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First Sunday Lent - Year C

This week we are presented with Luke’s account of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. To put this into context, this story follows Luke’s account of Jesus’ baptism, at the conclusion of which the heavens opened and the voice of God rang out. 

After His experience in the Jordan, Jesus begins to head for home - but we are told that the Spirit leads Him into the wilderness where He is tempted by the devil. 

Two things strike me immediately in the opening of this story. The first is that Jesus was led into the desert by the Holy Spirit. It wasn’t his idea, this forty-day period of fasting and isolation. The second is that the devil awaits Him there. Is this a set up? 

And what happens to Jesus there? Well, he's tested. Isn't that what the Gospel says? No! The Gospel says that he was tempted. 

The Christian tradition teaches us that Jesus was BOTH fully human and fully divine (a teaching that was accepted by the early Church long before our division into different denominations).  And being fully human like us, the temptation that this Gospel story describes is not just a nice title, it is a human reality. Offered a way out of the suffering and the frustration that lies ahead of Him, Jesus is tempted to take up the devil’s offer, just as we would be. But Luke tells us that, bolstered by the Holy Spirit, Jesus manages to see off temptation. 

It’s no coincidence that the Church selects this reading for the First Sunday of Lent - the beginning of our own forty days of communal and self-reflection. It’s not an admonishment designed to make us feel bad that we’re not more like Jesus. It an appeal, an encouragement, a message of hope; that as difficult as it is sometimes not to succumb to temptation, it’s not impossible. That even in our human weakness, sin is not inevitable. So no, it’s not a set up. Or at least, we're not set up to fail, because we too are bolstered by the Holy Spirit. 

As we enter into this focused period of prayer, fasting and good works, I pray that I may recognise more clearly and resist more consistently those moments of temptation that are leading me into the wilderness, and away from the fullness of relationship with God and the people in my life. And I pray that forty days is long enough to embed that habit of goodness. At least until the end of the Easter season. 



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