First Sunday of Lent

I don’t know whether you have watched any of those “I’m a Celebrity, get me out of Here”, programmes, you know, the ones in the outback of Australia, where “has been” celebrities undertake the strangest physically and psychologically demanding tasks, are deprived of food, and sleep, and have to co-exist alongside people they probably dislike intensely, to survive for two weeks and the winner acclaimed “King or Queen of the Jungle”.

Our Gospel reading today brings us quite a different account of survival.  Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit after his baptism in the River Jordan, and God’s exhortation, “You are my Son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased”, is led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. This wilderness was a very inhospitable place indeed, stretching some 35 miles by 15 miles, with hills like dust heaps, the limestone crags blistered and peeling, the rocks bare and jagged, glowing with heat like a vast furnace, and the ground sounding hollow.  The local name for this wilderness is “Jeshimmon”, which means “The Devastation”, which seems very apt. We are told Jesus was in the wilderness 40 days, eating no food and tempted by the devil.  If you think about it, the number 40 figures a lot in the Bible, the flood, the Exodus from Egypt, as well as Jesus being in the wilderness, but in scripture it is really a symbolic period signifying a “very long time”. Jesus’ wilderness experience was radically different from the “I’m a Celebrity get me out of here”, experience.  Jesus went because he was driven by something even greater than himself - God through the prompting of the Holy Spirit - to face his demons before he could begin his ministry. Jesus was about to embark on a new phase of his life – an active ministry of God’s will, an entry into the public arena.  He was about to begin his preaching and teaching, but he needed to retreat into the wilderness for self-examination, for cleansing, to focus, to work through the realities of fullness and emptiness, grace and temptation, which are as much part of our lives as they were Jesus.  It was to be an intensely personal time of soul searching.

In Luke’s words we hear Jesus acknowledge who he is, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test”, and that the devil departed from him until an opportune time.  There would be other times of temptation and loneliness for Jesus, just as there are for us, just as we think we have conquered our devils, they have the nasty habit of coming back, and we have to fight them again.  We are often led into our own wilderness experiences, and as hard as those times are for us, and so often seemingly destructive to us, we actually need those times in our lives when we come face to face with who we really are. That can be a difficult concept for us but think about it for a moment. We need our wilderness experiences to strip away those areas of greed, selfishness, pride, conceit, vanity in our lives, so we can reveal our true selves, the selves God wants us to be. Because just as the devil presented things to Jesus to tempt him, we are presented with things in our lives to tempt us, and turn us away from God.  Those things that cause us to act in ways that are contrary to living a Godly life, and they can be very appealing to us.  Money, power, control, selfishness, conceit all seem more appealing than ‘Loving Our Neighbours as Ourselves’. Taking Jesus as a model, we can use these wilderness times to go deep inside ourselves, quietly and reflectively, so we can confront our temptations and rid ourselves of whatever it is that makes us act contrary to the promises made on our behalf at our baptism, and we repeat each Easter Sunday morning.

Firstly, the devil asked Jesus to turn a stone into a loaf of bread to satisfy his hunger.  A reasonable request for a hungry man, we might think. But Jesus isn’t merely being asked to satisfy his hunger, far from it, he is being asked to rely on the material world over the spiritual world.  God knows we need physical comforts of food, clothing and shelter, but God has asked us to prioritize – to care more for the spiritual than the material, which leads us to holiness and grace. Paul in his letter to the Romans, urges us, “Not to be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect”. The word of God is not just what we read in the Bible, but is also revealed to us in other ways, through Christ’s continued presence and meaning in our lives, through the work of the Holy Spirit, through God’s calling in our lives. And then the devil offers the world to Jesus if only he would worship him. But Jesus tells the devil that only God is to be worshipped.  And it’s a timely reminder to us that idolatry - worshipping false things - is placing things in a higher priority than God, when we allow our love of money, power, possessions, to become more important to us than our love of God and God’s unconditional love for us. Jesus refuses to place anything above his love for the Father, and his commitment to do God’s will, and neither should we.

The devil’s fundamental error in his offering the world to Jesus is that the world is not his to give, neither is it ours.  The world and all creation belongs to God, we are merely custodians of it.  Oh, if only we could learn that lesson, we might be more caring with the resources God has given us, be more careful how we treat this wonderful and unique creation. And finally the devil urges Jesus to jump from the highest pinnacle of the Temple in a test to see whether God would command an angel to save him.  Jesus’ answer “Do not put the Lord your God to the test”. In our lives we are often tempted to test God, “If God really loved me, then this shouldn’t be happening”. Those times when God seems far away from us, times of disaster, or personal anxiety or grief, but we have to trust God and rest securely in his love. We have to acknowledge God is always there for us.

Not many people nowadays actually give up something for Lent, as we were expected to do. As children there were no sweets, or other little pleasures for 40 days.  But when we reflect on the fact that Jesus’ time in the wilderness was a period of self-examination, perhaps that’s what lent should mean to us, to have the opportunity to enter into our own wilderness space, to reflect and to listen to God without the distractions of the urgency of everyday life. To set aside time to read the Bible or a book that challenges us in some way, or to attend the Lent Course.

The Old Testament reading from Deuteronomy has such a different nature to the Gospel reading. The wilderness where Jesus has gone to is barren, void, empty, yet in the Deuteronomy text we find ourselves in a land flowing with milk and honey, the promised land, gathering first fruits to offer to God, preparing for a harvest celebration, a joyous occasion.  What a contrast of images and senses!! But the contrast is appropriate, because it represents the journey Jesus takes, and the one which we are invited to take also.  Out of the barrenness of the ground in winter, out of the wilderness, when the land seems dull and empty, comes the rebirth, the growth of new life in the spring.  From an empty field comes a land full of fruits and vegetables. Out of the emptiness of the wilderness that Jesus experienced comes the fullness of his ministry.  From the suffering wilderness of the Cross, comes the rebirth of Easter Day, the resurrection, the fulfilment, the fruit of God’s labour. We are all invited to come to the garden, and enjoy the gifts God gives us, but we must travel through the wilderness to arrive there. The wilderness is a necessary step, a place we must go to in order to harvest the fruits.

A problem we all face is that it is difficult to feed people who are already full, but so often full of the wrong things.  Worries, and cares, possessions and distractions, tensions and anger, and then the question becomes, 'Is God relevant in our busy lives anymore?' With so many distractions is there room for God in our lives at all or as Christians do we only do God on a Sunday? How can we experience the fullness of Easter, which is fast approaching, unless we first empty ourselves in the wilderness.  Once we can free ourselves in the wilderness, we can approach the garden, offer our first fruits to God and join in the celebration of the resurrection.  Like Jesus we are invited to make the journey from the wilderness to the garden. The season of Lent brings opportunities for us to awaken to God’s love. And the reading from Romans tells us how we should respond to God’s love. ‘If we confess with our lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that god raised him from the dead, we will be saved, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved’.

Harry Williams in his book, “True Wilderness”, wrote, “Christ’s glory is his full and satisfying communion with all that is.  It is the opposite of being isolated.  You don’t have to wait for this, until you die or the world comes to an end.  It can be yours now.  Accept your wilderness.  From the glory of the Son of Man realise what your Lent really means, and then angels will minister to you as they did to him”. Amen.