Driven Into the Wilderness

"Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil."

--Luke 4: 1-2a

I was out to dinner with a group of people in a non-church setting a few nights ago and got asked one of those priestly questions.  Out of the blue one of the folks I was with blurted out:  so Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness…why did it happen after his baptism?!  This is what I like to call a coffee hour question:  it’s a clerical question that you get asked in a social setting, and it usually catches you off-guard.  I gave this person an answer, but I wasn't sure whether or not it was the right one. After sitting with this gospel through the week, however, I’ve decided that the same answer I gave to that person at dinner is the same one I’m going to give y’all.  

An eastern mural's depiction of the Temptation of Jesus.

We find Jesus having just been baptized by John. God has declared him as God’s Son, and he is driven into the wilderness, filled with the Holy Spirit.  It is out there in the wildnerness that he encounters the devil.  The word here is diabalus, which is used for devil, demon, enemy, or accuser.  It’s not capitalized, so this is not meant to be the end-all-be-all devil with a vibractated tail and carrying a hay fork.   This is an enemy of God, whose sole purpose is to stand between Jesus and God, to distract him from what God wants him to do, and to entice him to follow, not God’s will, but the will of mortals. 

So Jesus is presented with three temptations:  the first is to always have his fill.  Jesus has been fasting out there in the desert and is no doubt famished.  Turn the stones to bread, the devil says, and you’ll never be without.  Jesus refuses.  The next temptation is to have authority over nations. The devil takes him on a mountain and brags that all of these kingdoms are his and could be Jesus’ if only Jesus worships him.  Jesus refuses.  And lastly the devil uses Scripture—Psalm 91 to be exact—to convince Jesus that if he tests God and jumps off the pinnacle of the temple that God will save him.  Jesus refuses.  Three temptations:  to always be filled, to have authority over others, and to put God to the test. 

Brothers and sisters, these three temptations, these three devils—if you will—are still very much alive in the world.  We experience them regularly.  We are often tempted by a consumer-driven society that tells us we need more and more, and that if we get more, we'll finally satisfy our hunger.  Get just the right amount of money and material possessions, and we won't hunger for anything anymore, including God.  We see the temptation to power and prestige, as well, especially in our presidential candidates. Just look at what that ambition for power has done to these folks!  Meanwhile, we are tempted to look out only for ourselves, for our own family, friends, and church brethren, and to forget everybody else.  That's a temptation to lord over others.  And every single one of us has given in to the temptation to test God. We've all prayed to God to give us something, and we've all tried making a deal with God (“if you give me this, I’ll do that for you.”).  These temptations haven’t gone anywhere.  They’re still here, they’re still lurking, they’re all around us, constantly poking and prodding at us, doing anything possible to turn our attention away from God, away from God’s promise of love and mercy. 

This, I believe, is why Jesus was tempted after his baptism.  Jesus’ baptism was his first public act in his ministry—at least in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  All three of them say that he went immediately into the desert to face these temptations.  Why now?  Why not when he was younger and may have been more prone to give in to the devils’ offers?  Perhaps it is because baptism—that public action—was the agent that drove him out there, and that Spirit that filled him was the same Spirit that rested on him as a dove and called him “My Son.”  Jesus was tempted after his baptism because this sequence of events in his life mirrors our own. 

We are baptized not for the purpose of staying in the church where it is safe and friendly.  We are baptized for the purpose of being driven out by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness of this world.  It is a world that is full of temptations, full of devils that seek to undermine the love and mercy of God in our lives.  It is a world that offers us a quick fix for our problems, a world that says we should gain power for ourselves at the expense of others, and a world that tries convincing us that it understands the mind of God when, in fact, it’s as bad at interpreting the meaning of Scripture as that devil was to Jesus when he missed the point of Psalm 91.  In spite of those temptations, though, we, like Jesus, have been filled with the Holy Spirit.  We, like Jesus, face temptation after temptation everyday.  The devils, they come and go-waiting for an opportune time to return—but they do not succeed.  They cannot succeed.  Not so long as we are led by the Holy Spirit, who calls us God’s Sons and Daughters, and empowers us to face those devils head-on.  

This occurs, though, when we see church for what it really is:  the dress-rehearsal for the rest of our lives!  Church is not a country club that occasionally mentions Jesus.  It's not a gathering of like-minded individuals who've all be baptized and saved and who come together to sing songs and have pot-lucks.  Church is a collection of the broken, yet redeemed Body of Christ, called to go out into the wilderness and offer the message that will satisfy the hunger this world faces, so that we may bring the broken into our communities of faith.  But this can only happen if we let the Spirit drive us out.  It is scary to step out of our comfort zone, but I suspect Jesus was scared by it, as well.  With him as our guide, and with the Spirit driving us, we can, in fact, face that scary world and transform it!

Jesus had choices. He could have stayed put and gone back to Nazareth after his baptism.  He could have given in to those devils and put his own needs ahead of those of God.  He could have sought only his own power and prestige, but he chose to live out there in the wilderness, to be a man without a place to lay his head,  and to take the position of a servant, so that we might know what real leadership looks like.  We have those choices, too.  Do we stay cooped up in our cozy church and look out only for ourselves?  Or do we let the Spirit lead us into the cold, frightening wilderness, into the unloving and unforgiving world, so that, like our Lord, we can share the Good News of our all-loving and all-forgiving God?  The choice is ours.