Luke 4, Temptation in the Wilderness
+ Romans 10.8b-13
The Word is near you. It is in your heart and on your lips.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
The Temptation in the Wilderness is the story of a journey home. It’s a journey interrupted by snares and distractions. It’s a classic story form, like a potted version of Homer’s Odyssey. In that epic poem the hero, Odysseus, is trying to get home to his wife and son after fighting the Trojan War. En route, he will encounter Sirens who want to lure his ship onto the rocks with the beauty of their song, a Cyclops who imprisons him in a cave and wants to eat him, Lotus Eaters who want to lull him into opioid oblivion, and a nymph called Calypso who wants to sleep with him on her paradise island and give him the gift of eternal life and youth. I guess it’s not all bad. The temptation for Odysseus to forget his home is everywhere, and resisting it is what will make him into the husband and father he is called home to be.
Jesus, in today’s Gospel, is journeying home to Galilee. He’s been with John the Baptist at the River Jordan. Just as Odysseus must plunge out to sea, so Jesus must plunge into the desert. It’s a recapitulation of the journey of Israel after their escape from Egypt, forty days for Israel’s forty years. Both Israel and Jesus begin by plunging through the sea, through the waters of chaos and into a new creation, Israel though the Red Sea and Jesus through the waters of baptism.
If the journey of Odysseus is his father-making, the journey of Israel is their son-and-daughter-making. “Out of Egypt have I called my son,” as the prophet Hosea puts it. The trials and temptations they meet in the wilderness will form them as this son and daughter, as the image of the Father they are called home to be, and which they will be called to model to the world.
This son-and-daughter-making is fulfilled in Jesus. He has just been claimed by a voice from heaven saying, “You are my Son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Now, like Israel, his trust in this claim will be tried and tested in the desert. “If you are the Son of God,” is the prosecution’s refrain. Jesus’ trial will take up Israel’s and bring it to fulfilment. Then, like them, he will arrive in his homeland to reveal his sonship and to share it with the world.
When Jesus arrives in Galilee, however, it turns out not to be much of a home at all. His own do not receive him, as St John would say. They do to begin with but then they turn – and it’s Jesus who provokes it. In Nazareth, the town where he grew up, he reads the Isaiah scroll in the synagogue. He identifies himself as the Lord’s anointed, sent to set them free and give them sight, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour. They like this idea and speak well of him. But Jesus rejects their praise. It’s quite shocking. He says he isn’t sent to them because they’re stupid. They can never receive their own prophets. The Lord’s favour is not in their favour. The Lord is in favour of foreigners. Jesus cuts the people’s flattery dead – their flattery of themselves. His outrageous rudeness gets him driven out and nearly thrown off a cliff. Being a prophet is not about making a good impression, and it’s not about a warm welcome home. It’s about showing us a face we are not yet willing to see.
Jesus’ home is not in Galilee, it’s in the wilderness. How does he get there? He is led by the Spirit. “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, was led by the Spirit in the wilderness,” as we heard. That is to say, he gets there by prayer. Luke locates the declaration, “You are my Son,” not as Jesus is emerging from the water as in Matthew and Mark, but afterwards, when he is praying. What follows in the desert, then, we can well imagine as the contents of that prayer. Wilderness, loneliness, tempting thoughts and roving devils, wandering disorientated in barren, trackless wastes. Sounds a lot like prayer to me. We all know how it goes. We sit down to pray and are plagued by distracting thoughts: planning and worrying, dreaming and remembering. And the thought underlying them all: shouldn’t I be getting on with something useful? Well, that’s the thought that underpins the devil’s three temptations of Jesus. If you’re the Son of God, get out there and use it. Use your power to make a living. Establish some little kingdom. Make a splash and get yourself known, get a thrilling reputation. Jesus responds by doing what we’re taught to do in all the various forms of meditation: acknowledge the distracting thoughts, let them go and return to the presence of God. He doesn’t indulge the devil, he quickly corrects him and refers back to his Father.
Prayer is a journey home. Jesus’ home is not in Galilee, and it’s not in the literal wilderness. Jesus’ home is in God and nowhere in the world. If we want to follow him, the same will be true of us. The devil, like the Nymph Calypso, wants us to forget our true home and settle down here in the world. He wants us to act like the Prodigal Son, to take our inheritance and run off with it, to use it as a means to an end. But our inheritance is not a means, it’s an end in itself. It’s the sheer joy of living with the Father in the abundance of His kingdom. If we run off, we take nothing with us. The gift of God is God. He is our life, our meaning and value. We can’t get it from anywhere else, from people or from things. We can share it with people and enjoy good things, but it’s God we’re sharing and enjoying.
It’s so easy to take the gift for granted. If you’re the Church of God, get on with it. Serve a purpose, make a splash, try to be a bit more relevant. Don’t just sit there praying and worshipping. Before we know it we’re selling our birth right for the passing opinion of people. Instead of listening out for our purpose in life, we might try listening in. We might tune out some of the opinions and tune in to the voice of God. We need to stop being anxiously conformed to the patterns of this world and be quietly transformed by the renewing of our minds. Then, gradually, we can learn to discern what His will is, His good, pleasing and perfect will, what God wants for the world. All our work must be to travel home. Then the Spirit can lead us out.
I’m not preaching faith without works. The Spirit will lead us out. I’m preaching faith without false justification. That’s faith without false comforts. This Lent, as we abstain from comfort eating and comfort scrolling, let’s try to abstain from comfort thinking. Let’s try to notice, as we go about our day, where our minds go for a quick fix. What’s my default idea of myself – the boss, the critic, the winner, the helper, the failure, the artist, the clown? Do my thoughts tend to flatter me like Calypso, because I’m afraid of growing old? Do they lull me like a Lotus Eater, saying check out of reality and live on dreams – or regrets? Or do they terrorise me like a Cyclops, keeping me safely trapped in a cave of fear and shame? All these gods and monsters live inside us, and more. We’ve assimilated them so thoroughly we think they are ourselves. They are not, and they only stop us from growing. In the wilderness of prayer and observation we can get some distance from them. We can move out into the open space where our Father is waiting to speak. The Word, as we heard in Romans, is near us. It is in our hearts, and on our lips. It is our own. The Word is Christ himself speaking within us, the voice of our Father, saying, “You are my daughter, my son, my beloved. With you I am well pleased. That isn’t an opinion, it’s a gift. It is your birth right, and it’s waiting for you at home.” Amen.