Lent 1

Readings: Deuteronomy 26:4-10; Roman 10:8-13; Luke 4:1-13

Doesn’t it seem like Jesus
makes resisting demonic temptations look easy—
maybe a little too easy?
First, Jesus doesn’t seem at all frightened by the devil.
Luke doesn’t tell us what the devil looked like,
but Jesus seems completely unruffled
by whatever form it is in which the devil appears.
Second, Jesus never seems to be seriously tempted
by the devil’s offers of food, fortune, and fame.
He acts as if he is completely unmoved
by these undeniably desirable things.
Third, Jesus seems to know exactly what to say
in response to the devil’s temptations.
Rejecting the devil’s attempt to engage him,
the appropriate verses of Scripture
come effortlessly to Jesus’ lips
and effectively silence the devil.

To be honest,
were I in that situation,
I can’t imagine it turning out quite the same.
First, I would be terrified
by the sight of the devil,
who I’m pretty sure looks something
like a cross between Godzilla and a giant housefly.
Second, while I might be able to resist
temptations to fortune and fame
(but who am I kidding?),
after forty days in the desert I’d be hungry
and I’m pretty sure I would turn the rocks
not just into bread
but maybe into a nice juicy cheeseburger.
Third, despite my fear,
I would undoubtedly chat with the devil
at great length,
flattered that such an important entity
saw fit to tempt me.
And if I thought to quote scripture to him
I am pretty sure that it would be
some wildly inappropriate verse
that would occur to me,
like, “You must also make linen pants for them,
to cover their naked flesh
from their loins to their thighs”
or, maybe, “As dogs return to their vomit,
so fools repeat their folly.”
In other words,
I have a hard time relating to Jesus
when it comes to his temptations in the desert.
I don’t think I would find resisting those temptations
as easy as Jesus seems to.
The letter to the Hebrews says that Jesus was
“tempted in every way that we are, yet without sin.”
It’s that “without sin” part that sends me scurrying for excuses.

The easiest excuse, of course,
is that I, unlike Jesus, am not the incarnate Son of God;
I am not the Word who was with God in the beginning;
my human nature is not hypostatically united
to the divine nature.
Clearly Jesus has superpowers that give him
an unfair advantage.
Who could blame me if I,
lacking such powers,
were to succumb to demonic temptation?

But, at least in this case,
the relevant difference between Jesus and me
is not that he is God and I am not.
The difference between Jesus and me
is that he is unafraid to be fully human and I am.
He is unafraid to be hungry,
to be powerless,
to be unknown and unacknowledged by the world,
while I hide from my humanity
and the neediness and fragility that comes with it.
I want to be able to turn stones to bread
to always supply my physical wants.
I want to have power and wealth
to always control the people and things around me.
I want acknowledgement and notoriety from the world
to validate my shaky sense of self-worth.
In facing the devil’s temptations
it is not the divine power that Jesus possesses
that separates me from him,
but rather his embrace of human weakness,
his lack of illusion about what being human entails.

In our first reading, from the book of Deuteronomy,
Moses instructs the people of Israel
to embrace their identity as God’s people
as they present the firstfruits of their harvest at the Temple,
an identity grounded in their need for God.
At the very moment when they might be tempted to think
that they are doing something great for God,
supplying some divine need,
Moses tells them to recite and recall their story:
the story of how God rescued their ancestor from slavery
and gave them the very land that has produced their offering.
He tells them to remember that anything they do for God
is but a pale echo of what God has always already done for them.
He tells them to embrace their humanity in its neediness
even as they offer their gifts to God, saying:
“I have now brought you the firstfruits
of the products of the soil
which you, O LORD, have given me.”

In his letter to the Romans,
Paul too reminds his readers
that their salvation is not something
that they have procured for themselves
but is what God has wrought for them
in raising Jesus from the dead.
He reminds us that it is not
in our possessions or power or popular acclaim
that we find our salvation,
but in calling upon the Lord in our neediness,
in confessing with our lips and believing in our heart
what God has done for us in Jesus Christ.

And we too should remember and recite
all that God has done to bring us through
in our moments of weakness and need,
which, let’s face it, is every moment of our lives.
Lent gives us a season to turn
from our illusions of self-sufficiency,
with which the tempter entices us,
back to the God who supplies our need.
It is a second chance to embrace and love
in all its fragility and poverty
the humanity that God has given us.
It is a second chance to remain hungry,
so that we may be filled by God,
to remain powerless,
so that we may be lifted up by God,
to remain unknown and unacknowledged by the world,
so that we may be known and loved by God.