Gen 2. 15-17, 3.1-7 Matthew 4.1-11
We never quite know what is around the next corner.
These last few years have taught us that, even if we didn’t know it before.
A year ago, Russia invaded Ukraine. On one level, people saw it coming for weeks beforehand as the tension built, but I recall the news reports from Ukraine at the time showing people apparently just going about their normal business right up to the last moment. Maybe it was defiance, but I suspect that there was an element of simply not being able to get their heads around what was happening. Surely it wouldn’t come to actual war, or if it did, it wouldn’t last long. The alternative – the reality, as it turned out – was too awful to contemplate. And if we had been in their shoes, I am sure we would have behaved in just the same way.
Coincidentally, three years ago, it was also at this time, that Covid was starting to loom on the horizon. There had been a handful of cases in the UK, a few deaths. We saw the hospitals in Italy filling up and being overwhelmed. But I don’t think, even a month before the first lockdown it felt very real to most of us, and even if it had, we couldn’t imagine what we could do about it anyway, other than panic-buying toilet roll. We knew there was trouble ahead, but we had no way of knowing what it would mean for our individual lives. And when the government ordered us all to stay at home, we were thrown into confusion. I’d like to pretend that I’d carefully prepared for all the complexities lockdown brought to church life, but in reality I was making it up as I went along, as I think we all were. I realised in that first week of lockdown that we would have to find different ways of connecting with one another and with God. I rapidly taught myself to make podcasts, and use zoom, as well as trying to find ways of keeping in contact with those who weren’t online. I rejoiced at the way people in the congregation and community sprang into action to take care of one another – we discovered that the most effective, perhaps the only effective, preparation we’d made was to build up the love we had for one another over the years – but, looking back, I know that there was so much we weren’t ready for, and maybe couldn’t have been ready for.
I suspect the same was true for Jesus at the beginning of his ministry. In the Gospel passage we heard today, he heads out into the desert. He has just been baptised by John in the Jordan, and a voice from heaven has announced “This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him”. He was probably around 30 years old at this point, and we know almost nothing of his life in those first three decades, other than that he seems to have been learning Joseph’s trade as a carpenter and builder. But at some point, he realised that he had a job to do, a calling to fulfil, a calling that would empower the powerless, but as a result bring him into conflict with those in authority, and it would have been obvious to anyone that a calling like this would lead to pain and suffering. Rome didn’t get where it was, to the top of the tree of power in the ancient world, by being soft on its opponents, and the Jewish authorities, who were trying to keep Rome happy, weren’t likely to welcome challenge either. There’s no reason to think that Jesus knew that in any detail what was going to happen – he wouldn’t have been human if he did – but whatever the future held, he has to have known that it was going to be tough and lead to his death.
That was what he was doing in the wilderness, pondering that future. And “wild” in “wilderness” is significant. The Judean desert where he spent 40 days and nights was a hard place to be, barren, waterless, exposed, baking during the day, freezing at night, inhospitable. It was a place of wild animals - scorpions, snakes, bears, wolves – and of wild people too, bandits, outlaws, people driven away from settled society. In the thinking of the time, it was also the home of demons, a place of conflict and danger. Jesus wasn’t withdrawing for some peace and quiet, he was heading straight for the spiritual frontline.
Jesus’ earthly ministry, then, begins as it will end. In the wilderness, as on the cross, he is alone, afraid, vulnerable, hungry and thirsty, at the mercy of the uncaring forces around him. And he’s tempted to find an easy way out, to use the tactics of the worldly leaders he sees around him to avoid the suffering he sees coming. The emperors and kings of his world – and ours too – puff themselves up to try to look big in the face of danger. They heap up wealth – turning stones to bread. They make alliances with other powerful people – bowing down to the devil. They boast that they are untouchable, invincible, immortal, that nothing can touch them, that they could take any risk and get away with it, in the hopes of convincing people not to even think of defying them. But ultimately those tactics are illusions, even if they work for a while, and they come at a high cost, corrupting and destroying.
This isn’t the pattern God calls his Son to follow, and his time in the desert confirms that. Jesus isn’t called to protect himself, to look strong, to dazzle by displays of power. He isn’t called to manoeuvre and manipulate. He is called to trust his Father’s love, to trust that when he is weak, God is with him, when he is struggling, God is with him, when he is suffering and dying, God is with him, so that all of us who are weak, struggling, suffering and dying know that the same is true of us. He answers the temptations that Satan puts before him, not by pointing to his own strength, wisdom or resourcefulness, but by pointing to the love and faithfulness of his Father.
In a sense, this passage is a direct counterpart – the anti-story if you like - to our first reading. There Adam and Eve are tempted to believe that they can go it alone, that they can be “like God, knowing good and evil”. They are tempted to believe that God doesn’t really love them, that he was lying when he forbade them to eat from that particular tree, just trying to keep them subservient to him. Jesus chooses to believe the opposite, that he is loved, whatever happens, that he doesn’t have to do it all or have it all, and that is what carries him through all that he faces.
I began by saying that we never know what is around the corner. It’s tempting to see Lent as a time to build up our spiritual strength, so that we can cope with anything life throws at us, like the spiritual superheroes we would like to be. But actually, I wonder whether Lent might be the opposite. Our collect for today asked God that, “as you know our weakness, so may we know your power to save.” I wonder whether Lent is really , a time to get used to the idea that, ultimately, we can’t cope, and that we don’t need to, that we will all fail and fall and die, but that when that happens, we will still be safe, because we will know we are held by the grace of the God whose faithfulness is eternal.
Amen
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