“And Jesus … was led
by the Spirit into the wilderness.” (Luke 4:1)
The Scripture text for the first Sunday in Lent pushes us
out into the wilderness with Jesus. This
dry, barren place is where Jesus began so it seems fitting that we too start
with the wilderness. Paul tells us that
the pre-incarnate Christ emptied himself in order to take on flesh
(Phil.2:1). In the wilderness Jesus’
flesh was being tested to see how it fit. Jesus was stretching his wings and
learning how troublesome this flesh stuff can be. The writer of Hebrews said that Jesus was
tempted in every way just as we are (Heb.4:15), and because “he himself suffered when he was tempted, he
is able to help those who are being tempted” (Heb.2:18). In other words, in the wilderness Jesus
learned what it meant to be human … what it really feels like to be one of us …
to be finite and limited and frail and scared and paranoid and heartbroken and
angry and gullible and passionate and willful and stubborn and all the other
crazy things that make us human. And
that skin must have felt very strange to Jesus.
One of my favorite writers, Frederick Buechner, in his book Whistling in the Dark, wrote the
following: “After being baptized by John
in the river Jordan, Jesus went off alone into the wilderness where he spent
forty days asking himself the question what it meant to be Jesus. During Lent, Christians are supposed to ask one
way or another what it means to be themselves.”
In his baptism, Jesus experienced an overpowering show of
solidarity with God. The voice from heaven boomed, “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased” (Luke
3:22). God’s affirmation must have been an
intoxicating elixir. The human thing to
do would be to grab hold of that power and use it. For good, of course, but use it,
nonetheless. Jesus didn’t do the human
thing. He did just the opposite. He did the Spirit thing. “Jesus,
full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan (his baptism) and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness” (Luke 4:1). He left the refreshing waters of his baptism
and lived for a while in the dry dust of the wilderness. And in the wilderness
the Beloved in whom God was well pleased … emptied himself. He stretched his
human skin and resolved himself to make it fit.
His response to the temptation was, in essence, “this is not
about me.” Satan: Are you hungry? Make
stones turn to bread. Jesus: Of course I’m
hungry, but this is not about me. Satan:
Do you want to change the world? Worship me and I will give you the world.
Jesus: Of course, I want to change the world, but this is not about me. Satan: Do
you want people to believe you? Throw yourself from the pinnacle of the temple
and let them see the angels save you. Jesus: Of course I want people to believe
me, but this is not about me.
Jesus knew exactly what any human being would do. He felt it
in every strand of his human DNA. And he did just the opposite. I agree with
Buechner – Jesus wrestled with what it meant to be Jesus.
But what does that mean for us? It means that we too have to wrestle with
what it means to be us. What it means to
be both human and Christian. What it
means to empty ourselves. What it means, in light of Jesus, to now live in this
skin of flesh.
Joan Chittister, in her book, The Liturgical Year: the spiraling adventure of the spiritual life,
says that the temptation of Jesus reminds “us
not to be surprised at our own struggle with the will to have power, the desire
for things, the propensity for the morally malign – all of which threaten to
deter our giving ourselves to the things that count in life. As Jesus triumphed over the seductions of the
world and the limitations of being human, so must we.”
Next week – How do we begin?
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