First Sunday of Lent: Genesis 2.15-17, 3.1-7; Romans 5.12-19; Matthew 4.1-11; St Paul's Knightsbridge
“He was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without
sin.” Heb 4.15
It was that great 20th
century commentator on the human condition, Mae West who remarked that “I
generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.”
In fact a popular
theological conundrum for students (from the 5th century onwards when this
Gospel was adopted for the first Sunday in Lent) was usually expressed in this
form:
Was Christ able not to sin? ORWas Christ not able to sin?
The answer of course
is ‘Yes’ to both questions!
If he had sinned, he
would not have been the sinless God.
But if he had not
been able to sin, then he would not have been fully human.
And Jesus has to be
both fully God and fully human.
So does this mean
that the temptations were in some way a sham - not real temptations?
Certainly not! In
fact the opposite is true. Only the sinless can know the full intensity of the
temptation to sin: the holier the life, the more severe the testing and
temptation to sin.
One of the happy
memories of my undergraduate engineering course was designing and building a
model bridge out of aluminium and testing it to destruction - the Omega point.
The better constructed the bridge, the greater the pressure needed before the
Omega point was finally reached and the bridge buckled.
The life of our Lord
was so coherent, so integrated, so well-constructed, that the pressure applied
to break him was more than most of us can possibly understand.
We break far too
easily, for our interior life is often ill-constructed. Oscar Wild’s dictum is
the familiar pattern: “I can resist anything except temptation.”
Looking at the three
temptations in today’s Gospel, Jewish readers would have picked up the
parallels between Jesus and Adam, Jesus and Israel, and Jesus and Moses.
In today’s epistle
Paul sees Jesus as the second Adam. The first Adam we read about in Genesis failed
to resist the temptation to eat the forbidden fruit and followed the sensual in
preference to the spiritual.
So he set the pattern
of self-idolatry that we all follow.
Jesus succeeded where
Adam failed and resisted the temptation to abuse his power to make and eat
bread when he was famished.
Then secondly, Israel
puts God to the proof at Meribah and Massah during their forty years of testing
in the wilderness. They demand signs: water from the rock; bread in the desert.
Jesus, as the
faithful Israel, demands no proof from God but is trusting and obedient. Satan
has quoted Psalm 91 “He shall give his angels charge over
thee.”
But Jesus has construed
its meaning aright and in quiet trust and confidence he submits to the will of
the Father. He is the living water, and
the Bread of Life, that comes down from heaven.
And in the third
parallel, Moses spends forty days on the mountain, in preparation for receiving
the Law. Later he is taken up a high mountain to survey the Promised Land of
God. So Jesus is set on a high mountain to survey the promised land of Satan.
Moses never reaches the Promised Land - but Jesus, the new Joshua (the Hebrew name for Jesus) - both mean 'Saviour' -
succeeds and carries his people with him.
Notice how Christ, in
his weakened state, falls back on familiar Scriptures. In fact the three
quotations are from the early chapters of Deuteronomy which recount the
wilderness experiences of the people of Israel. Christ would have been educated
as a Jewish boy, by learning Hebrew Scriptures by heart. They were deeply
embedded in his mind.
There is great value
in having fixed in our memory, familiar scriptures, familiar prayers and hymns
of the people of God. When we are physically and spiritually weak, they can be
of great assistance to us. It’s a good Lenten discipline to try and learn some
passage or prayer or Christian poetry, by heart.
The temptations
themselves can be looked at in different ways. At one level, they were an
appeal for Christ to misuse his divine powers to obtain the common human goals
of Sustenance, Protection and Security. At another level, they are the common
snares of Christian leaders to be selfish, to sensationalise and to compromise.
What of the
temptations we face?
We are not tempted to
turn stones into bread, but we may turn bread into stones for others by our
selfish indulgence and the way we treat God’s world.
We are not likely to
feel the urge to prove God’s care to sceptical friends – putting ourselves in
physical danger perhaps by blatantly queue jumping for a Harrods Sale. But we
may be tempted to care for ourselves and our own needs at the expense of others.
We are all likely to be offered much in order
to gain very little.
The big temptations
are not too difficult.
No, it’s the thousand
subtle temptations that sneak in every day and like the gentle acid rain
falling on the great cathedral, wear away our defences and ruin us.
The temptations to
live as though God did not matter; to live as if “I” am the centre of the
universe; to love things and use people, rather than use things and love
people; to neglect responsibility; to wound others; to lack compassion.
Lent is a time to
take stock and make repairs; to remember that we have a flawed human nature. As
Luther put it: “I’m more afraid of my own heart than of the Pope and all his
cardinals.”
And Lent is a time to
strengthen our defences, by selfless giving, by disciplining our demanding
bodies, by fortifying our minds with the truths of our faith, by reminding
ourselves through our devotions that we are greatly loved by one who gave
himself for us and longs for us to live full lives by following his example.
Lent can sometimes be
quite hard for us if we set our disciplines too high. Better to have modest success
than spectacular failure.
It reminds me of the
priest who used to go into the Blue bar every evening after Evensong and order
two Gin and Tonics. He would drink them both and then order another two.
After a few weeks of
this the barman asked him why he always bought his drinks in pairs.
“Well its quite
simple really” he said, “when my twin brother moved to work in Australia, we
decided whenever we were out drinking we would always order two as a reminder
of each other.”
After a few months the
priest came in and ordered just the one gin and tonic. The barman feared the
worst.
“Is everything
alright with your brother?” he asked.
“O yes” said the
priest “its just that its Lent and I personally have given up alcohol.”
So aim for modest
success in lent.
And when at any time
of the year and in your life, you are faced with big temptations, cry out to
Jesus for help and remember
“He was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without
sin.” Heb 4.15
