“Then was Jesus led up by the Spirit into the wilderness,
to be tempted by the devil”
The Christian season of Lent traditionally begins with the temptations of Christ on the first Sunday of Lent. The whole idea of Lent, the quadragesima, is derived in part from Christ’s going into the wilderness and fasting for “forty days and forty nights.” It recapitulates the themes of the Exodus journey of the ancient Hebrews; the forty years of wandering in the wilderness of Sinai. It takes on a symbolic significance. At once a liberation from the yoke of slavery under the Egyptians, it was also a time of testing, and, above all, a time of learning. Learning what? Simply what it means to be the people of God, defined ultimately by God who reveals himself and his will in two ways: first, in the burning bush, and secondly, in the Ten Commandments, the moral code for our humanity, if you will.
These are astounding stories. And in a way they are recalled and reworked in the story of the temptations of Christ which sets us upon the Christian journey of life, a journey into the greater promised land of our redeemed humanity, our humanity forgiven and restored, like the paralytic in the lesson from Matthew’s Gospel, our humanity called and empowered, like Matthew, to follow Christ at his word to challenge and proclaim the new reality of God’s absolute mercy for our wounded and broken humanity. Somehow in the season of Lenten fasting we are also reminded of the joy of the new life of redemption. “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?” Jesus asks. It is a provocative question which calls attention to something new and wonderful in Christ which at once corrects and completes all that belongs to the rigour of the law and to the disciplines of Lent.
The temptations are our temptations brought to a certain kind of clarity in the exchange between Christ and the devil, also called here, “the tempter.” Christian baptism involves our threefold renunciation of “the devil and all his works, the pomps and vanity of this wicked world, and all the sinful desires of the flesh” (BCP, p. 525 ff). In a way, they present in reverse order what we see in the temptations of Christ: first, to turn stones into bread – the temptations of the flesh; he was, after all, “an-hungred”; secondly, to become a celebrity spectacle – “if thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down” from the pinnacle of the temple; the temptations of worldly renown, “the pomps and vanity of this wicked world,” to be sure; and thirdly, to “fall down and worship” Satan, the devil himself, the tempter, that ancient deceiver. The temptations are all about “the devil and all his works”, we might say. These we renounce in Jesus’ name, in the name of the one in whom we see with utter clarity the full force and weight of temptations and see even more the greater force and truth of our humanity in its deeper truth and power in its perfect unity with God. Such is our true calling and one which turns all our fastings into feastings.
And in a way, that is the deeper point. We are apt to look upon the disciplines of Lent with a kind of dreary acquiescence. Here we go again, as it were, more privation and hardship, but with a sense of wanting to get it all over and done with. Our second lesson from Matthew reminds us of something greater and more important. All the disciplines of Lent, if we consider them at all, belong to the celebration of our life in Christ. They are all part of the greater marriage feast; Christ is the bridegroom. Lent would remind us of the ways in which we are not with him, to be sure, but only so as to recall us to the truth of his presence with us.
I know, this seems so hard and confusing. It isn’t really. The simple point is that the disciplines of Lent belong entirely to the joys of Easter. In a way – spoiler alert! – it is all about the resurrection in us.
And yet, we need the seemingly sombre and sobering realities of the Lenten season for no other reason than that we cannot presume upon the promises of the promised land; we cannot take for granted that the bridegroom is with us. He is, to be sure, but we are, I fear, too often far from him and far from his deep love for us. We need the season of Lent to remind us of how we are apart from the bridegroom of heavenly love, of how much we are in need of forgiveness, of how much we need to be called from our worldly preoccupations and fantasies, of how much we need to be reminded that Lent is not just the journey but already our participation in the purpose of the journey. Just so, our fasts are equally our feasts. And it is all the feast of love. God’s love is revealed to us in Jesus Christ. He shows us the true promised land, a land beyond the divisions of our hearts, and a land which God gives to all who are the descendants of Abram, beyond number, for who can count the dust of the earth?
It is, I think, a staggering thought. The lesson from Genesis (Genesis 13) recalls us to God’s promise to Abram, the promise of a land and place and the promise of an heritage. Loaded promises, we may say. And in the Christian sense, they have their fullest meaning and truth in Jesus Christ. He is our promised land and in him the dust of the earth, beyond human calculation, is numbered, known and loved. In him we find the redemption of our humanity.
Yet, it requires that the same quality of sacrifice be in us as in Christ. Paradoxically, our fastings become our feast days. We are with the bridegroom in the wilderness. We are with the bridegroom who bears all our temptations and, unlike us, overcomes them. His lesson to us is to see and know what he has done for us and to let that live in us.
The second lesson from Matthew (Mt. 9. 1-17) begins with the story of the raising of the paralytic. He had been brought by his friends to Jesus – intercessory prayer is about nothing less than bringing our friends to Jesus, placing our concerns for them with Christ. Jesus’ initial response is astounding. He simply says, “take heart, my son, your sins are forgiven.” It occasions scandal and upset, even accusations of blasphemy, a recognition that such a power belongs only to God, but that is the point, the point of the new wine of divinity in Christ. It cannot be poured into old wine-skins: it requires a whole new outlook. But one which does not deny and destroy the past. Quite the contrary. It is about the redemption of the whole of our humanity. God wills to be reconciled with the whole of our wounded and fallen and broken humanity. This is the strong message which turns all our fastings into feasts, all our sorrows into joy.
Christ goes into the wilderness for us and for our sake. Will we go with him? Will we find the banquet of love in the wilderness, even the wilderness of our sins and folly? Such is Christ’s grace. He calls us to go with him in the journey of his love which seeks our good and perfection.
There can be no greater call than to follow him. There can be no greater feast than our Lenten fast. Only so shall we know what he wants us to know – “that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins.” He is God with us even in the wilderness. And there, there alone shall we learn what God’s love for us really means. Our fasts become our feasts.
Lent begins with the temptations of Christ, to be sure, but even more it begins with the realization that he has overcome all our temptations. And to what end? That we might “worship the Lord [our] God, and him only serve.” Such is our freedom, our joy and our delight. God makes something grand and glorious out of the sad mess of our lives. The Lenten fast is really a spiritual feast.
“Then was Jesus led up by the Spirit into the wilderness,
to be tempted by the devil”
Fr. David Curry
Lent I, 2013
Morning Prayer