Jesus' Temptations in our Time

First Sunday of Lent Year A

This year the Church proposes for our prayer and reflection three scripture passages which lay out for us what is at the heart of our Lenten observance.

The first text tells us the story of the first sin. Adam and Eve were tricked by Satan, and gave in to a monumental delusion that they could on their own become like God by partaking of the forbidden fruit. Their sin was trying to wrench from God that which he intended to give them as a free loving gift in a personal relation with God which called for trust and surrender. This fault introduced sin into the world, and since then human beings are born into a world marked by sin. All of us bear the scars of that. We are sinned against and in turn we sin against others.

The second text, which is from Paul’s letter to the Romans, shows us the way out of this impasse. Yes, Adam by disobeying introduced a terrible dynamic into the world, one which leads to sin, to death, to eternal separation from God. But God sent his Son into the world to undo this terrible dynamic. He did not spare his Son from the supreme sacrifice. The antidote to Adam’s disobedience was Jesus’ obedience unto death. Adam and Eve tried to grasp the status of being like God; by contrast Jesus was already God’s equal but voluntarily gave up the privileges that came with that status, fully sharing the vulnerability of human beings (Phil 2:6-7). He thereby overcame the power unleashed by Adam’s sin. His obedience brings grace, and opens for us a path to our being right with God and sharing God’s own life and glory.

The third text, which is the story of Jesus’ temptations in the desert, show us how Jesus in his public ministry prepared himself for his final act of loving obedience. Throughout his ministry he faced challenges and temptations, and this story summarizes what must have been a constant experience throughout his life. As the letter to the Hebrews tells us, he was tempered, he was tested, he learned obedience through suffering.

This story, like the first one, features Satan, who personifies the power of evil. He tries three times to seduce Jesus into the path once trod by Adam, and each time he fails. The first temptation was to invite Jesus to satisfy his hunger with something less than God, in this case bread. But Jesus responds by quoting scripture: ”Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” The devil could not make him deviate from his adherence to God and God’s word.

The second temptation was more subtle. In it Satan picks up on the fact that Jesus quoted scripture in repulsing the first temptation, and he attempts to unsettle Jesus with a scriptural quote of his own. This time he invites Jesus to take a short-cut to the success of his mission, a short-cut which would be to perform a spectacular miracle which would gain many followers, but Jesus knows that such a miracle would not convert their hearts. Their adherence would be superficial, like adherence in our own world to the heart-throb of the day put forward by the media. At the first sign of trouble they would leave him. Jesus rejects this temptation with another word of scripture: Do not put the Lord your God to the test.

In the third temptation the devil is no longer subtle: he shows himself as he really is, asking Jesus to worship him, with the result that he would be given unlimited political power. But Jesus knew that his mission was not to gain political power but to win over human hearts to the worship of the living God. This blatant and frontal attack Jesus also overcomes. He often faced this particular form of attack during his public ministry. The crowds that followed him wanted him to be a political messiah according to their own desires, and even his disciples, and that includes Peter their leader, were upset when they found out that his way would lead him to the cross. But Jesus did not stray from his path. He told Peter in no uncertain terms “Get behind me, Satan”. Jesus’ mission was the conversion of hearts, and the only way he could do achieve that was by the supreme act of love that would melt the hardness of our hearts.

Will we allow our hearts to be melted during this Lenten season? That is the question. The three temptations of Christ are the temptations that we continually face ourselves.

The first temptation is the temptation to addiction, addiction to something other than God that we think will satisfy us, but which time and time again leaves us with a bad taste in our mouth and deep dissatisfaction. The word addiction is often attached to drugs, sex, alcohol, but we can be addicted any number of things or values or images of ourselves, and these prevent us from treasuring God and our fellow humans as we ought.

The second temptation is to cut corners, to be impatient, to try to achieve results too quickly, especially in complex human situations. We end up hurting others and in the process fail to achieve anything solid and substantial. This too is a temptation of our public life: how many cars have to be recalled because the company could not overcome the urge to rush them to market? The same applies to many other areas of business. Shoddiness and premature obsolescence are the order of the day.

The third temptation is the temptation which defines our competitive world, the temptation of power, power to be gained and to be maintained by stealth or by force. Those who give in to this temptation sow the seeds of violence, oppression in some cases – think of Libya; of cynicism and hopelessness in others – think of our ailing first world democracies. This temptation also applies to our personal lives. We are involved in many subtle power plays within our human interactions. Everything is seen through the lens of unbridled competition.

Jesus proposes to us another way of behaviour, the only one that can transform our world and bring it new life. But that transformation takes place slowly and is often hidden from our eyes. It will not be easy to follow Jesus, but better to light one candle than to curse the darkness, and a multitude of small candles can often shed considerable light. This is a path of faith, struggle, of solidarity with the poor under the standard of the Cross. Let these scriptural texts inspire us, and the Eucharist we share strengthen us.