Today is the 1st Sunday of Lent. The common theme for all 3 years of the Lectionary is Jesus in the desert. What came to mind when I was preparing to proclaim the Gospel is that there are two different vantage points to look at temptation:
- From the viewpoint of the person doing the tempting… the devil in this case.
- From the viewpoint of the person being tempted… Jesus in this case.
Because I don’t want to have constantly clarify my words, for the remainder of this post I will use the word tempt (and it’s variants) for #1 and the word entice (and it’s variants) for #2.
I don’t know if I’m alone in thinking this, but I’ve always thought of Jesus as having not been very enticed by the Devil’s tempting. Sure, those are pretty big and powerful things to tempt someone with:
- You’re hungry? Here’s a way to get some food.
- For most human beings, the prospect of power and honor is very enticing.
- Similarly, the desire to show off our capabilities, to prove how awesome we are, is also very enticing to most of us.
But I tend to think of Jesus in perfect terms, usually in divine terms, or when I think of Him in human terms I think of him as being the perfection of human behavior. So, while the rest of us would be pretty enticed by the Devil’s temptation, I generally assume that Jesus wouldn’t have been similarly enticed.
But is that right?
We should also remember that Jesus was fully human during His time on earth. Part of what we believe about the human condition is that we have those temptations that are very enticing to us. It differs from person to person, but we all have multiple things that entice us greatly. For me, food is on that list. I struggle with my weight (losing the battle too often). The sin of gluttony is one I confess all too regularly. But for others, beyond massive hunger, they aren’t much enticed by food. For them it might be lust or sloth or greed. Some of us struggle with many enticements.
Thus it seems fair to assume that Jesus too, being fully human, had his things that enticed him. And the Devil, being capable of seeing things us humans can not, had to be well aware of what to tempt Christ with. And so, one has to think, that Jesus was indeed much enticed by what the Devil was using to tempt.
The question then becomes, if Jesus was so enticed, as enticed as we are when we fail to resist the enticement, how was it that he was able to resist? We all have so much experience with the temptations of the world catching us at our weakest moments, when we lack the fortitude to resist what entices us, and us falling into sin. How did Jesus do better?
I think that’s where my first instinct of assuming that Jesus wasn’t all that enticed comes from. I have a hard time believing that someone could be so enticed and still resist. But that might also be the most powerful lesson in this passage from the Gospel.
Jesus found the strength to resist by tapping into the divine. No matter how much He was enticed, no matter how much *we* are enticed, God offers us His strength to combat it. It may be difficult for us in our humanity to believe that or to trust God or to reach out to God enough to grab onto that strength, but Jesus demonstrates that it *IS* possible. He was enticed by the Devil in the most comprehensive way the Devil could conceive. The Devil wanted nothing more than to turn Christ against His Father. Yet Christ found the power to resist in God.
I think if we can all learn that lesson, to believe deep in our hearts that we can resist any temptation no matter how enticing it is, by tapping into the power of God, we’d be far better off.