Christ our Lord was tempted in the wilderness. Christ knows our trouble, our struggles, and our weaknesses. Therefore, we may confess our failings and our sins knowing God will hear us and forgive us through Jesus Christ our Lord.
On Ash Wednesday we confessed our need to find the quiet center of God. We offered ourselves to God and to one another. We shared our hearts as an expression of our beloved community and received ashes as a sign that we go under the mercy of God’s forgiveness.
We come to share the journey; even if it means entering a wilderness experience; hungry for God, hungry for each other, hungry for the person striving to emerge in us, hungry for the quiet center of all life. We are reminded by God’s word the same spirit that leads us into the water leads us into the wilderness. We come in search of confidence that we can be led through the wilderness of temptation and doubt by calling upon the name of the Lord.
The thought of the wilderness may make you bristle and ask what God has to do with the wilderness. Like its Greek word companion, abandonment, wilderness suggests a desolate environment, a place locked in a dry spell leaving an unsown parcel of land. You may have experienced the wilderness in loss. The wilderness can be described as the place of the widening gap between where you are and where you most desire to be. It could be that the wilderness for you is not being alone but being lonely in the crowded hallways of life. You may know the despair of searching for something more, preferring something different.
The wilderness offers perspective, a place to decide what you might never decide were it not for just such a space; a climate that can nurture such decisions. The wilderness is not a dead-end. It can allow a U-turn; a place to return to your first love; a backdrop or canvas upon which you may make brush strokes that clarify just who and whose you are.
Wilderness can be for us what it was for Jesus and for Israel in its infancy, a place where hunger can be explored; a place to be confronted by a choice between goods, between what is good and what is best.
The tempter is subtle and present alternatives that are attractive. Craddock says no self-respecting devil would approach you with offers of demise or speak of your ruin. If there is any kind of warning or caution advised, it is only in the small print at the bottom of the temptation. The wilderness is where you must weigh the visible alternatives and decide the best way to put yourself into the world as a child of the kingdom.
At Jesus’ baptism God’s spirit brought affirmation: “You are my son, the beloved!” Now, empty with hunger, Jesus must more fully come to terms with himself as the devil challenges his understandings: “If you are the son of God.”
He is first tempted to turn the stones to bread; to give the tempter his due whose timing is impeccable. Jesus is alone and hungry in the desert, poised at the beginning edge of his ministry. The temptation is presented as a fitting conversation. Jesus is struggling with what it really means to be about God’s business, and he is hungry. The first temptation is not only personal but also social. Will his ministry be one of turning stones to bread?
It is a question of interdependence. Turning stones to bread could further isolate Jesus from others, a way to be self-contained, keep apart, expressing no need of others. Of course, turning stone to bread could have met both his needs and the needs of others, but it would have done so by being dismissive; a short-cut from interdependence upon God and upon others. Jesus chose to decline such temptation. Those who enter and depart from the baptismal waters are encouraged to choose actions which are best described in partnership, as co-laborers, yoke person, children of God. The beloved Son knew that together we were joint heirs. He sent out his disciples two by two. We go together because we cannot bring goodness on our own.
I learned a powerful lesson about interdependence one afternoon when I called a preacher friend who was going through an extreme wilderness. When I asked him how he was doing, he told me that he had been better and knew that he would be again because a multitude of people were supporting and encouraging him. You cannot live by bread alone. You cannot bear it alone. May the time come in our forty days when we learn to say, “I’ve been better, and I will be again” because you are joined on this pilgrimage by God and by our brother and sister in Christ. We believe in the dynamic, relational process; the partnership of seed-soil-water-sun-plant-harvest-mill-bakery-table-meal. This journey with Christ takes more than bread.
Jesus is again tempted. This time he is tempted to allow this world (and the richness of this world) to be the measure of all things. The tempter offers more than is his to offer, “If you will worship me, it will all be yours” (4:7). Temptation is an indication of strength, not of weakness. We are not tempted to do what we cannot do. We are tempted to do what is within our power; the greater the strength, the greater the temptation. Christ shares words found in Deuteronomy 6:3 and differentiated between the goods of this world and the good that God desired to do through him. He was decisive. “Worship only the Lord your God. Serve only God.” The attractiveness and splendor of the things of this world would not shift his focus from the things of God.
The temptation climaxed when he was tempted to choose an alternate route for his ministry other than the cross. It is the temptation of power. Would Jesus choose coercive faith: a leap from the temple for those longing for proof of God’s power? Real temptation is an offer not to fall but to rise. “Do you wish to be as God?” Instead of taking a short-cut to the top, Jesus chose to walk the lonesome valley in service.
In All Over but The Shoutin,’ Rick Bragg, tells his story about growing up dirt poor in the pines of Alabama. Even when he was poor he knew the temptation of power. He writes, “I was too dumb to know that a swagger is a silly walk for a man with yet a long way to go!”
Jesus resolved to take the long route of the cross, the humble way not of power but of service. Philippians 2:15 “Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, who although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as a thing to be grasped but emptied himself and taking the form of a bondservant and being made in the likeness of man, humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross!”
He chose the humble way of the cross. Marney said this could have been construed as his chief failure. The devil argued, “God would not let anything like this happen to you, the angels would take care of you. Throw yourself down.” Jesus answered, “You are not to put the Lord your God to the test.”
May we get hungry enough to be reached by “the tender forces of God” that seek to mold who and whose we are! Let the work of God’s spirit lead us through the wilderness. May Spirit work in us and make us “a fresh expression” of God’s love.
Pray: O God, help us when we are so full that we lose our need for you. In the name of Christ, the one who ached with hunger for thy kingdom come. Amen