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| "wilderness" by Martin Howard, on flickr |
Luke 4:1-13
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished.
The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’ ”
Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’ ”
Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’ ” Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ” When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.
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Every year, we begin the season of Lent with this same story - with this same account of Jesus, on the heels of his baptism, being sent out into the wilderness for a season of prayer and fasting, silence and meditation, self-reflection and self-limiting. It is as if the public bestowal of his identity, "Beloved Son of God" is so heavy, so life-changing, so essential that there is nothing else to do besides ponder it, wonder about it, seek to understand it, need to internalize it so deeply that forty days alone in the desert are not just demanded by the Holy Spirit, but desired by the heart of Christ himself.
This gospel reading gives us the basis for our own Lenten discipline. We mark out forty days (plus Sundays) for reflection, fasting, and prayer. We describe the season as a journey through the desert or through the wilderness. We contemplate our own identities as beloved children of God, and we take a hard and honest look about our lives.
Part of my Lenten discipline is to read. To read a lot. And this week, I read an essay by Barbara Cawthorne Crafton entitled, "Living Lent" that pretty much kicked me to the ground and picked me back up. It put this story of Jesus in the wilderness into new perspective. Seeing as she said it first and best, indulge me for a few moments as I read an extended excerpt:
We didn't even know what moderation was. What it felt like. We didn't just work: we inhaled our jobs, sucked them in, became them. Stayed late, brought work home – it was never enough...no matter how much time we put in.
...
We ordered things we didn't need from the shiny catalogs that came to our houses: we ordered three times as much as we could use, and then we ordered three times as much as our children could use.
We didn't just eat: we stuffed ourselves. We had gained only three pounds since the previous year, we told ourselves. Three pounds is not a lot. We had gained about that much in each of the twenty-five years since high school. We did not do the math.
We redid living rooms in which the furniture was not worn out. We threw away clothing that was merely out of style. We drank wine when the label on our prescription said it was dangerous to use alcohol while taking this medication....
We felt that it was important to be good to ourselves, and that this meant that it was dangerous to tell ourselves no. About anything, ever. Repression of one's desires was an unhealthy thing. I work hard, we told ourselves. I deserve a little treat. We treated ourselves every day.
...
There were times, coming into the house from work or waking early when all was quiet, when we felt uneasy about the sense of entitlement that characterized all our days... Suddenly we saw it all clearly: I am driven by my creatures – my schedule, my work, my possessions, my hungers. I do not drive them; they drive me.... [And] we arose and did twenty sit-ups. The next day the moment had passed; we did none.
After moments like that, we were awash in self-contempt. You are weak. Self-indulgent. You are spineless about work and about everything else. You set no limits. You will become ineffective. We bridled at that last bit, drew ourselves up to our full heights, insisted defensively on our competence, on the respect we were due because of all our hard work. We looked for others whose lives were similarly overstuffed; we found them. "This is just the way it is," we said to one another on the train, in the restaurant. "This is modern life. Maybe some people have time to measure things out by teaspoonfuls." Our voices dripped contempt for those people who had such time. We felt oddly defensive, though no one had accused us of anything....
When did the collision between our appetites and the needs of our souls happen? Was there a heart attack? Did we get laid off from work, one of the thousands certified as extraneous? Did a beloved child become a bored stranger, a marriage fall silent and cold? Or, by some exquisite working of God's grace, did we just find the courage to look the truth in the eye and, for once, not blink? How did we come to know that we were dying a slow and unacknowledged death? And that the only way back to life was to set all our packages down and begin again, carrying with us only what we really needed?
We [labor]. We are heavy laden. Refresh us, O homeless, jobless, possession-less Savior. You came naked, and naked you go. And so it is for us. So it is for all of us.
"If you are the Son of God," the tempter says, "turn these stones to bread. You deserve it."
"If you are the Son of God," the tempter says, "sell your soul for the chance to claim limitless power and authority. You deserve it."
"If you are the Son of God," the tempter says, "claim the limitless power of God for yourself. You deserve it."
Jesus, at the end of forty days, is in pretty rough shape. He is famished. He is exhausted. He hs worked hard and prayed hard and suffered hard in the wilderness. Surely the Son of God would have been entitled to summon up the power of God to strike water from the rock or call in a favor for some manna and quails; surely he would have been entitled to call upon the power of the Creator to make the sun a little less hot, the ground a little less hard; surely he could have decided right then and there that there were easier ways to save the world than suffering for it, and why couldn't he just wrest all power and authority from the rulers of the world, become supreme divine dictator, and use might to make the world right again?
And yet he refuses, three times, all these things that would offer him a quick fix. He resists temptation to throw away forty days of self-sacrifice for the sake of desperate indulgence. He resists the temptation to believe that being the Son of God is something that entitles him to whatever he wants, whenever he wants.
Friends, for however many times this gospel has been preached as a warning to resist falling prey to many and various sins in the world, as if we by our own power could hope to perfect ourselves, I want to tell you today that this gospel is much, much bigger than that. Do I think Jesus cares if you eat that second piece of cake or if you watch that trashy but entertaining TV show?
No, this gospel is, for us, is a much, much bigger indictment about our temptation to believe that we are in control of all the creatures that control us, that we we are entitled to them, and more, that somehow these creatures make us worthy, self-sufficient, nourished, and immune from our need for repentance, salvation, or God himself.
Barbara Cawthrone Crafton turns the question and asks us, “So when, then, does the collision between our appetites and the needs of our souls happen?" When are those moments in our lives when the busy-ness and the stuff and the indulgences that we pretend are so important or necessary come into direct conflict with our souls, who demand not material comforts or worldly accolades, but the nourishment of things divine and eternal?
The nakedness and wilderness of Lent - and really, of the spiritual life as a whole - is not meant to be oppressive. It is not meant to make you feel guilty or worried. It is meant to remind you that the wilderness reconnects you with your identity as a child of God. What Jesus shows us in the wilderness, to quote Ms. Barbara once again, is that "the only way back to life [is] to set all our packages down and begin again, carrying with us only what we really need."
The story of Jesus in the wilderness is a story about wanting nothing and yet having everything. It is a story of resting securely in the promise of a God who provides. It is a story of the battle between entitlement and excess, on the one hand, and self-giving and holy nakedness, on the other. It is a story of the cross.
Jesus will, at a later point, take up this matter of bread. He will take a stone's worth of bread and multiply it to feed thousands. And he will, at a later point, take up the question of power and authority, by claiming the authority of God to forgive and to heal beyond the. power of the religious authorities to argue. And he will, at a pivotal point, cast himself down from the heights, stumbling as he carries the cross, falling prey to the power of death, and God will indeed raise him up. He will do all the things that the tempter prodded him to do, but he will do it in God's time, and he will do it not for himself, but for others.
For us, too, there will be a time to join the feast of the resurrection. There will be a time to claim a powerful victory over sin and death. There will be a time to fall into the grave to be raised up once again.
Because what Christ resisted in the desert is what Christ ultimately poured out on the cross. He did not exploit his identity as Beloved Son of God, but instead gave himself for us all. In the mad rush of this life, the yokes that we bear and the baggage that weighs us down, we trust our naked and needy souls to the freedom offered us by this very Christ, the self-giving savior and eternal, resurrected Lord of all creation.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
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