LENT 1-A, February 10, 2008

Forty days in the desert. Alone. No one around. No companions for support. Just you and the sand and the hot days and the cold nights. The silence must have been deafening and the temptations beyond imagination. Back when I was in seminary we used to have a seven-day silent retreat in the fall and a three-day silent retreat in the spring. Those were a pierce of cake compared to what Jesus went through. We even had cake for dinner even if the meals were eaten in silence.

The purpose of my seminary retreats was to help us in our spiritual lives, challenge us about our vocations, perhaps even steel us for the temptations that would come, temptations to be less than faithful, temptations to use and abuse the power and authority that came from being a priest. Those were the same temptations that Jesus faced but mine were nothing in comparison.

In one way or another we all face those same temptations. I suspect Jesus’ first temptation was probably the one that was the most difficult to resist. It was a temptation to put himself first, to take care of his own needs, to use his own resources for himself alone. And the temptation came when he was most vulnerable.

But they always do, don’t they? The best time for me to go grocery shopping is right after dinner. I am full. I am no longer hungry. I can go up and down all the aisles of the supermarket, right past the Fritos and jelly beans and donuts and not stop even for a look or a smell. I am not hungry at that moment. But don’t send me shopping at meal time. I don’t need to be led into temptation. I lead myself.

Temptations to sin all boil down to one: to do that which I know I should not do because I will get some personal pleasure out of what I am doing even though it will hurt someone else or hurt me or both. Sin is selfishness, pure and simple. It does not get any more profound than that. Everything we do, of course, is selfish. It starts with the self: the only place it can start. What makes an act sinful is that it stops with the self: what the self wants, what seems good for the self, and not what is good for others.

The selfish self is a mighty formidable foe, very convincing, hard to resist, to say no to. We’ve all fought those battles with the selfish self and have lost. The way to win the battle with the selfish self is the way we win any battle – by being prepared.

Jesus’ forty days in the desert were a time to prepare himself for his ministry, to prepare himself to overcome those temptations of the selfish self – like changing stones into bread so that he, famished as he was, could eat. Anyone coming off a forty-day fast would have food on his mind. It is natural. And if one could make bread out of stones right now, why not? It would be so easy but also so selfish.

We do not resist temptation by sheer force of will, not on a regular basis. Our will is simply not that strong. We can resist temptation only through prayer and preparation to do so. Jesus spent forty days in such prayerful preparation.

Like Jesus, besides being tempted to be selfish we are often tempted to test God. We test God’s love, God’s patience, God’s wisdom, almost everything about God. We test God one way or another every single day of our lives whether we realize it or not. Our testing of God does not come in the way Jesus was tempted to put God to the test: jumping off a tower and landing in the hand of angels.

Rather, our testing of God comes when we ask God to bail us out of the messes we have made for ourselves, messes we could have and should have avoided were we not so lazy or selfish or stupid. We put God to the test by asking God to protect us from ourselves. We foolishly place ourselves in harm’s way and then expect or even demand that God bail us out.

I’m not sure how strong that temptation was for Jesus at that moment in time, but throughout his ministry he was tempted to go places and get into situations where even angels would fear to go. So are we. Sadly, we often give into those temptations and then beg God to redeem the situation.

Jesus final temptation was one he constantly warned his followers about, the temptation to try to serve both God and material possessions. This temptation was not a one-shot deal on the tempter’s part. Over and over again Jesus was tempted to become king of the universe. That is what his followers wanted of him, were demanding of him, knew he could become. And Jesus knew it as well. He knew he could sell his soul to the devil and he knew how strong the temptation to do so was and would always be. He could not let down his guard for even a moment.

Neither can we. The temptation to pursue more and more, to build up storage places to keep our material goods, the desire for bigger and better, with never being satisfied with what we have is a constant. It may recede into the background when another issue needs attention, as when our health is at stake or our children demand our every ounce of energy and every moment of time. But once life gets back to normal, the god of the material comes begging for our worship and adoration.

And we give in, often unknowingly. We purchase things we do not need and often will never use. We give clothes to Good Will that still have the price tag attached. We hold garage sales to get rid of stuff we thought we could never do without and discover we have hardly ever, if ever, used. And then we use the proceeds to purchase more things we don’t need. All the while we are serving the god of the material.

It takes vigilance, often in the extreme, to keep ourselves centered on what is important and what is not, on the God we are to serve and the god we can so easily come to serve even before we are aware of what we have done. The desire for more and more is so very subtle because it is all around us. The temptation to chase after the material often comes when we are the weakest. We purchase something because doing so makes us feel good, gives us satisfaction, perhaps even makes us feel important, godlike.

Perhaps we never sell our soul entirely to the devil. But there are times when the devil owns a big chunk of us and we do not know how we got into so much debt. But the truth is that we do know, don’t we?

Jesus was tempted to be selfish, to test God, to sell out, sell his soul to the devil. So are we. Jesus used those forty days in the desert to prepare himself for his ministry where he would be tempted even more to do the same. You and I can’t take the forty days of Lent and go on a silent retreat somewhere much as we might like to. Rather, we are offered the forty days of Lent to make and take some quiet time each day to reflect upon those temptations that come our way every day of our lives: temptations to look out for ourselves and ourselves alone, temptations to test God’s love and compassion, temptations to do whatever it takes to sell out to the devil and make ourselves into little gods.

May we make that time and take that time so to make ourselves better prepared to resist those daily temptations and to live out our faith better and better each day. May we use these days well.