Jesus Tempted
Jesus Tempted
Luke 4:1-11
This Wednesday—Ash Wednesday—marks the beginning of the season of Lent. The word, “Lent” comes from the Latin word for “spring,” (There’s hope!) However, Lent, in Christianity, is the forty day period before Easter. Early on, Lent was a time for teaching new converts to Christianity who would then be baptized on Easter Sunday. In the evolution of Christianity, Lent has become a “back to the basics” time for spiritual discipline and renewal.
I have my own history with Ash Wednesday and Lent. I don’t remember ever attending an Ash Wednesday service until I came to this church. I do remember seeing folks in my mostly Irish Catholic hometown with ashes on their foreheads. However, this was something Protestants just didn’t do. At the Union Church, though, we have people from all sorts of backgrounds. Therefore, we are open to practices other than just the one’s we grew up around. This is part of what I love about our church!
So, when I first started here, I had to get up to speed. I knew that the ashes were created from the palms from the previous year’s Palm Sunday celebration. There were some leftover palms that I had seen in the cave under the stairs. So, I grabbed a bunch, headed over to the manse driveway, found a metal garbage can and set the palms on fire, at which point smoke started billowing all over the neighborhood. There was so much smoke, in fact, that I am still amazed that the fire department didn’t come screaming over! The other distinct memory was the smell. No one told me that burnt palms stink!
I waited forever for the ashes to cool. Then, I gathered up some ashes, put them in a bowl, and set them on the communion table and prepared for that night’s service. I’m sure that I preached that night so I was probably working on that sermon and thinking to myself, “No big deal…”
Boy, it turned out to be a huge deal! Toward the end of the service, everyone lined up. (“Everyone” being probably about fifteen or twenty people.) They came forward as if they were going to receive communion. Instead, I held the cup of ashes in my hand and dipped my finger into the ashes. What unfolded next was a total mess. I hadn’t thought to add any oil to the ashes to thicken them. I also hadn’t thought to grind them to make them a bit less “chunky.” So, the first person in line had a terrible experience. I awkwardly put one hand on their forehead to hold their hair out of the way. I took my messy fingers and tried to draw a cross. Big chunks of ashes just fell everywhere. What a mess!
At the same time, what an intimate moment: the simple act of physical contact; the shared sense of being covered in ashes; the inevitable eye contact from a very close distance. Then, there was the question of what to say. The most traditional words are simply, “From out of the ashes you arose, to ash you will return,” or just “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” These are words that I only say at a graveside. I’ve never been able to make peace with saying them on Ash Wednesday. Instead, I look the person in the eye and say, “These are the ashes of forgiveness and new life.” It is such a vulnerable moment, for everyone involved.
The creation of that experience of vulnerability completely fits with our text for this morning—Luke’s account of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. This, of course, is not an accident. Lent lasts for forty days to mark the forty days that Jesus spent in the wilderness, being tempted. He didn’t eat at all—hence the connection for many faithful people between fasting or giving things up during this season. According to the Gospel of Mark’s incredibly brief account of this time, Jesus is kept company by the wild animals and comforted by the angels. However, with no food in sight and no people around, it’s a good guess that Jesus was suffering. Forty days, alone and hungry, could make anyone vulnerable.
We should pause to make a few connections on our way into this story. There are folks who believe that if you are a faithful person then you won’t suffer. God will protect you You get a pass. You’d think that the end of Jesus’ story—the part when he suffers a lot—would make that a hard position to hold. The truth, though, is that this view is already ruled out by Matthew, Mark, and Luke in the beginning of their Gospels. Jesus shows up at the River Jordan, gets baptized, is filled with the Holy Spirit, receives an endorsement from above. Then, immediately, that same Spirit leads him into the wilderness where he suffers for a long time.
When things get really hard in our lives, it’s hard to remember that we have not been abandoned. God is still with us. When things get hard, we get vulnerable. Our worst fears start to creep around us. All sorts of temptations start presenting themselves, inviting us to be less than who we are. Fear and isolation and unmet needs can make a person get pretty selfish. Such things can make us bitter about the people and the God whom we were sure would not only be there for us but who would keep things like this from happening to us. It’s tempting, for one thing, to think, “Why am I trying so hard to be good in a world that is this bad?”
Now, I don’t want to argue that the things which tempted Jesus are the things which would tempt us. That’s not the point. My point is that there is a shared human experience of enduring through really hard times. Those hard times invite us to see who we don’t want to be. Sometimes, they invite us to learn those things because during a hard time we can easily became someone we never want to be again. Those hard times may also invite us to a greater empathy for the folks around us when their hard times arrive and they make a mistake or two. If we are really paying attention though, we may learn just how much we need the people around us and just how much we need a gracious and forgiving and loving God. Life is often so very hard. Without a little grace and love, none of us stand a chance.
Maybe there is no greater expression of this truth than the fact that this year, we won’t even get our ashes. Here’s the thing, though…most years, those ashes make us stop and realize that things could be a lot harder than they are. This year, I suspect that most of us don’t really need ashes to remind us that life can get tough. We’ve “been there and done that” for a while now.
What we do need, perhaps, is a reminder that hard times don’t mean that God is not present or that there is not a way through. In fact, let’s set the ashes aside until next year and dive straight into Lent, instead. The challenges of this life already have our attention. The question is, “How will we make it through?” The answer, or at least the beginning of one, lies in Jesus’ example in our text.
Think about it this way. The baptismal moment for Jesus tells us something about who he already is. He hasn’t preached a sermon or healed a person or worked any other miracles. All he has done is show up. When he does, the Holy Spirit is upon him and God announces, “You are my Son, the Beloved. With you I am well pleased.” In short, he is already loved. That’s not up for debate.
I don’t think it’s up for debate about any of us, either. I know, I know, we’re not Jesus. I get that. However, the fact that we’re loved is not about us and how great we are. We are loved simply because God is a gracious and loving God. What matters isn’t who we are. What matters is who God is. This is what Jesus showed us. I know that’s hard to take in—that God could know us, warts and all and love us anyway. It’s a miracle, plain and simple, the kind of miracle on which a person could build a life, the kind of miracle which just might help us get through hard times.
It’s this miracle that gets Jesus through. At the end of forty days, he’s lonely and tired and hungry—and he’s tempted. He’s tempted to turn stones into bread. He’s tempted to worship something less than God and get all the power in the world. He’s tempted to put God to the test—to force a little proof into the equation. You could even use Scripture to justify giving in. (You can use Scripture to justify just about anything, after all!) However, the bottom line is that the hard times have just become even harder. There is the real possibility of settling for something less—a meal, worldly power, proof that makes faith seem unnecessary.
What does Jesus do? He doesn’t deny the temptations. He doesn’t get all “holier than thou.” No, that’s left up to centuries worth of followers. Instead, he goes back to basics. He says, “No!” three times. He grounds that, “No!” in Scripture. In fact, he grounds his resistance in the book of Deuteronomy, in the hard won wisdom of our ancestors in faith, in the lived experience of Moses and the people. It’s not that he gets bonus points for knowing the book. Rather, isolated as he may be, he is not separated from the people and our shared history. In the hardest times, he grounds himself in the wisdom of our ancestors. He remembers who he is.
When the people were brought out of slavery and into the wilderness, they had a terrible time trusting God. They worried about what they would eat. God provided manna, every day. They had to learn that there would be enough. Imagine how important remembering this would be for Jesus as he embarked on three years of homelessness! Imagine how it might change us to remember that enough really is enough… A full stomach isn’t the point.
It turns out, neither is having unlimited power. The tempter offers Jesus all the political power in the world. What Jesus recalls is Moses’ speech to the people as they stood on the brink of the Promised Land. Moses tells them to never forget who gave them the land in the first place. Power and status—not even unlimited worldly power—are not enough. We’re not here to grab power.
Finally, faced with the temptation to put God to the test, Jesus refuses. The allusion is to Moses at Massah, the place where the people demanded that God provide water—right now! It was known as the “place of quarreling.” With a little proof, a person wouldn’t have to be faithful or trusting. A person could just be invulnerable and invincible. God would be at your beck and call! Jesus says, “No!”
How do we make it through hard times? Not by focussing on our needs. Not by grabbing for power. Not by demanding that the people around us or God prove their love. Not even…and this is a hard one for folks like us…by becoming more and more self-reliant and self-sufficient and self-centered. No…we make it through hard times by embracing relationships—with one another and with God. We ground ourselves in something far larger than ourselves, the chance to show others how much God loves the world, even when times are hard, even we are tempted to settle for something less.
And, having confirmed who he was not, Jesus walks out of the wilderness and begins loving the world, one person at a time. He isn’t there because there is something in it for him. He isn’t there to restore the nation of Israel. No, he’s there precisely because life is hard and people are suffering and being with them and for them might just be the only way to show them just how much God loves this broken world.