+The Mount of Temptation. Located in the heart of the Judean desert, a few miles outside of Jericho is high, stark and full of caves. One has no problem seeing Jesus, along with Satan, standing there, wrestling with temptation. Getting to the Mount is quite the journey----I have pictures for you to look at---first we took a cable car halfway up…way up…..then, by foot, we climbed and climbed and climbed until we arrived at the entrance to a monastery which has been built on the sheer face of a cliff. From there we spent time in prayer and then headed out onto a deck, suspended by God only knows what, and looked out over the vast expanse of the Judean desert.
As I said, I had no trouble imagining the Tempter, holding onto Jesus outside one of those caves, and showing Jesus, mocking him, challenging him to give in, to take his divine power and use it for temporal, mortal gain. I could hear the tempter’s sneering voice, urging our Lord, nudging the newly anointed Beloved Son of God to give in to his Humanity, to ignore his Divinity, trying his very best to distract Jesus from the task he’d been given, the journey he was to take, the Good News he was to spread.
In the midst of wilderness, desert, emptiness, Jesus was faced with a challenge…..Give in or endure. Quick fix or long-term change. Distraction or Focus.
The emptiness of the desert, the loneliness of the wilderness, the hunger of the fast give Jesus a chance to really consider, really reflect, really wonder just what God meant when God, as Jesus emerged from the baptismal waters of the Jordan, anointed him as God’s Beloved, God’s Son.
Jesus was in for quite the ride.
Baptized by John, anointed by God and then swooped into 40 days of hell, 40 days of denial and one can only think, 40 days of depression. What a huge change of fortune.
God’s Beloved? God’s cherished one? Nice way to show it God.
But this makes sense. You know, in a God sort of way. Armed with the power of God’s Love, clothed in the garment of Righteousness, what better time to be tempted, to be challenged, then immediately after baptism? If you aren’t ready then, when will you be?
But, you may ask, why tempt Jesus---he’s God for goodness sakes, he’s not going to give in. And the Divine Jesus isn’t going to give in…but the human Jesus? He just might. Remember---our faith maintains that Jesus was fully human as well as divine, so his human self was just like us—he felt the same, he hungered the same, he desired the same. God came to live among us, in the flesh to fully experience the human condition. And the human condition includes---is often ruled by----our consumerism, our perceived need for more, our attachments. We have a lot of stuff—physical, emotional, psychological. We are laden down with stuff.
The tempter zeroes in on this these human traits of hunger, desire, longing and he’s bound and determined to keep Jesus focused on the temporal, the here and now, immediate fulfillment of these desires: the tempter is banking on the human part of Jesus to give into the immediate, to forget the big picture, to ignore the loving embrace of God, to focus instead on acquiring what’s being offered—right now---- for what the tempter knows about us, and frankly, what we know about us if, we’re brutally honest---is that we’ll usually give in to the here and now, abandoning long term planning for immediate reward. It’s part of who we are and it’s what our culture reinforces---through social media, movies, music, tv and magazines. We’re a people who consume and desire more and more.
And even though Jesus didn’t have all the stuff we have available to us he must, in his humanity, have felt desire and, on some level, feared being left behind, of having less than, of doing without. The tempter’s job, in Jesus’ life and in ours, is to keep us so focused on the external, on the quick, on the immediate that we completely ignore, shut out, and reject God’s steady, quiet offer to give us everything we need. So, the Tempter takes Jesus up this mountain and strips him of everything: food, fellowship, sleep, security. And, once he gets Jesus vulnerable, fatigued, famished, lonely and unsure, the tempter strikes---“you can have this, you can have that----c’mon Jesus just say the word and it’s all yours.”
The truly magnificent thing, the truly divine thing, is that he didn’t give in.
Jesus doesn’t budge.
It’s too easy to say, “well Jesus is God, he’s Divine, he would never give in.” But the Savior I know, the Savior I love, is a lot like me….so I know he had to waver…..
And so, we’ve entered our wilderness, our Lenten observance. A time to quiet down, to simplify, to strive for a laser focus, to zero in on what we really want, what we really desire. And, if our Lenten journey is successful we’ll end up atop a mountain of our own desire, fully aware of what it is we really and only need: God’s Love, the same Love bestowed upon Jesus as he arose from the baptismal waters of the River Jordan. +
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