Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent, 10:30am Morning Prayer
“One who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin”
To be tempted (root, πειραω) and to be pierced (root, πειρω) are related words. The temptations which belong to the beginning of Lent have a connection to the end of Lent in the crucifixion of Christ. He who is pierced for us is tempted for us. The overcoming of temptation belongs equally to the overcoming of his being pierced, in other words, to the triumph of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The cross and the resurrection are obliquely, yet strongly, present in the temptations of Christ. There is a resurrection into the presence of the living Word and Spirit of the Father, but only through “the burning love of the crucified,” to use Bonaventure’s phrase, a love which is already signaled in the temptations of Christ. To be tempted is to be drawn to what we know to be wrong and false. This implies as well that we are drawn away from what we know to be right and true. Our reason is beguiled; our will is seduced. We are at once deceivers and deceived.
Temptations are received in the soul. It is there that they have their force of attraction, drawing us to what we know in some sense we should refuse. But there is always a choice, a crucial moment of decision, whether to give in or withstand. The problem is not that there are temptations – these there must be – but how we face them. Sin, after all, does not lie in the temptations themselves, but in our yielding to them, whether inwardly in our thoughts or outwardly in our deeds. Temptations belong to the path of our spiritual journey to God and with God. They are, we might even say, necessary to the perfecting of our wills, to the matter of setting love in order.
