? Absolutely.

Think about the flies? One of the titles of Satan is “Beelzebul,” which is literally “Lord of the Flies?” From what I understand, the flies in that part of the world are unbelievable. Put yourself in Jesus’ shoes: You’re striving to be faithful and you are bombarded by all the flies from hell; circling your head, buzzing in your ears, trying to crawl up your nose, landing on your eyes.  I think flies are special tools of the enemy.

And that’s not even taking into account the Holy Land’s equivalent of chiggers and mosquitoes. And the incredible changes in temperature, often 70 or more degrees in a 24 hour period.

It was a brutal time. And then Jesus was really attacked. The first temptation was to change rocks into bread. His reply was that one does not live by bread alone, “but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God”. This is a direct quote from the 8th chapter of the book of Deuteronomy. This is interesting because a parallel is developed between Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness and the 40 years that the Children of Israel wandered in the wilderness.  Listen to the full quote from Deuteronomy:

“Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you keep his commandments.  He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Deut. 8:2-3)

The second temptation for Jesus was to leap off the temple in Jerusalem and land unharmed on the pavement to prove that God would protect him, because, after all, He was the Son of God. Again, Jesus made reference to a passage from Deuteronomy.

“Do not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah. You must diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God, and his decrees, and the statuettes he has commanded you.” (Deut. 6:16-17)

By the way, Massah was the place in the wilderness wandering of the Children of Israel where Moses drew water by striking a rock with his staff. It was a time when the Israelites were parched, so they demanded a sign from God to prove that he was still taking care of them. It was the old “If you really loved me, you’d do what I tell you.” We’re all prone to that. By quoting this passage, Jesus is saying that it is a terrible idea to try to manipulate God into being your toady.

The third temptation was to fall down and worship Satan in order to receive from him all the kingdoms of the world. Just think of the splendor.  Once again, Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy:

“When the Lord your God has brought you into the Land he swore

to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give to you—a land

with fine large cities that you did not build, houses filled with all sorts

of goods that you did not fill, hewn cisterns that you did not hew,

vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant—and when you

have eaten your fill, take care that you do not forget that it is the Lord

who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

[You shall worship the Lord your God and Him alone] shall you serve”. (Deut. 6:10-13)

That was the “there and then message;” the “here and now” application is what I would like to address now.  We need to take a couple of things into account: First, these temptations for Jesus were real. As a fully human being, He could have succumb to any and all of them; Second, these and other temptations make him very empathetic and supportive of us when be are both tempted and when we succumb to those temptations. In Hebrews 4:15 we are told that Jesus “in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”  That means he knows the tug, without actually committing the sin.

Let’s now look at these three areas of temptation that are in today’s Gospel lesson.  Back in the 16th century, a Spanish Monk and mystic, St. John of the Cross, made some fascinating observations about these temptations that speak very clearly to the human condition.

The first temptation about turning stones to bread speaks of the temptation of appetite.  John of the Cross noted that Satan takes normal and good desires and twists them. Hungering for food can make one a glutton and ignore the hungry in the world.  But appetites deal with so many other issues as well: sex, money, power, prestige, all kinds of drugs. Each of us knows the tug of wanting something so much that we become irrational, even foolish and destructive in our desires. Sometimes we are able to curb them; often we are not. The temptation of appetite is a tool of the devil.

Jesus reminds us that we don’t live on the fulfillment of appetite, but on the message of love from God.

The second temptation is the temptation of vertigo. Jesus was placed on the temple and it was a dizzying height. John of the Cross observed that dizziness causes us to be obsessed with control.  We can become dizzy with adrenaline and we find ourselves driving too fast then we have this incredible desire to outrun a police officer. That is really a control issue. 

More subtly, for mature Christians, we tend to be more susceptible to sins of omission, things left undone. Often I want to control things by being unavailable: I won’t actively resist, but I just won’t cooperate. As one woman once said, “I’ll just take my dolls and go home.”  When we opt not to do something that God wants us to do, it is sin. It is the sin of omission. It is the sin of the desire of control; it is the temptation not to trust God and to stay safe, or not to be hassled because we are tired or have something else we’d rather do. In the more active sense, we do something foolish and see what God will do to take care of us. It’s all about being in control and not trusting God.

The third temptation that is common to all of us is idolatry. Satan showed Jesus all the nations of the world and said that they would be his if he, Jesus, would bow down and worship him. There are a many interesting nuances here. The term worship comes from the Middle English term “worth ship” which means “ultimate worth.”

I’ve found the best indicator of what we consider to be most worthwhile in our lives, what we really worship, can be determined by our checkbooks and our daybooks: Where do we spend our time and our money.  Who or what do we shortchange? Usually it’s God. We often take short cuts. For example, Jesus will one day have all the nations of the world. Satan tempted him to do it before it is time for that to happen. You can hear what the temptation is: “Jesus, you don’t have to go through all the pain and turmoil of teaching these people, of being crucified; you can have it all right now.”

How often do we want to take short cuts or to shortchange God? We want the power and the glory, or at least we want to avoid the pain and hassle. These are temptations for all of us. I want to put my ultimate worth on something that I want, not necessarily something that God wants. In so doing, we are worshipping something other than God. We are all tempted to do that.

I closing, I want to remind you that these temptations are common to all of us. We are tempted by our appetites; we are tempted with vertigo, of dizziness that makes us control freaks; we are tempted to worship things other than God.

Remember that Christ used Scripture to defend himself against the enemy. That is a good lesson for all of us. I end with a couple of passages from scripture. One is from I Peter 3:8-9 that we find in our Prayer Book service of Compline, designed to be prayed at bed time:  “Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him firm in your faith.”

The second is from I Corinthians 10: 13. “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to all. God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape that you will be able to endure it.”  Remember: the Angels came and ministered to Jesus and that is our promise too.

Amen.