“Into the Wilderness”
By the Rev. Ernie Lewis
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Romans 10:8b-13
Luke 4:1-13
Psalm 91:1-2,9-16
Early Christians understandably struggled to understand Jesus. Who was he? Where did he come from? What he was all about?
One group claimed he wasn’t a human being at all but a kind of heavenly phantasm, a mirage. He only “seemed” to be “real.”
This implied that his suffering, death and resurrection were not actual occurrences but simply manifestations of the mirage.
They were called “Docetists”, the root word meaning “to seem”.
But the church as a whole ultimately rejected this view and went to great pains to affirm quite the opposite: “….. by the power of the Holy Spirit became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man”, they proclaimed.
The gospels relate many examples of Jesus’ very human emotions and needs: hunger, impatience, sorrow, exhaustion, emotional and physical pain, even anger!
And yet ,……isn’t it easy for us to imagine another Jesus?
He seems suspiciously European, “well-scrubbed”, exuding a sort of heavenly aura; bathed in warm, ethereal light! This Jesus seems always in control and exudes love and gentleness.
He really doesn’t sound much like us or any of the people we know!
Now that’s all well and good.
But where, I wonder, is the sunburned Jewish carpenter with knotty muscles and big strong hands bearing scars, stains and scratches. Where is the evidence of hard physical work, and of living rough on the roads and hills of Galilee?
Where is the Jesus laughing uproariously or chuckling softly at some foible of one of his disciples or watching children or animals at play?
Where is the loud exclamation when the hammer misses the nail and finds the tip of a finger, or the toe meets an unyielding rock in the road?
Do we really want a Jesus who always hits the nail squarely on the head?
The church down through the ages has struggled with the concept of Jesus as both God’s eternal Word and man, borne of woman.
But, in spite of that “heavenly” Jesus, those who observed him “up close” went to some lengths to reassure us that he was very, very human…very, very…. just like us!
For example: Luke, who knew him and lived closely with him tells us that right after his amazing baptism experience when the heavenly voice proclaimed him as “My Son”, Jesus, “filled with the Holy Spirit” and led by that Spirit, went off by himself into the wilderness.
He stayed there for “forty days” (the biblical description of a long time). He fasted as a means of sharpening his focus.
Might this have been the point at which he fully realized for the first time, just who he was and what lay ahead of him?
We’ll never know but it’s obvious he felt the need to be alone and to begin to try to make sense of it all.
But he was not alone!
“The devil” was there with him!
Oh, not the little guy in the red suit and horns, but something infinitely worse and more dangerous; the origin of the awful doubts and fears that plague us all from time to time. It’s that thing that robs us of sleep and peace! It’s when our minds reel with confusion. He might better be called “The Tempter”.
And it was there in that lonely place Jesus experienced that most human of experience: “Temptation”.
He was hungry, ragged from lack of sleep, and so tired!
He was at his most vulnerable and defenseless.
For him as for us, that is when temptation strikes most effectively!
The Tempter presented Jesus with three proposals:
Change that stone into bread! (“You gotta’ eat, Man!”)
Assert your position as God’s Son to gain political power, (You heard the voice, you’re God’s “Son”, you can do anything you want”!)
Perform a death defying “trick”. (“You’ll be a celebrity Big Guy! Everybody in the country will hear about it and want to be near you!”)
So what was so tempting?
Was it to demonstrate his power as the Son of God, the Word come into the world, the Promised One of Israel?
Or was he seeking to test himself, to feel somehow more secure in the calling he was just living into?
Could it be appealing to him that if he were to do these miraculous things, he might avoid some of the horror of his life that he was just beginning to understand? “Maybe if I do these things people will believe in me.”
The point is that no matter what was going through Jesus’ mind during this time of he was tempted!
These were not “fake” temptations!
They were real!
And that means that there existed the possibility that he might have yielded to them!
Were that not even a possibility, these would not have constituted real temptations!
BUT HE DID NOT!
He fell back, I think instinctively, on some “memory verses” like the ones some of us learned in Sunday School as children; verses he might have learned from his local rabbi as he was growing up! (Interestingly, the Tempter tried some “proof texting himself, avoiding of course, any context!).
When Jesus needed them, they were there, in his head and on the tip of his tongue! With them, he turned away from the Tempter!
This is not to suggest that we can “proof text” our way out of any difficulty or temptation! But the closer God’s promises are to our consciousness, the more likely we are to be able to resist!
So, what can we learn from this episode in Jesus’ life!
I think its best summarized by the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every way has been tested (tempted) as we are, yet without sin.[1]”
The God/Man Jesus knows us and what we are like because he was one of us! He knows what it is to be human!
He knows the power and allure of temptations because he experienced them!
And he loves us still!
In spite of our stumbling around, our easy excuses for our own weaknesses and how prone we are to fall for temptations on an everyday basis, he loves us still!
“…..though he was in the form of God, (he) did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”[2]
Lent is a time for “taking stock”, of reckoning who we are.
To be tempted is part of our human condition.
Thanks be to God, we are not alone!
Jesus has gone before us!
His Holy Spirit will strengthen, keep, and encourage us!
Amen!
[1] Hebrews 4:15
[2] Philippians 2: 6-8
