First Sunday in Lent
9.30 a.m. Eucharist at St Thomas's Cathedral
13th February 2005
Readings: Rom. 5: 12-19; Mt. 4: 1-11
‘Lead us not into temptation’ are five well-known words that we shall be saying together later on in the service, as part of the Lord's Prayer. They are not easy words – and some of the profoundest Christian thinkers have wrestled hard with them. At the end of the day, it’s really about saying that life can be – and frequently is – tough, and that we need to try to learn ways of ourselves not committing evil, just as the second bit of that prayer, ‘but deliver us from evil’, means not experiencing it.
But is that really enough? To say that life can be – and is – tough must mean placing that ‘toughness’ under a microscope. On the first Sunday of Lent, there is a golden opportunity to do so, because year in, year out, we read of Jesus being tempted, being tested, in the wilderness. Here, at the start of chapter four of Matthew’s gospel, is Jesus, in heart and mind experiencing in a severe way some of the hard questions that we sometimes have to face. They come in three different ways.
The first test is about the stomach: stones into bread. Life, surely, is about solving every physical problem. Feed the hungry. Feed ourselves. Take it all a few steps further and list all the things that I really want – and didn’t get – on Christmas Day. Of course the hungry need food. Their hunger, however, is the direct result of the economic reality that the rich parts of the world are rich at the expense of the poor. In other words, with all our amazing technology and high ideals, we still cannot organise this planet of ours properly.
But there’s another part of the Lord's Prayer that goes, ‘give us today our daily bread.’ That ‘daily bread’ is every kind of sustenance. Not luxuries, ‘dainties’ as some of our forebears used to put it. But bread enough for each day; food for the body, but food also for the soul, Jesus, the Bread of Life (Jn. 6:35) – and, this morning, at the eucharist as well. Such a way of looking at food, at sustenance, begins to place our own personal desires on another footing altogether. We ask for enough, and no more. That jogs the memory – hence the Lent Appeal for aid workers to go out to areas affected by the Tsunami disaster.
The second temptation is the most reactive and terrible: throw yourself down from a high place, take a short cut, and see what happens. Abandon the disciplines of this life, because they no longer appear to give us any freedom, and press the self-destruct button, for example, in one’s relationships, or at work. This is the worst temptation of all, which is why when a suicide does happen, there is a wound of self-inflicted finality that remains for ever in those closely left behind. Incomprehension sets in rapidly and remains. Those suicide bombers really do make me ask some very searching questions about how important it is to value human life, even when the limits seem far to outweigh the possibilities.
Which is why the Lord's Prayer ends with those words about kingdom, power and glory: God’s authority, his strength, and the weight of his wonder. All these are to be seen and felt and known in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, a vulnerable God, not a God of the stomach (at all costs), or of short-cuts to achievement (at all costs) or of manipulation of the system (at all costs), But a God who leads us to the cross.
The third temptation is about power: can we manipulate the system sufficiently to our own ends? It makes me think of those letters and e-mails from people who want the Church to take a strong lead, just so long as that lead reflects their particular prejudices – and ending with those telling, bossy words, ‘I look forward to hearing from you.’ As Rowan Williams has remarked, if we are busy and bossy with each other, we shall start being busy and bossy with God. And there it all is: the kingdoms of this world, shown to Jesus in the twinkling of an eye. Power, domination, even assertiveness – yes, good for the doormats of this world, but even then it can be a subtle form of manipulation for those determined to be on top.
But there is another part of the Lord's Prayer that goes, ‘your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.’ More familiar words. But they are words at once so simple, and at once so deep, that they repay careful attention. It is not my kingdom, my power base, my domination, for example from No. 10 or the White House over the Middle East. Power has to be handled responsibly, even by bishops: that letter which could have been better worded, or that conversation that could have been handled more tactfully. To pray for earth to echo heaven is about more than singing ‘Holy, Holy, Holy Lord… heaven and earth are full of your glory… ‘ to fine music. It is about seeing all our power bases as (potentially) places where the spotlight falls on our motives, our attitudes, as well as our capacity to forgive, and be forgiven – just to make a reference to another part of the Lord's Prayer. Take out your shoulder-chips and resentments by all means, but with a view not to polishing them, but facing them down, and setting them aside.
Lent is not a time to be miserable, but thoughtful. It is a time to ponder the humanity of Jesus, where we see a human will, genuinely free, yet held in obedience to the divine will, struggles and all. It is no coincidence that in Matthew’s gospel, as we read this morning, chapter four portrays him in the wilderness, being tested about his identity and mission, in relation to the world and us; and only two chapters later (Matthew 6: 9-13), at the very heart of the Sermon on the Mount, he gives to the world what we have since learned to call, ‘The Lord's Prayer’, with those startling words, ‘Lead us not into temptation.’ But, then, Christianity, for all that its critics may say, has never been about ivory towers. Instead, it is about seeing through the world at its most greedy, determined, and manipulative, in order to point us to another Way.
+ KENNETH PORTSMOUTH
