For Sunday Lent 1A
Collect
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.
Reading
Reflection
Jesus leaves his baptism for a forty-day quarantine in the desert. This is the beginning of Jesus’s ministry, before the disciples and the crowds, before the healings and the miracles. All he has is what he entered the time away with: his life, faith, and the promise. Words of God’s faithfulness, of love and hope.
And here, at the end, when he can almost taste the food and the feel the blankets of his bed, the voices of loved ones calling to him, the adversary appears, to tempt him. To tempt him to stray. From his path. From belief. Tempt him with power. Security. Certainty. That he could be the master of his own fate. That he doesn’t need God to protect him. He could have it all. Everything. Just take it.
This is the devil’s bargain. It isn’t satanic worship or doubt and disbelief. It is the self unmoored from dependent and reciprocal relationship. The exercise of power to dominate and oppress. To control the world around you. The things we call human greatness. Claiming them for ourselves. These are the things the devil tempts Jesus with because they are precisely not the things of Christ, of God. They aren’t Christian.