Temptations

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
February 18, 2024

1 Lent B

When our sons were young, I used to pick them up after school and wait to hear about their day.  I'm a mom.  I wanted to know how their classes had gone, how the test went, who they sat with at lunch...all the details a mother needs to know.  And every day, without fail, the conversation with a certain child went like this: Me: "How was your day?" Child: "Good."  Me: "What did you do?" Child: "Stuff."  If I probed a little deeper and asked who he sat with at lunch, the answer was “people.”  I suppose that I should be happy that the child's day was "good," he did nothing worse than "stuff" and he had lunch with “people.” But the lack of detail left me with little information about the child's day and a whole lot of room for my imagination to work.

The writer of the Mark’s gospel must have been a similar child.  This morning, we hear that Jesus was driven into the wilderness where he stayed for 40 days, was tempted by Satan, he was with the wild beasts, and angels waited on him. The entire story of the temptation in the wilderness takes one sentence.  The story is so short that we have to hear the ending of the story of Jesus' baptism and the beginning of Jesus' public ministry to make a complete paragraph!  With what was Jesus tempted?  What did Jesus do out in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights?  In what way did the angels wait on him?  Wilderness room service? Did the wild beasts try to eat him or were they nice beasts? Mark gives us little information and leaves a lot to our imaginations.

          The writers of Matthew and Luke must have been similarly frustrated by the lack of detail in Mark's story.  The later two gospels tell us that Jesus was tempted with bread, since he was fasting in the wilderness.  Jesus was tempted with special privilege when the tempter told Jesus that God would send angels to catch him if Jesus would throw himself off the pinnacle of the temple.  And Jesus was tempted with power as the tempter offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the world if he would only worship the tempter.  Each of these temptations would draw Jesus away from the God who had claimed Jesus as God's beloved son at Jesus' baptism and prevent Jesus' work in the world.

As we gather on this first Sunday of Lent, we might think for a moment about the ways in which we are tempted away from being the children of God we are called to be. What forces keep us, both as individuals and as Christ Church, from doing the powerful work God has given us to do?

First, I believe the tempter says to each of us "What you, one little person, has to offer, does not make a difference.  So why bother?"  The tempter knows that if each of us can be persuaded that our little bit does not matter, life here will grind to a halt and we will be unable to do anything to make the Kingdom of God a more present reality.  The tempter wants us to think only about our one pledge, our one voice, our one bottle of laundry detergent, and forget that when we all offer what we can, we make a powerful difference in the world.  The tempter says "Keep what you have and use it for yourself, where it will make a real difference."  Scripture says that we are the body of Christ, and when all of the parts, no matter how small, work together, gospel work is done.

The second temptation is the follow-up to the first temptation.  The tempter says "Don't worry-someone else will do it" whatever "it" might be, and the possibilities are endless.  The need might be serving on the vestry or the need might be cleaning up after an event.  The need might be singing in the choir or the need might be serving as an usher for a special service. The need might be serving on the Altar Guild or making a meal for Youth Group and Lego Church.  When the tempter can convince us that someone else will meet that need, the tempter wins because nothing happens.  As long as we think that someone else will meet the need, we cannot move forward.

          The last temptation is a "I don't have time.”  The tempter says "you are far too busy and important to take time for worship and study, much less ministry."  We are busy, all of us.  But if we think God cannot run the world without us for a few hours a week so that we can worship and be renewed, we have decided that we are God.  And the tempter does love that.  Our relationship with God takes work, just like every other relationship we have.  When the tempter can convince us that we don't need to do that work, the tempter wins.  If we want our relationship with God and our relationships with fellow Christians to sustain us in good times and bad, we have to do the work of building and maintaining those relationships.

These temptations and others like them try to keep us from being the people God has created us to be.  When we fall for those temptations, we are unable to do the work God has given us.  When we keep our focus on who we are called to be as God's beloved children, and what we are called to do to make the Kingdom of God more present now, the angels will be with us and the wild beasts will encourage us.  Our relationships with God and each other will be strong, and our ministries will flourish.  And the Tempter will not stand a chance.                                           Amen.