Faith | Cats | Hope | Grace

I frequently appreciate how the lectionary and the allotted prayers come together every Sunday. And the first Sunday in Lent is no exception. We start with the collect that reads, “Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan: Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.” Later we hear the story of Jesus’s own temptation by Satan in the wilderness.

Satan offers up the top hits for temptation–food, power and authority, and safety. Ok, looking at that list we might start to feel a little uneasy. Human bodies need food to live. That’s an undeniable fact. We hear that Jesus ate nothing during his time in the wilderness and was starving. Is food here really a temptation or an offer of a relief of suffering? But there’s the why behind Jesus’s starving. Jesus is led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness. This time in the wilderness could be a time of reflection, a time of deepening relationship with God, a time to remove himself from the distractions of life. The Gospel doesn’t give us the impression that this time in the wilderness was ever meant to be permanent, but a time of possible intentionality with God. A time set apart. And then the offer of bread shows up. 

Jesus’s fast was part of his spiritual practice during this time. This time set aside for his relationship with God. The bread may have fed his body, but by inserting a wedge into this intentional moment with God. Relationships, and that includes relationship with God, must also be fed.

And that’s the thing we sometime trip up on. We see Jesus fasting for 40 days, we hear “One does not live by bread alone.” And if we’re not careful, we jump to the conclusion that a life of constant sacrifice, a life of asceticism, is the only and ultimate ideal. But a key of that sentence is “bread alone.” Yes, we absolutely can and should feed our bodies. We should delight in the bounty of the earth that sustains us. But, again, that isn’t the only feeding we should do. Not living by bread alone calls us to a life of balance, into a life of relationship, hopefully into lives of clarity.

Next Satan tempts Jesus, and by extension us, with power and authority. Or, he promises to feed our egos. All that’s needed for this power and authority is to worship something or someone other than the Lord our God. To orient our lives away from the God who created us and loves us.

Finally, there is the final temptation of throwing oneself down from the pinnacle. “He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you.” With the first temptation and this temptation, Satan is challenging Jesus’s role and authority as the Son of God. We hear again and again, “If you are the Son of God.” Another layer of Jesus’s temptation is to use his authority as the Son of God for his own benefit.

But for me, as a simple human, these temptations touch on trusting—with all of our being—that we are loved and cared for by God. No human needs power and authority, we need food and safety. In turning away from God, we could be offered the power our egos crave. Trusting in a loving God fills our bodies, keeps us safe, and helps us know that we are loved. And that is the truly challenging temptation, to continue to believe in a loving God when you are hungry, and scared, and others are using their power over you. Those are the moments we find ourselves in the wilderness.

I wish I had a good answer for these moments in the wilderness. I think finding those answers is the collective and individual work of a lifetime. But I do think that the collective work can support the individual work. It is important to keep in the front of our hearts and minds, that every person we meet and interact with, the people that we see on the news, the people that we demonize, the people that we find easy and that that we struggle to love, is an absolutely beloved child of God. That knowledge shores up others in their time in the wilderness when it is harder for them to do that for themselves. Because that love should not just be a feeling, but action in our world showing that we recognize that those around us are loved by God, just as we are loved. Each of us have moments where we struggle to trust in God, and those around us carry us forward. And we do the same for those around us. We don’t live by bread alone, but we also don’t live our lives alone. And for that we should all be grateful.