First Sunday in Lent- Those Temptations

Every year as Lent rolls around we hear the same message. Jesus is sent off into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. To give myself a different view of temptation I went looking for some appropriate quotes to enlighten the story in new ways.

[Jesus] fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished.

Which made me think of a quote from Shakespeare from Romeo and Juliet.

• Tempt not a desperate man.

Now that would seem to be the time to go for the kill. Which may very well be what the Devil is thinking as he steps forward with his first offer...

“If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”

That's catching Jesus where it hurts- both his divinity and his humanity. "Use your divinity," says the Devil, "to solve the problems of your humanity. You are starving. Do it. Turn your divinity into a magic act- and I will have you."

How true are the old-time preacher Billy Sunday's words. The accepting of the tempting offer opens the way:

• Temptation is the devil looking through the keyhole. Yielding is opening the door and inviting him in.

So, the Devil looks for another way when one doesn't work.

“If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”

Now Jesus is to prove his divinity and his trust of God- by tempting God. What a concept. Now, we would never do that! But alas, to want that kind of relationship with God is to fall to what Jean Anouilh said, through the voice of Thomas a Becket in the play Becket.

• “Saintliness is also a temptation”

But the Devil has one more trick up his sleeve.

the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”

The down and dirty nitty gritty. Thats what the Devil has been after from the beginning. When the sly sideways acts fail he offers the world in return for simply worshiping him. It's sly in its straightforwardness. Columnist Earl Wilson mentioned this power:

• Ever notice that the whisper of temptation can be heard farther than the loudest call to duty.

But throughout this whole scene Jesus doesn't falter or fail.

• He's hungry - but not for stones of his own creation.
• He's the Son of God - and doesn't need to test it.
• He knows worship - and the Devil isn't the focus.

Oh how nice it would be if we could be that strong and aware and faithful. But truth be told, we don't need no Devil to come after us. Humorist Sam Levenson understood that:

• “Lead us not into temptation. Just tell us where it is; we'll find it.”

But what Jesus shows us is that we don't have to give in. Yes, he is God become a man, but he is still a man. If he can do it, he will certainly assist us in our temptations. I have a hunch that part of the original context of this passage was to remind early Christians that if even Jesus was tempted- and overcame it in his humanity- so can we. It was not through magic or even his special relationship that this happened. It was his trust in the Word and the One who gave the Word.