Be Human.

Matthew 4:1-11

“Jesus fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was famished.” It is interesting that we meet Jesus at the beginning of our forty day fast as he reaches the end of his. Only a few days ago many of us received the sign of the cross in ashes upon our foreheads and were reminded that we are dust, and that someday we will die. We have only begun our Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and self-denial, of intentional study of scripture and repentance and amendment of life.  And now in our Gospel passage we find ourselves face to face with the accuser, the evil one, the devil himself. Jesus has just been baptized in the river Jordan, and received the anointing of God’s Holy Spirit to begin a ministry of healing, forgiveness, and renewal of life. A voice from heaven has named him the son of God, beloved, and the spirit has led him into the wilderness to fast and be tempted by the devil. Weakened by hunger and thirst, isolated and alone, far from home and family, Jesus faces the magnitude of his own humanity. The anointed Messiah faces his mortality in preparation for the work he has been given to do, and sin rears its ugly head before his eyes. Because that is what this story is about, although that tricky word does not appear in the text. This passage is known as the temptation of Christ, but we are lost if we do not recognize what exactly the danger of temptation is. Jesus of Nazareth is being faced with the opportunity to sin. And as is the case with most human sin, the temptations he faces are commensurate to the degree of power he wields. This supernatural exchange of more and more extreme temptations might lead us to believe that the sinless Christ faced temptations altogether different from our own.

 The temptation to use his divine creativity to defy the natural world by turning stones into bread? Something he is fully capable of doing and which is wildly outside of our comprehension. The temptation to command angels to save him from a fatal plummet? As King of Heaven, it is well within his rights, but in what world could we imagine being tempted, let alone capable of doing the same? The temptation to obtain infinite wealth and power over others? Well, that one might hit just a little closer to home, if we look closely and honestly at ourselves. Most of us would be satisfied with just a bit more wealth than what we have, and a bit more power over getting what we want. But infinite wealth? World domination? Only egomaniacs and supervillains would fall for that one… right?

On one level, it is apparent that the temptations with which Satan plagues the son of God seem to grow in scale, becoming more extreme and more unreal with each denial. But the devil has a one-track mind. Satan is woefully unoriginal. If we look closer at the tempter’s attempts to trap Jesus, we will see that there are not really three temptations, but one. Control. A hungering Jesus is offered the opportunity to meet his immediate need by exercising inordinate control over nature, denying the inherent goodness of God’s creation in favor of his own satisfaction. A weakened and isolated Jesus is offered the opportunity to be caught up in the arms of angels, exercising control over God by bargaining and testing his Father’s love for him. And finally, Jesus who is fully aware of the betrayal, the humiliation, the pain and the death that await him at the end of his journey, is given an out. Jesus who will be broken is given the chance to choose a different will, to walk a different path and live in a different light. Satan tempts the Messiah with control over all the nations of the earth, with control over the people who will deny him and hang him on a cross to die.

The tempter’s only got one tool in his belt, and it is quite literally the oldest trick in the book. Those poor folks in the garden of Eden fell for it, the same way we fall for it over and over again, and are only freed from it by the Grace of God. Control. The great lie. These temptations tell us something about the character of evil, about the nature of sin. In this Gospel story the devil is personified, but every day we are faced with this same lie coming from a thousand directions. We can control nature by burning, digging, drilling, killing, building, consuming infinitely and with no regard for the generations that follow us or the legacies of those who were here before us. We can control God by claiming to speak for God when it suits us, weaponizing God’s word against those who differ from us and skipping over the histories that inconvenience us. We can control one another with our words, with our laws, with our weapons and our money and our expectations, with no regard for the damage we cause. That is the only temptation we ever face, the same temptation our Savior faced. The lie that we can have what the devil promises, without denying who we are.

That is the undeniable truth of Jesus’s meeting with Satan. In his baptism Jesus was anointed, and named as beloved, the son of God. Jesus rose from the waters of baptism the same way we do, confirmed in an identity that goes beyond human understanding. And immediately Jesus faced temptations to deny that identity, to exchange the reality of his humanity for the falsehood of control. We face the same temptations, day in and day out. When we come face to face with our sins, what we face is the temptation to deny who we are. This is what Jesus teaches us, in his responses to the temptations of the Devil. Where the devil offers up control over nature, Jesus responds with trust in God that all his needs will be met. Where the devil offers up control over God, Jesus responds with surrender to God’s will. Where the devil offers up control over the people of the world, Jesus responds with servanthood, as a servant of God and a servant of God’s beloved people. By exposing the great lie, Jesus shows us who he is, who God is. As the incarnate God, Jesus shows us what it means to be truly human, what it looks like to bear the image of God with a pure heart and deep faithfulness.

Jesus may have completed his forty days and forty nights in the wilderness, but ours have only just begun. It is a wilderness of its own to even talk about sin in a culture that has so misused and misconstrued the concept. Sin is real, but sin is a lie. Sin is the lie that we can replace God with something else, can cling to control and deny who we are made to be. The ultimate reality of our belovedness is the truth. Our humanity is defined by the fact that nothing can separate us from the love of God. Being human has nothing to do with power. Being truly human is to keep choosing God. So if you haven’t chosen a discipline this Lent, I invite you to consider this one. Be human. Jesus came to show you how.