Luke 4: 1-13 – The Temptation of Jesus 

What are we up to during Lent?  I was listening to a homily before Ash Wednesday in which the priest warned us not to let Lent take us by surprise.  But what is this thing called Lent that would be taking us by surprise?  The popular conception involves a period of giving up this or that, or making scheduled visits to food pantries, or praying with some degree of regularity that is more than we currently pray.  That is all well and good, but it still begs the question: why? 

The Gospel today I think puts this question squarely in front of us.  It is the familiar story of Jesus’ temptation by Satan in the desert.  Jesus is there for 40 days and Satan tempts him with power, prestige, and wealth, among other things.  Jesus denies these temptations, in each instance citing Scripture in his defense.  In the course of our tradition, we honor Jesus’ denial and from this has emerged our various Lenten practices.  

I wonder if we’ve deeply reflected on this.  What was so wrong, we might ask, about what Satan was offering Jesus?  Would it have been wrong to turn a stone into bread?  Don’t we ask God in our prayers to make things useful for us?  What is so wrong about the offer of power and glory – don’t we seek similar things in our educations and jobs and lives?  What would be so controversial about Jesus saving himself from falling off a cliff – wouldn’t we want our God to be able to do this, and perhaps do the same for us?  

What Satan is offering Jesus is hard to resist precisely because it is actually kind of good.  In our world today we are offered all kinds of similarly good things, things that will give us power and wealth and respect and immunity, or at the very least marginally better lives. New houses and cars, ways to get kids into college, gym and health club memberships, smart devices…the list goes on.  And who would argue with a parent taking his or her children to soccer practices as a means to further their goals, or getting those children tutoring so they can do well on an admissions test?  Who would argue with a gym membership that promises better health and fitness? Who would quibble with the climb up the corporate ladder by a hard-working person with a family, and moving her family to a house in the suburbs in a good school district?  

Few, I would guess, probably because none of the above is bad or controversial in and of itself.  What is challenging – and I think what Jesus cautions us about – is when these things become the only things.  When our careers, our health, our and our children’s advancement, or our various other strivings take up either all of our time, or so much of our time that all other concerns (and specifically the concerns Jesus took up) get sidelined, that is when the seemingly good become a dangerous temptation.  I know that this happens to me all the time.  I am particularly prone to getting very intense and worried about helping my children “advance” in the world.  I think a cursory look at parental anxiety in the world today would suggest that I am not the only one.  

The warning – and the opportunity – the Gospel presents today is that Satan does indeed lurk in the world, not in the form of a cartoonish red devil with a pitchfork, but more subtly in the guise of the seemingly good.  For every move to the suburbs and the good school district, another more challenged school district gets left behind.  With every gentrifying city neighborhood comes rises in rents and displacements of existing residents.  Compare the time and attention we spend on sports with the concern we have for the poor and the homeless, those segments of society where Jesus spent nearly all of his time (the Bible citations are too numerous to list here). 

Satan – a manifestation of cynicism and lack of trust in God and love – tempts us to spend all of our time with our own concerns, “doing us”, as it were.  One need not have an actual belief in or conception of Satan at all to understand the temptation we have to concern ourselves only with our own good fortune.    

I think that is what Jesus resists in today’s Gospel, and I think he asks us to consider the same resistance. It is not a call to asceticism or total self-denial.  I do not think Jesus is asking us to sell our homes or our other things, or not be concerned with our kids’ educations or athletics or whatever the concern of the day is.  But I think he does ask us to evaluate how much this is preoccupying us, how much power we are giving it, indeed how much we may be worshipping it.  Satan tempted Jesus in the desert to worship – that is, be wholly concerned with – power over love and trust.  Jesus offers us both the challenge and the opportunity to resist those temptations, to resist all the pressing and anxiety and competition that pervades our world, even if only for a little while, and center ourselves on God and love (more to come on what this may mean, practically).  Our Lenten practices, whatever they may be, ought to be oriented toward addressing that challenge and pursuing that opportunity.