The story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness is so familiar to us it’s easy to take no notice of it. It happened. We hear about it every Lent. So what? Well maybe we can learn things about our own lives and priorities if we look at Jesus’ temptation in a little more depth.
And really it’s all about power. How Jesus, and how we use our power.
In the first temptation Jesus was tempted by the devil to use his power for his own needs, to enable him to get what he wanted. He wanted bread – and he had the power to turn the stones which were strewn across the desert into bread when he was hungry. It’s not as if anyone would notice him do it out there in the desert; why should he be hungry when he had the power to be satisfied, replete?
We have to remember that God lead Jesus out into the wilderness for a purpose – he was there to learn something important. And what was this thing he had to learn. He was to do what God asked, even if it meant being hungry. Later in his ministry Jesus made a habit of miraculously feeding people – the feeding of the 5000 is the only miracle mentioned in all 4 gospels. And here is its root – in the desert Jesus bowed to God’s desire that his ability to produce food out of thin air was to be used for others, not himself.
Food is a very complicated thing for people of this millennium. Half the world is overweight while half the world starves. Millions in our own country exist on cheap rubbish while the select few follow faddish diets of very expensive food. Teenage girls starve themselves to death because they think they’re fat even when they’r’e virtually skeletons. Food miles – remember those. How tempting it is to pick a packet of beans or broccoli off the supermarket shelf without even realising that it was grown in Egypt – delicious and healthy but unsustainable.
These are all things that we can reflect on in Lent, and the tradition of ‘giving up chocolate/bread/pastry/cake for Lent has its roots in this first temptation of Jesus.
The second temptation was to become what we might call a celebrity. Here Jesus’ power could easily have been misused to draw attention to himself and establish his importance by doing stunts. And Jesus could do stunts – amazing ones! In his ministry we see again that whenever Jesus performed a stunt it was always in the service of others, or to teach them something really important, never to draw attention to himself. Maybe this is the difference between a stunt and a miracle – the intention either or draw attention to yourself or to help others. Just think how Jesus’ life could have looked if Jesus had fallen for this one. We might have had the miracle of the man who made wine out of water and sold it for a profit; the miracle of the raising of Lazarus and Jairus’ daughter – for a fee; the miracle of the man who came down off the cross, just as his taunters suggested; the miracle man who built himself a mansion with his takings from his fan club, and was waited on by slaves and beautiful girls.
Today we are obsessed with celebrities. We watch them at the Oscars, follow their divorces in chat magazines, have national hysteria when several of them die in close succession. Children at school increasingly want to be not not firefighters or teachers or aeroplane pilots but celebrities when they grow up, – ‘someone famous’.
The third temptation is the temptation to be king of the world – someone with the ambitions of Napoleon or Hitler amongst others. In Jesus’ case this offer could sound very plausible; if he were to govern all the nations of the world he could insist that everyone would do what he wanted. He could have made an excellent and good King.
But God isn’t a God to force us to do what he wants and that wasn’t the message that Jesus proclaimed. Jesus told us that those who lead should be servants; that the greatest are those who mourn, who hunger, who seek peace, who are meek, merciful, who know their sinfulness.
In many ways the Jesus’ followers are at their worst when they’re the leaders of empire and tangled with the establishment, although it could be argued that we wouldn’t be here today if these things hadn’t happened. At the very least we need to be careful how we use our power. We need to ask ourselves whether, when we use our power we use it for ourselves or for others. Sometimes it’s hard for us to know whether we’re using our power well, and certainly isn’t always easy for others to understand. Those with power need always to be very self-critical and accept that their actions will sometimes be misconstrued. But in a way we all have power – the power to smile or glare, the power to praise or criticise, the power to speak out in public or stab someone in the back, the power to help or hinder, the power to do nothing or the power to act. We might not always have a choice on all these things, but most of us will have choices some of the time. How will you use your power this Lent? What choices will you make?
We live in a complex world. Very often it isn’t at all clear what is a temptation and what isn’t – we choose between the lesser of two evils. This is because sin isn’t just a personal thing – it is woven into our human institutions and even into God’s beautiful but ‘fallen’ – flawed – creation. Sin is global and all embracing. We can’t avoid it because it’s everywhere. And we do succumb to temptation – very often without even realising until afterwards. Often we don’t notice at all.
The good news is that Jesus IS a King but not the kind of King that the devil suggested – Jesus is the King of Love. He shows us the Father’s love and sends us the Spirit of love. Whenever we give in to temptation, the God of love is waiting there to forgive, before we even ask. As we walk into Lent, let us remember we walk with the King of Love by our side every step of the way. He guides us, picks us up when we stumble, and strengthens us when we’re tired.
Amen
