“Tempted” is a loaded word, and can have associations beyond what Biblical translators may have meant. When we read that Jesus was “in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan,” we may imagine him out there with the Sports Illustrated swimsuit Issue, or faced with the loaded buffet tables my new churches have been laying on to welcome me. Since Mark, unlike Luke and Matthew, includes no details about the nature of these temptations, our imaginations have free rein.
The other Gospels explain that Jesus was tempted less to garden variety sin than to misuse - or relinquish - his divine nature, temptations more cosmic than venial. Perhaps a more useful word for what happened to Jesus in that wilderness is that he was tested. His faith in the unseen power he had received was tested. His trust in the guidance of the Holy Spirit was tested. His commitment to the mission for which he had come into human life was tested.
As I write that sentence, thinking of Jesus in his humanity, I am struck by how bewildering all the experiences related in the gospels must have been for him. Many of us have a sense of mission. But how does a human hold the mission we believe Jesus had – a mission we see perhaps more clearly in hindsight than he might have on any given day – and not be daily wracked by questions and doubts?
Perhaps this is why the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness, to test his confidence in his identity until he could withstand such doubts, whether they came from within or from others. Jesus could not have exercised the ministry the gospels describe were he not able to return time and again to his solid center as beloved, his sure knowledge of his Father’s love and power flowing through him. Indeed, faith in Jesus could not have spread so far and endured for so long had he not maintained that center to the grave and beyond.
What if we look at Lent as a forty-day period of testing rather than temptation? Do we really need to know we can resist chocolate or wine, or that we can sustain a spiritual discipline for six weeks? Wouldn’t we be better off, more joyful followers, more effective apostles if we knew our faith and sense of mission to be bearers of Christ could withstand the arrows of scheduling, convenience, complacency, embarrassment, priorities and their like?
We don’t have to go to the wilderness looking for testing. Life hands it to us (and I’m not even talking about tonight’s Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper, an oxymoron if ever I heard of one, since it’s all pancakes and no shriving…) Every time we are tempted to allow an item on our to-do list to co-opt time we had planned to spend in quiet prayer; every time a friend or family member tries to talk us out of investing in our spiritual life; every time we are tempted to look at an area of pain or disease and agree with the world that God has no power there… such are the tests that come our way.
How has your faith or your commitment to God in Christ been tested lately? How might you respond differently? We may need to become more aware of the tests themselves, and then how to resist.
One thing we can always do is call on the power of Jesus to help us and re-center us. After all, Hebrews 4:15 tells us that he was “tempted in every way as we are, yet he did not sin.” That means he did not give in to other demands or to what the devil told him was “reality.” With his Spirit in us, we can withstand those darts too.
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