Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to you, O God, my stronghold and my redeemer. Amen.
“After Jesus was baptized, he was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.’
Baptized. Led by the Spirit. Fasted forty days and forty nights.
And then, right on schedule, temptation. Welcome to Lent.
Our Gospel reading for this first Sunday in Lent – known, aptly, as The Temptation of Jesus – is … relatable. It seems to me that, in many ways, it is the story of the journey of Lent itself – not only of the liturgical season of Lent, but of the Lenten dimension of the life in Christ, which is always present regardless of the time of year.
As indicated, the passage immediately preceding this one is Matthew’s account of the Baptism of Jesus. Jesus has presented himself for baptism by John in the river Jordan. The heavens opened and the Spirit of God descended upon him like a dove. The voice of God is heard to call Jesus his “Son, the Beloved,” in whom he is “well pleased.” We could be forgiven at this point for expecting it to be nothing but fair winds and following seas for Jesus from here on out.
But instead, it’s where his troubles begin. It’s where they tend to begin for most of us. We take a bold first step in reorienting our lives toward God, believing that we will receive an overflowing of grace, a reward of some kind for heroically putting aside our self-serving ways, and that, from here on out, God will have our back. But as you and I know, the road to eternal life is narrow and fraught with danger.
In my own life, I’ve often experienced these “post-committal” troubles in the form of fear, self-doubt, guilt, anxiety, feelings of inadequacy and in-authenticity and, of course, temptation.
And so what exactly is temptation? It’s not the passionate, carnal desire for comfort, money, food, sex, or power. Those are merely the disguises temptation wears to woo us. Temptation is the bold-faced lie we tell ourselves that we should quit something because we aren’t good enough, strong enough, or beloved enough. For Jesus in the wilderness, it’s the enemy trying to make him feel that he needs to prove himself, even though God had just declared that he’s God’s Son, and is well-pleasing to God. It’s the shameless attempt to get Jesus to deviate from the path of being his true and full self.
Likewise for us, temptation is devious, presenting as a more attractive, safer alternative for the sake of distracting us and pulling us away from the path to becoming our true selves. Instead of going to the gym to become healthier and better focused, I’ll lie on the couch and eat tacos today. Rather than spending time with a lonely friend or loved one so that we can both be nourished by one another’s company, I’ll stay in my sweatpants and watch internet cat videos instead. I’m all ready to do the work of committing myself to renewal, self-emptying, and service to God and others, when the passions flare. It’s as if the old tempter – or, more likely, my shadow or false self – is saying, “Do you really think you can do this? To shake off all your bad stuff? Well, you really can’t. All you’ll do is fail and mess it up, and everyone will laugh at you and hate you for it, so it’s better not to even try. Trust me, I know you better than you do, better even than God does.”
If I had to guess, I’m probably not the only person this happens to. And no wonder: When we make the decision to empty ourselves, what we’re really doing is letting our guards down, allowing our defenses to take a back seat to the Spirit of God working within us. We are weak in these moments, vulnerable. And while this is a necessary condition for allowing ourselves to grow into greater union with God, it is also an ideal condition for letting in the invaders – the demons of our pasts, so to speak, and our shadow-selves – all the bad stuff we’d rather ignore or forget.
If only there were some way to have one without the other. After all, letting God in is good. Letting demons and temptations in is bad. The two seem like they should be mutually exclusive, don’t they?
Well, as it turns out, they’re not. In fact, they sort of … go together. In order to become spiritually strong, we must first become weak, as the Apostle Paul counsels us. And, as somewhat of a spoiler alert, Jesus himself is going to demonstrate this principal rather dramatically at the opposite end of Lent.
This is because we can only grow in union with God by overcoming the bad stuff that assail us. We can only overcome it by naming and confronting it. And we can only do that with God’s help. So, strange as it may seem, the act of conversion really does demand that we take the bad with the good.
Of course, there are plenty of examples of people engaging with this reality with varying degrees of success. In our reading from Genesis this morning we can probably see a lot of ourselves: “I know I shouldn’t do such-and-such a thing, but I want to, and I’m being given a compelling rationalization by someone who claims to have my interests at heart and seems to know what they’re talking about, so that makes it okay. Or, at least, it makes me feel less responsible for choosing my own will over God’s.” Good old human nature at its less-than-finest.
Perhaps a more edifying example is that of the desert elders of the first centuries of Christianity who, following the example of Christ, fled to their own wildernesses where they certainly faced temptation. Those who were unable to contend soon either returned to the relative comfort and perceived safety of civilization or allowed themselves merely to acclimate to their circumstances without ever really facing – or getting to know – themselves. But for those who meant business – for the likes of Anthony and Pachomius, and later figures such as Benedict of Nursia and Isaac the Syrian, life in the wilderness meant a constant, intentional engagement with the bad stuff – the insecurities, the weariness, the hunger, the burning heat and biting cold, and, especially, the temptations.
I imagine those early desert monastics must have thought about today’s Gospel reading a lot. And, my guess is it must have provided a measure of both comfort and reassurance, along with a challenge. After all, Jesus likely had only the same resources at his disposal as were available to them: prayer, meditation, fasting, silence, solitude, and faith in God’s mercy. And if Jesus himself was not immune to temptation, then they certainly couldn’t expect to be either. And, most important, while he was enduring many of the same elements that they must have been experiencing, he still managed to resist succumbing to them because, at all times, his eye was on the prize, which was to do the Will of the One who sent him.
This is key. Jesus, having just been baptized, and in preparation for his ministry in Galilee (that’s the part that comes right after today’s reading in Matthew), undergoes a period of intense human and spiritual formation to prepare himself for the path he has committed himself to following: namely, the proclamation of the Reign of God. It is a process and a path we are each called to follow no less stringently.
Commitment, formation, and then proclamation. It’s a process that all of us must be willing to embrace in its entirety. The reason is simple: each step along the way, including all of the trials, the setbacks, the doubts, the temptation to stop and return to what we knew before – not because it’s what we really want but because it’s what’s familiar and known and, therefore, seemingly safer than what we think may lie ahead – prepares us in a particular way to live more fully into the Paschal Mystery and to proclaim the good news that there is a God who loves each and every one of us so much that he’s willing to walk in our shoes, to be baptized, famished, and tempted – all to show us that we are worth it, and we can do this too.
This can seem overwhelming, if not utterly unrealistic depending on where each of us is in our own life. For someone like me, who has spent the past nearly eighteen months being tested in a period of formation here at the monastery, I can see for the first time, really, just how much of a gift this path is. Drawn out of what was familiar to me and led up by the Spirit into the Wilderness of the mid-Hudson Valley, I have indeed been very much tempted by those parts of me that would prefer to throw in the towel and return to what feels safe.
Yet, as Jesus demonstrates to us in today’s Gospel, it’s worth it to resist the temptation to quit, to flee to what feels safe in the moment but what is ultimately unsatisfying and lifeless. Because on the other side is the promise of something far, far greater than the suffering of the present time.
Our Gospel reading is about the temptation of Jesus, but that isn’t where it ends. The closing sentence proclaims, “Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.”
The enemy left. The attacks ended, the bad stuff was over. And angels of God surrounded him. The fruits of trial, prayer, perseverance, and unceasing faith in God’s saving power have won the day. Now that Jesus has experienced what we do, he is ready to begin his ministry in Galilee.
Of course, we know it’s not going to be smooth sailing from here on out – not for Jesus, and not for us. In fact, these periods of testing will repeat themselves again and again, and not just in Lent. But each time we experience the suffering that comes with living – the bad with the good – we are a little better prepared than the last time to face them head-on. If nothing else, it becomes a little easier each time around to have hope that angels are indeed flying our way to wait on us. This hope is, really, the hope of the Resurrection. That in the death of our anxieties, fears, self-judgement, and self-loathing, new life will emerge in the form of peacefulness, faith, self-acceptance, and love.
And, having passed through the gauntlet as Jesus did, we, too, will be ready to join him in the proclamation of the Reign of God. May each of us hold to the hope of the Resurrection, never allowing the enemy of temptation to fool us into believing that there’s any better option for us, no matter how appealing it may seem in the moment. And, when we emerge on the other side of these forty days, may we find ourselves tested and proved, bearing the marks of the struggle, yet strengthened and equipped to proclaim the glory of Easter morning. Amen.
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