Lent: Day 14

Part 1 of a Three-Part Series

Scripture: Luke 4: 1-13

This gospel reading from Luke tells us that it isn’t just us that find the existence of suffering and injustice the hardest part of the gospel. Jesus seems to have found it difficult as well.

Jesus goes into the wilderness after his baptism just as Israel went into the wilderness after crossing the Red Sea, and he goes there to find out the same thing Israel went to find out. Jesus goes into the wilderness to find out what it means to have power.

The first temptation he faces is about physical power. He’s surrounded by stones and it would make life a whole lot easier if he were to turn one of them into a loaf of bread. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t because he’s learning what it means to have power over his own body.

Yes, he’s hungry, but that doesn’t mean he allows hunger to take over his imagination so he can’t think of anything else. Yes, he could do with a coffee, but he’s not going to let his body become subject to a craving for caffeine before he can embark on any form of physical effort or serious thought. Yes, he’d love a beer, but he’s finding ways to relax and be cheerful and find a sense of humor without depending on a brown bottle to do it all for him.

Yes, he’d love to be intimate and feel the sexual excitement of holding somebody close, but he’s here in the wilderness to learn not to be subject to the whim of lust and the sovereignty of his hormones. Yes, he’s tired, but he’s discovering that he can’t make sleepiness a perpetual excuse for avoiding those things he doesn’t want to do, and he can’t make his own exhaustion a symbol of his self-importance.

What he does is to transform every desire into a desire for God. “One does not live by bread alone,” says Jesus, quoting Deuteronomy, and the original verse goes on “but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” If he had bread, he’d be hungry the next day. If he had a beer, he’d be thirsty again. But learning to desire the word of God, learning to feed on the bread of heaven, means he’ll never be hungry again. That’s power.