A Homily for the First Sunday in Lent
Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the
wilderness, to be tempted by the devil.
—Saint Matthew 4:1
According to Saint Matthew, immediately after Jesus’s baptism he was led by the Holy Spirit into the desert, where he remained for forty days. And at the end of the forty days he endured temptation. This account (together with the parallel passage in Saint Mark’s Gospel) is the only time we are told about a specific temptation of Jesus, and there are about this account some extraordinary features. But it was a consequence of his taking on him our human nature that he was never safe from temptation.
But, as we are told in the Epistle to the Hebrews: “We do have a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but he was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” It is precisely because of this shared experience, that we can “come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”
We Christians know Jesus Christ to be the Word of God, the second person of the divine trinity, begotten of the Father before all time: light of light, very God of very God. We know him to be eternal, the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. It is altogether meet and right that we should sing hymns of praise to him and that we should pray to him and to the Father in his Name, and that we should fall down and worship him.
But, at the same time, we must not forget that Jesus is also a real human being, a real man, Mary’s boy. His earthly life was real, it was not play-acting: he felt real pain and real joy, he became weary and sometimes even angry, he wept real tears and told real jokes, and, in due course, he bled real blood. And when, after his resurrection, he ascended into heaven, he retained his humanity, inseparably linked to his divinity.
This is the distinctively Christian message, that God became man and, for a season, pitched his tent among us. For us human beings, and for our salvation, he came down from heaven. He who was God by nature did not cling to equality with the Father, “but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men. And, being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even to death on a cross.”
This morning’s Gospel narrative of the temptation of Jesus in the desert emphasizes for us the reality of the incarnation. Having fasted for forty days, he found himself hungry, just as you and I would find ourselves hungry. Just as his hunger was real, so his temptation was real. If he was not put to the test, as we are put to the test, the incarnation would have been a sham.
Saint John
Chrysostom, the bishop of
Since it was
with a view to our instruction that he both did and underwent all things, he
endured also to be led up thither, and to wrestle against the devil: in order
that each of us who are baptized, if after his baptism he have to endure
greater temptations, may not be troubled as if the result were unexpected, but
may continue to endure all nobly, as though it were happening in the natural
course of things.
And, surely, temptation is in the natural course of things for us human beings, both baptized and unbaptized. Baptism is for the remission of sins, not for the banishment of temptation.
The story of the temptation endured by Jesus in the desert after his baptism is striking because in some ways it seems so different from the temptations that we endure every day. How often, after all, does Satan, the adversary, show up in person and offer us dominion over all the people and things in the world? And yet, this is not really a difference, but a clarification and a magnification of the temptations we face: it is all the little temptations of daily life written in larger letters; it is temptation stripped of excuses, and prevarications, and everyday pettiness.
To Jesus, fasting in the desert, the adversary appears in person. When we are put to the test—by the urge to cut corners on a job, to take something that is not ours, to spread a rumor or repeat a slander, to deceive a friend, or a spouse, or a boss, to do something to harm a neighbour—it may seem to us that the impulse is our own, or that it is suggested by an acquaintance or a co-worker, or that it comes from something we saw on the television. But the source of the temptation is always the same: it is that rebellious angel who makes war against God.
The
tempter offers things that appear desirable.
Food and security, wealth and power.
They are things that can be used for good. So crafty is the adversary that ofttimes he
can make it seem wrong to refuse.
Wouldn’t it be wrong not to
turn stones into bread, if by doing so one could feed the hungry children of
Darfur and
The temptations that beset us may be far more mundane, but the rationalization is the same. Indeed, in the twenty-first century, the rationalization threatens to numb us to the very idea of the sinfulness of sin. Sexual perversion and lasciviousness masquerade as love and authenticity and getting in touch with whom God made you to be. The murder of the unborn is passed off as the “right to choose.” Hideous experimentation with human embryos is advertised as holding the key to curing all illness.
“Temptation” itself is ridiculed in a hundred advertising campaigns. Why, for example, would a confectioner market its goods under the name “Sweet Temptations®” if we were not meant to buy them? And every day we hear the fatal rationalizations: “you deserve it,” “be good to yourself,” “enhance your self esteem.”
Writing to the Corinthians, Saint Paul tells them (and, therefore, us): “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”
The surest
remedy against temptation is prayer.
Jesus himself, in the
How then are we
to get the better of the tempter? In the way which Christ hath taught us, by
fleeing to God for refuge; and neither to be depressed in famine, as believing
in God who is able to feed even with a word; nor amidst whatever good things we
may receive to tempt Him who gave them, but to be content with the glory which
is from above, making no account of that which is of men, and on every occasion
to despise what is beyond our need. For nothing doth so make us fall under the
power of the devil, as longing for more, and loving covetousness.
And the nineteenth century English priest, John Henry Newman, in a sermon on today’s Gospel text said:
Prayer
is not only the weapon, ever necessary and sure, in our conflict with the powers of evil, but a deliverance from evil
is ever implied as the object of prayer.
It follows that all texts whatever which speak of our addressing and
prevailing on Almighty God, with prayer and fasting, do, in fact, declare this
conflict and promise this victory over the evil one. . . . Let it be observed that . . . perseverance in
prayer is especially recommended to us. And this is part of the lesson taught
us by the long continuance of the Lent fast, that we are not to gain our wishes by one day set
apart for humiliation, or by one prayer,
however fervent, but by “continuing instant in prayer.”
We are instructed to pray that we be not led into temptation, and to pray lest we enter into temptation; and yet, despite our prayer, we enter into temptation daily. Nor are we always, despite our prayer, successful in resisting temptation. When we find ourselves, despite ourselves, doing what we know to be wrong, we are then faced with a new temptation, which we must also pray for grace to resist: that is the temptation to despair.
But Jesus Christ, who “was in all points tempted as we are, yet did not sin,” knows what it means to be tempted, knows how easy it is for us weak human beings to fall into sin. And as Saint John saith, “if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world.”
05
March 2006