Faith and Temptation
Lent 1
Fr. Tim Nunez
May my spoken word be true to God’s written word and bring us all closer to the living word, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Our Gospel for the first Sunday of Lent each year concerns Jesus being tempted in the wilderness by Satan. Mark’s account is very brief, but remember this story is our story. It shows us vital ways that Jesus is bound to humanity’s long struggle with the sin that separates us from God, and vital ways we are bound to Jesus. Some lessons are found in the three types of danger Jesus faced, and some are in how his temptation is framed in the narrative.
The first danger is that Jesus was driven by the Spirit into the wilderness. That wilderness is desert, so very little water or food either.
Second, he is tempted by Satan. Satan is the accuser. Just as he stripped Job of everything he loved and had and afflicted him with physical suffering and misery, he looks for any and every weakness within Jesus and uses any and every means to break him.
Third, Jesus was in some measure of physical danger from wild animals. At that time, predators in that region included leopards and hyenas.
Taken altogether, he was exposed internally and externally to the same sorts of dangers that we face. Maybe we aren’t struggling for clean water or food, but we all have unmet needs. As we prayed the Great Litany at the start of the service, we all felt some stabs of conscience and perhaps a question or two arose. Satan is always prowling around like a lion ready to devour us. We don’t have to worry much about leopards or hyenas, but we all face dangers. This story is our story.
And we can also find deep echoes that show us how Jesus reconciles humanity’s relationship with God, which in reflected in the way Jesus’ temptation fits into Mark’s narrative.
Jesus’ temptation happened immediately after his baptism. As Peter notes in his first letter, Jesus suffered for our sins once and for all. Once and for all. Baptism in a complete washing away of sin. Peter wrote that baptism was prefigured by the Flood.
The Flood was God’s reboot of the creation, essentially returning the world to the waters of chaos, except for the remnants of life huddled in the ark, including the righteous Noah and his family. All of that was meant to wipe out evil and start again.
But it didn’t work. The problem with sin isn’t ever going to be resolved by removing the bad people, by disposing of “them.” Evil infects all of us.
We believe and proclaim that baptism by water and the Holy Spirit and being sealed and marked as Christ’s own forever forms an “indissoluble bond” with God. In other words, as Peter describes in this letter and as Paul noted in several of his letters, in baptism we join Christ in his death and we join him in his resurrection. I wish, I truly wish, that gave us protection from all the sin, hazards and dangers of this life.
But baptism did not shield Jesus from the dangers and struggles of this life. Once we are baptized, we are not allowed to remain safely in that moment. We, too, are driven by the Spirit into the wilderness of life. There, like Jesus, we will be regularly tempted by our internal needs and desires as well as by the accidents of this life; as well as by the sin infecting others as well as our systems and organizations. We must carry our faith into the world, into our families, our churches, our workplaces, our neighborhoods and our friendships.
There is also an unmistakable link to the Exodus, when the entire nation of Israel was delivered by God from tyranny and slavery in Egypt, then went into 40 years of wandering in the same sort of desert wilderness where they not only had to rely on God for protection, water and food, as well as the Law to structure their society, but the provision of each comes as a clear sign of God’s presence and love. Surely God delivering them from slavery, appearing in pillars of fire and cloud, water gushing from a rock, manna and quail descending to feed them, would be enough to secured their faithfulness, right?
But it didn’t work. As soon as Moses stepped away for a time to receive the Law, they fashioned and worshipped a golden calf. Our sin cannot be resolved by signs and wonders. People quickly take God’s provision for granted. People forget and turn to their own devices. They disregard every sign of God’s grace. Evil infects all of us.
Humanity is very much exposed to Satan’s temptations and Jesus went right there with us. He went right there for us.
Immediately after his temptation, Jesus began proclaiming the good news about the Kingdom of God. Jesus’ faith, his relationship with the Father, enabled him to endure these 40 days and 40 nights as well as the hardships that he faced all the way to the cross and his crucifixion.
Likewise, faith is the gift God gives us in Jesus. Jesus is a sign, he said that when we see him we have seen the Father, and he is much more. He promised to be with us. He is at once that stab of conscience, our ultimate judge. And he is our companion.
We are bound to his death and we are bound to his life. We are fueled by the power of the Holy Spirit, to join in his relationship with the Father. He helps us endure the internal and external struggles, temptations and dangers we face in life, all the way up to and including our own death. We don’t get to go around them. We may avoid many by living right. We may push back some conditions, but we don’t get to avoid them entirely. Best of all, he forgives and heals where we fail.
We go forward from baptism, into the wilderness of life to be his witnesses, not because we are perfect, but because we know he is the answer to our struggle and, in the end, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.
AMEN