Good morning and welcome to the first Sunday in Lent, as we prepare for
the Eastertide Feast of our resurrected Saviour, shining on a hill some 40
days away. With prayer and offerings on our regular Christian menu, the
speciality Lenten plat du jour is fasting…usually by “giving up” something.
But beware! Temptation lives between desire and denial and solicits both
to deliver its victims into the arms of Sin. It is many-headed in its forms,
seductive in its charms and clever in its approaches; fortunately, it is also
singular in its source and its defeat. Although temptation shapes the arch of
God’s salvation plan from Genesis to Revelation, it is in the desert that its
trajectory is secured by the faithful obedience of the Son of God, fully
human and fully divine.
Let’s dismiss one possible “remedy” for temptation at the outset, and that is
human performance of denial or righteous demeanour. Included in the Ash
Wednesday service was Jesus’ advice to shun the outward appearance of
fasting as a “humble brag” that may impress everyone BUT God. Instead,
prepare to meet our Father in one’s best personal order, befitting the
privileged personal relationship he offers us. God will know if you have
been fasting as a path to spiritual growth and not as an exercise in
personal PR or self-enhancement.
For fasting is more than limiting food intake –it is a liberation from
disordered desire and a positive choice to turn to God. Fasting is stepping
up to our identity as his child and partner in creation, formed in his image,
and a vital support to living with temptation. Not because it builds our will
power, but because it brings us closer to him. At coffee last Sunday, I
spoke with a parishioner who noted that she already missed the beauty and
colour of church decoration denied in Lent. Yet she also noted that its
absence focuses her eyes on the crucifix on the altar as never before. It
appears that any of our God-given senses may provide the insight that selfdenial
can bring, though the eyes might do a lot of the heavy lifting for
temptation and the ears might hear a siren song that goes straight to the
heart.
Though Lenten array is the order of the day, we are scarcely starved of
cinematic colour and theatrical effect in our readings…FIRST we have one
foot… yet… in the Garden of Eden with the serpent and our hapless foreparents,
NEXT we’re in the Desert, watching Jesus experience desire yet
not sinning, being vulnerable to the devil himself yet asserting the word of
God to turn away temptation. Is it too simple to state that Eve and Adam
fail, blighting humankind and all creation, until the Son of God incarnates
and triumphs first in the desert, to suffer and triumph ultimately on the
cross? Please do take away this reassuring message for Lent – that the
living God sustains our salvation through Jesus Christ, the New Adam for a
restored world. What is also evident is the foundational role both Garden
and Desert play in our story and those spiritual landscapes in our psyche,
worship, and cultural expression.
In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve live in unburdened harmony with
heavenly and earthly creatures, greeted by the Almighty in the cool of the
evening. They are God’s apex beings here below, chosen to enhance and
administer the garden that provides effortlessly. Only one commandment
has been given from God directly to Adam: eating the fruit of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil was forbidden upon pain of death. This tree
growing in the exact centre of this blessed realm must surely have been an
energetic conduit for and physical beacon of God’s overflowing wisdom and
love, encoded with the divine plan, and not to be hacked. Death of
innocence follows, and grievous death of relationship with God and each
other.
Enter the subtle serpent with treacherous intent whilst Eve is on her own.
Here is temptation’s first tactic, to isolate a victim and disrupt relationships.
Next, he employs rhetorical tricks to confuse and generate mistrust,
beginning with a corrupted leading question: “Hasn’t God told you not to
eat from every tree?” Eve must have felt doubt and confusion for the first
time, beginning to worry that all might not be as it appears. What else has
she missed? For indeed the fruit looks good enough to eat and..it is so
very beautiful and desirable that it seems a shame not to possess just
one…Then the snake strikes with an outright contradiction to God’s
message, “You shall not die!” Permission isn’t needed to take matters in
your own hands and be like gods yourselves. Hearing these words, Eve
thinks of how much good the fruit may do for Adam, as well!
The deed is done, Adam and Eve fall and with them all creation, particularly
their tempter, not named in this account, presumed to be the serpent later
known as Satan. Death indeed arrives in endless, painful procession. 1
John chapter 2 best describes the 3-part template for fatality by temptation:
“For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes,
and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the
world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God
abideth for ever.” God did not create anything evil. Including the twolegged
creatures he made with agency, because only free beings can love.
They can also find ways to abuse any of his good gifts.
Cue the arrival of Jesus of Nazareth, whisked into the desert by the Holy
Spirit from the Jordan River of his baptism, with the Father’s spoken
affirmation ringing in his ears. Here, the New Adam and Son of Man begins
a new Exodus as Messianic King entering the Promised Land. That’s a lot
of historical and theological baggage to carry as he begins a solo 40 day
fast in desert wilderness BEFORE he encounters the devil…although I
prefer to envision the Holy Spirit as his implicit companion and support, as
she is for us. He submits his flesh and his spirit to be emptied out. As time
spent in the spiritual dojo, the desert trials inspire Lenten practice to discern
God’s will through discipline and reflection upon his word. The contrast with
the Garden of Eden is stark, where temptation overcomes faith and
obedience to God despite overwhelming provision of his goodness and
love.
Meanwhile in the desert, hunger sets in with a vengeance. The devil
appears at the appointed time with 3 temptations carefully set to increase
Jesus’ spiritual risk, like examination by the pharisees and elders who plot
to kill him later. Staged first in the desert, then on a pinnacle of the temple
in Jerusalem, and finally, upon a towering mountaintop, each temptation
intensifies the appeal of securing legitimate and desirable ends by
illegitimate and self-serving means — manifesting bread to satisfy personal
appetite, enjoying recognition of special spiritual status for personal
advantage, acquiring sovereignty over all peoples without first winning
hearts and minds. The first two are launched with a dishonest question that
attacks Jesus’ very identity and mission “If thou be the Son of God…” The
final one reveals the devil’s real intention of manipulating Jesus to bow
down and worship him.
Each time, Christ replies not with his own words but with a quote from the
Scriptures. Deuteronomy features. The 5th book of the Pentateuch, it
relates a series of covenantal addresses delivered by Moses on the plains
of Moab just before his death and Israel’s entry to the Promised Land. Each
chapter reaffirms fidelity to the Sinai covenant that binds God and his
chosen people with obedience to his commandments and statutes, and is
powered by exclusive, responsive love and loyalty down the ages. At least
from God’s side! How well Jesus knows chapter and verse, so well he can
wield them swiftly as a sword and spot when the devil twists God’s word
against his own. In the phrasing of the second temptation–to cast himself
from the top of the temple with the certainty God will send angels to the
rescue–the devil quotes Psalm 91 accurately, but removes the covenantal
context of God’s protection, there for those who obediently rely upon him
with faith and without demand for proof or guarantee of how such
protection is provided. New Testament scholar Craig Evans writes that the
Qumran community well-known to John the Baptist and to Jesus believed
Psalm 91 to be effective for use in exorcisms of demons, as a “battle
anthem against the devil”. A cheeky choice by Satan.
By the third temptation – delivery of the powers over all the kingdoms all at
once ––our Lord had clearly had enough. He dismisses Satan by name,
with a portion of the Sh’ema passage, the great prayer of fealty to God
resounding in the evil one’s ear. All at once, the angels that ever watch
over him arrive, no doubt with a divine Deliveroo to ease the pangs of his
human flesh. And they ministered to our Lord so he might stay the course
with us and for our sake.
Wishing you a fruitful sojourn in the desert wilderness this Lent, hungry to
hear the word of God, and up for a fight with a personal demon or two.
AMEN.