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Tested to Destruction

Lent 1 : 17 February 2013  : Luke 4: 1-13

In our time machines have become our energy slaves. They make our lives easier, and often transport us safely and rapidly from place to place. They are made up of many components whose reliability and dependability are essential for the safety of the human user. So, often they are tested under laboratory conditions beforehand in a process of pushing them to their limits to see how long they will keep going under pressure. What usually happens is that they are tested to destruction, subjected to intense and continuing stress until their breaking point is found.

In a human sense that is what was being done to Jesus this morning. No spiritual leader should be let loose on the public until they have come to terms with their weaknesses and vulnerabilities, which are often the reverse side of their strengths and abilities. They need a preliminary time of sorting themselves out, which often involves struggling with their inner demons, and of getting the better of their recurrent temptations.

Jesus would not have been tempted by most of the things that routinely trip up frail mortals. But his greatness of spirit, his advanced understanding of all that is in the human heart, and his deep desire to do the will of the God of Israel would have left him vulnerable to the temptations of spiritual pride, the illegitimate use of spiritual power, and the alluring possibilities of taking short cuts to achieve the objectives of his mission. So it is that the evil one tries to push his buttons in all these areas. We might notice how Jesus uses Scripture to see off the evil one, to counter each proposition that is put to him. The evil one lapses into Scripture speak to try to tune in to Jesus, and to draw him to destruction by a distorted and perverted use of Scriptural reasoning. But Jesus so thoroughly inhabits the mind set of the Hebrew Scriptures that he can deploy the words of God to counter each false proposition that is put to him. We might therefore want to take advantage of the Bible study that will be running over the Monday nights of Lent in which we will be coming to a deep understanding of the epistle to the Galatians. In this way we too will have the words of God and the mind of Christ, which will equip us in our battle against temptation in Lent.

But more than a pre-ministry retreat process, Jesus is using this time in the wilderness to learn the ways of obedience. His entire ministry is about delighting to do the will of his heavenly Father, to be congruent with his plan for his mission. Indeed, to call God "Father," a title for God that Jesus will add new dimensions and depth to, is to point to his right to initiate, to command, to wisely direct. In the forty days of testing Jesus will make sure that he can say "yes" to God at every point and in every way, and "no" to the false directions and blind alleys of that false navigator, the evil one.

In that sense the time in the wilderness is a replay of the Garden of Eden scenario with which the Bible opens. The first Adam, followed the suggestions of the tempter, gave way to temptation, hid in shame from God, and thus began the human story with a story line of lostness, confusion, and self-inflicted unhappiness.

And that is where the temptations of Christ in the wilderness comes in. Here his obedience to the Father is clearly revealed, his firm no to sin opens up a way of hopefulness for us. As Brendan Byrne movingly puts it:

The obedience displayed in one human life gave expression to a divine love capable of overcoming and setting in reverse the whole destructive history of sin and selfishness from the beginning to the end of time. In Adam, as first ancestor, is told the "sin" story of the entire race - a story that leads to death. In Christ, as "Last Adam," is told the equally wide-ranging "grace" story, one that leads to the fullness of humanity intended by the Creator from the start. Both "stories" run in human lives and human society down to the end of time.

Here in the wilderness we see Christ wading into the strong, dark current of human sinfulness and reversing it. Now the current is flowing the other way because the model human life that represents God’s best hopes for us has said no to the seductive temptations that are put before supremely effective spiritual leaders.

In this season of Lenten hopefulness we are being invited to come to terms with the radical selfishness, otherwise known as sin, as it works itself out in the particularities of our personalities. For each one of us there will be an issue calling out for attention, and for action.

In doing something about this we will need the acute insights of that master psychologist St Augustine into what drives us to do the self defeating things that we do. Augustine was a passionate man with an acute insight into human behaviour. He could see that we seldom make clear, rational choices, because we are just not built that way. Desire is what drives our actions, and our hope for the delight that will follow from getting what we want. Feelings come first with us, but our choices and our desires and our feelings are clouded and confused. Usually we have mixed motives, and sometimes our choices are perverse and self-destructive. We are influenced by many lives that have gone before us, who have shaped our moral horizons and our behavioural expectations for good or ill in ways that we are often unaware of. Maybe we have chosen Christ, but there are vast areas of our psychic hinterland that remain unconverted, and pretty greedy, lustful, and vengeful to boot.

Another useful Lenten discipline would be to read Augustine’s Confessions, the story of how he became a Christian. In it we will see his confident trust in the power of God’s grace to cut through our confusions, and to resolve our inability to do the good that we want to do. We could benefit from the way he confidently expected Divine grace to kick-start our apprentice ship in Christian living - as he pointed out it is comparatively rare for people to sort themselves out by pulling themselves up by their own boot straps.

Augustine was struck by the way original sin has greatly reduced human freedom. But there is in fact just enough freedom left in us to choose to go with God, and his life giving ways of restoration. We are frail creatures of dust, here only for a short time, but there is also something rather splendid about us. Even those who live without God often choose to live in impressively unselfish ways.

What Christ did in the wilderness was to get sin and evil on the run, to open up a contra direction in the flow of human experience and expectation. He had seen personified evil off, and would do so again, and he had done it by turning the bankrupt logic of temptation on its head. He has now opened up the way for us to take action, to get cracking, to have the resolved confidence to get our Lenten spring-cleaning under way.

To what extent will this be our grit and determination, or God’s powerful transforming grace? The disciples of St Augustine and his near contemporary John Cassian could argue about this until the cows come home. But John Cassian said something that I will be using to my benefit this Lent:

God is not only the suggester of what is good, but the maintainer and insister of it, so that sometimes he draws us towards salvation even against our will and without our knowing it.