Homily: temptation in our deserts

​Lent 1, 2019: A homily on temptation
 
And he became like us – exactly like us, tempted just as we are tempted – yet he did not sin. This is what the writer of the Book of Hebrews tells us. This Jesus Christ, born of a virgin by the Holy Spirit, came into the world and lived among us; became one of us; was tempted just as we are. This is the truth of God’s relationship with us that you and I proclaim in our adoption into his family at baptism, in our weekly confession, thanks, and praise during our Eucharistic service, and in our daily devotions.
 
As I have been saying throughout Epiphany, this one whom we know to be our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, the thing that is special about him, is precisely how ordinary, how pedestrian, was his life; and yet simultaneously, that precisely his ordinary, pedestrian, day-to-day, week to week, month to month, and year to year faithfulness, is the substance, the content, the manifestation of love, the fulfillment of human life as God intended it, this very human life, filled with trials, temptations and ultimately death, is the very fountain of life. The fountain of water out of an inanimate rock, out of desert, dry bones, and death; the fountain of water that enfleshes once again our dry bones, that restores, by his own blood, the life that flows through our own blood. This very human Lord, we proclaim, comes into the world, suffers and struggles as one of us, lives, is tempted and dies as one of us; and yet this one named Jesus Christ is God, God who came into the world, the Son sent into the world, to change our fate; to change the end we’d chosen for ourselves that we hear about through Adam and Eve.
 
The first Adam was tempted and chose his own way, believed that he could make of his life and his desires, a better life than the one that he’d been given by his creator. He was not alone of course, who is ever alone when tempted. Those who are tempted are tempted precisely because they live in relationship with others and seeing what others are, what they have, what they don’t have, what they have become or can become, their own distinctions from us – their power, wealth, their success, their looks, their prestige or place or honor, their youth, their capacities, their intellect, their health, their power, their families, their lack of families – their own distinctions from us are no longer goods that God has created, but things that drive us to envy, jealousy, frustration, or maybe lust, maybe despair or disgust, or a sense of self-righteousness built on anxiety and insecurity.
 
The Second Adam, the one whom we call our Lord God, Jesus Christ, this one, boy was he tempted just as we are. We of course hear about this story of temptation when the Holy Spirit takes him out into the desert, just as he did with Job, just as he’s likely done with many of us, just as he’s done with the entire Church, the whole people of Israel, ‘blown’ all of us have been, out into a figurative desert where we are tempted to cave into those places where we are weak and vulnerable.
 
Just imagine yourself being Jesus for a moment. Imagine, knowing that you have been sent by the Father, that you are one with the Father. Surely you should be able to bring your own suffering, your own weakness and vulnerability, your own lack of power and control, the fact that people don’t recognize you as God, surely as the Son of God, you ought to be able to bring all these sufferings to an end. Wouldn’t that be an incredible temptation by which Satan could grab you? Thrust yourself off this here tower, turn these stones into bread, worship me, Satan, turn yourself away from your God and hey, then I’ll give you real power, I’ll give you control, I’ll give you wealth, I’ll other people into your hand to do whatever you want them to do. Isn’t this exactly what you desire, Jesus? And what about you Job, Leigh, Irene, Paul, Tyler, Mavis, Shirley … what do you all desire, just, turn yourselves to those things you most desire in your heart, I will bring them about and you will have everything you ever wanted.
 
We of course know how Jesus responds: We do not live in accordance with the reality God made for us, the world he made for us, if we put everything we are, if we set our hearts and minds, on achieving the things of this world, power, wealth, health, control over our lives, our friends our families, our society and culture. Silly Satan, how blind do you think we are? Does not the light of God that shone on the face of Moses on the Mountain in the desert, who came down that very same mountain with laws for you to live, illumine for you, give you light to see that you are to worship and love God only. Surely you must know the Law, dear Satan, that human beings do not live by bread alone, the figurative bread of this world that feeds your body but not your soul.  
 
Jesus is indeed tempted just as we are. Make no mistake, Jesus had the same hunger we do, had the same need for love that we do (think of what he says in the midst of his worst moments, ‘Father why have you forsaken me),’ he had the same desire to enact his will (‘take this cup from me,’ no, in truth, I have another mission, so I will take and drink this cup and go to the Cross), indeed, in relationship he too had fear, anxiety, a sense of conflict about his desire for basic survival, his desire for love, his desire to love others – his Father, and his neighbor (you and I), these relationships were not neat and tidy, they were complex, nuanced, and filled with people he was supposed to draw to him who instead spit on him, reviled him, turned their backs on him. So surely he must have been tempted to turn away from them, and in so doing, turning away from God who sent him into the world for our sakes.
 
But of course we know how the story goes. God sent his Son into the world to change it fundamentally. To make it so that all the partial, ignorant, fearful, and sometimes aborent ends we construct for ourselves and others – things we couldn’t fathom at the outset of our conjuring them – he sent his Son so that our broken ways of doing things wouldn’t dictate our fate, our end, our final place and so our very meaning here and now. Jesus came into the world as Isaiah tells us, the suffering servant, the one foretold by every word of Scripture, the God who would come into the world to rescue us from ourselves. The God who would bring us out of Egypt, our own figurative Egypts, where we have trapped ourselves, and been trapped in slavery to sin, to ourselves and our own broken ways, trapped in slavery unable to turn ourselves to our God. God came into the world and led us through his blood, red as it flowed, through the red sea into freedom. The thing is, that desert the Israelites went into, that Jesus went into, it is our world; it is our culture, our country, our city. It is our families, our relationships, our own personal circumstances: simultaneously barren if we allow ourselves to set our minds on ordering our lives solely to the things of this world; and yet filled with the hope of Christ who entered into temptation, into the desert, who there in that desert provided water in the desert for the Israelites, who in our own lives provides the river of life through his own blood when he gave himself up for us on the cross. For in this way, he opened the way for us to cross our own figurative deserts; to let go of the things that tempt us away from him; to step out into this desert of ours – this time where we are waiting for him to come again, to step out and into our lives living them based in hope, based in the love that God first shared with us, knowing that we are not being left on our own to figure it out, but that we have given a home in his house, his kingdom, his life eternal. AMEN.