“Forty days and forty nights thou wast fasting in the wild.” Today, on the first Sunday of a forty days of Lent which very conveniently began on the first day of the month, we read of Jesus being led by the Spirit into the desert, into the wilderness, to be tempted there by the devil.
I don’t know what your image of a desert might be; I was looking the other day at as aerial photograph of a man and his camel crossing the Arabian desert. They were tiny figures in a waste of sand that was utterly beautiful but also very scary, for there was nothing else in sight, no landmark to find the way, no place to find food, no place to take refuge.
So deserts are scary and dangerous, but in scripture the desert has a more positive role: it’s a place of testing and of renewal, and what happens there is useful and necessary. We sometimes speak of desert experiences, or wilderness years. If they happen to us we don’t feel very blest. My desert experiences over the years have been times of intense spiritual dryness, times when prayers just seemed to bounce back at me, times when I felt alone and unsupported; so not good times, even in retrospect. But looking back I can see how being tested in the desert often did begin something new in me: tough times, but I came out of them spiritually stronger, more aware, and more sensitive.
But I’d never have chosen to go there. They were crisis points, painful times I wouldn’t want to see again. Today we recall Jesus going deliberately into the wilderness. He didn’t have to go, he wasn’t there by chance or by mischance, though we are told he was led there by the Holy Spirit. So it was a place he knew he had to be, and the Greek word we translate as “led” (by the Spirit) is a very strong word - but even so, Jesus was in the desert because he chose to be.
And he chose to go there because he needed that time of testing, to arm himself for the spiritual battle that would be there throughout his ministry. Before he did anything else he had to identify, isolate and deal with the temptations that might otherwise lead him astray.
Does it seem strange to you that Jesus of all people needed to do this? Surely the Son of God would have it all sorted from the start? But Jesus the man is truly and fully one of us, and like us he was tempted. The Lord we praise and follow may be God’s only begotten Son, but here in the Judaean desert all his majesty and might are laid aside. He is completely one of us, except for this: right from the start he will be entirely focused on the will of the one he teaches us to call “Our Father”.
So this morning we’ve heard again the story of how Satan tries to turn our Lord away from the path of obedience, something you can be sure he went on doing wherever Jesus was. But in these forty days in the desert Jesus acted decisively to confront the pressure, and get the measure of his opponent. When he emerged from the desert he was ready for the task.
Temptation is something that’s always there when we’re trying to be good Christians. And temptation works on us by placing something - an ambition, a desire, something coveted or envied - where God should be in our lives. It’s like an itch: hard to resist, but when you do give in to it the relief never lasts long. All you do is start the itch up all over again, and in the end the damage done to our spiritual selves can be hard to repair. So when we pray: ‘Lead us not into temptation’ (or, in one modern version of that prayer, ‘Save us from the time of trial’), I hope we really do take those words seriously; temptation is a serious matter.
Jesus deliberately allowed himself to be led into temptation, so that in the desert he could isolate the chief temptations he’d be facing throughout his ministry, and beat them down. In Lent our task is to reflect his determination - this is a time to look for growth, root out the weeds, face up to things; it’s a time to be serious about temptation and what it does to us. But let’s not be at all negative about Lent. It’s a time of blessing and opportunity: God’s gift to us - a desert time of fasting in which we can isolate our own most dangerous temptations, and beat them back.
So we should make good use of Lent, like Jesus in the desert. It’s not just about giving something up. It’s about dealing with the things that have too big a place in our lives. It’s about getting serious about who controls us, about what God wants from us, and the stuff that stops us responding to him as we should. It’s our chance for a really good spiritual spring-clean, not just so we feel better in ourselves, but so we can better serve our Lord, be more tuned in to his will, have cleared out the rubbish that gets in the way of that.
The thing about the temptations Jesus faced in the desert is how plausible they were. Was it bad to turn stones into bread? Think of the hungry mouths you could feed, not just your own! Was it bad to do some crazy thing that would dazzle people into faith? Isn’t anything that would win you disciples worth a shot? Was it bad to go for political power, to want to rule over the kingdoms of the earth? You’d surely do a better job than those who already had that power!
Temptations are plausible. Most of us don’t want to do bad things, so we’re not tempted to do bad things, just tempted away from doing good things: something that’s harder to spot, and harder to beat. That’s why we need this holy season.
Jesus might have done a lot of good if he’d gone along with the devil. He might well have lived a lot longer, and he might still be remembered as a great leader whose rule was a golden age. But in truth his life would have been an abject failure, for he’d have let himself be turned away from the way of the cross; and the true and decisive victory of love over sin and death that was his task and his destiny would never have happened. He won in the desert a victory that was the vital precursor to the victory he’d win on Good Friday, the victory of the cross.
You and I are marked with the sign of that cross, so Lent is our time to take seriously what being marked with a cross should mean. It’s about the necessary discipline of faith; it’s about what I need to learn and receive as a disciple of Jesus, and what I need to do and to give as an apostle for Christ. Here is the simple question that begins my keeping of Lent: where, truly, is my Lord in my life?
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