Luke 4:1-13

We just prayed it: Lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. This is our hope and our prayer: to not be confronted by temptation or evil. The Lord's Prayer is a prayer in preparation for God's kingdom coming very soon and a prayer asking that we will remain steady in our faith in God and Jesus Christ even as we move from one world to another. “Lord, help us to remain steady even in the face of persecution and death,” is the prayer on many lips. I imagine it kept martyrs in early, first centuries of Christianity enfolded and hope-filled. We pray the Lord's Prayer not so much thinking of end times but more as a help in our daily life here on earth. But even so, we know that we are tempted. Perhaps though, we don't understand our temptations as matters of faith. We know also that evil is around us. So how do we work through temptation and keep evil at bay?

One writer who was considering this text from the gospel of Luke shared how the Sunday school and congregation as a whole were considering this the wilderness story and the temptation of Jesus. Her son's Sunday school teacher talked about the story: Jesus, the devil, the temptations. Although we could differ on the emphasis of temptations and the personification of the devil, her son seemed to take in well the different parts to Jesus' time in the wilderness. The teacher, to help the youngsters understand the story further, gave an example as an illustration. The story is something like if you were in a store: your mother and father were in one aisle and you are in another aisle. Where you are, in that aisle, there is candy. Now the devil would say to you, “You should have some! You should take some!” That's what it was like for Jesus. His mother was so astounded at how much her four year old son had taken in, that she asked, “So what would you do? What would you say back to the devil?” A genuinely sweet grin lit up his entire face and without any hesitation he replied, “Oh! I would say thank you!”

Now the four year old most likely missed the point of the story as a whole. But perhaps there is also a bit of truth in the boy's response as well: Perhaps, too often, we do fall captive to temptation.

Most often, temptation doesn't come labeled as such. It comes wrapped up in good intentions, the best of motives, or is rationalized with: it won't hurt if I do just this or I'll repay that when I get my check next week, or it's best if I protect him from knowing this, or I need this. Most often we see ourselves as good and doing good. At times, we think we can get away with the small infraction. Skipping class wasn't so bad: it gets easier each time we ask ourselves, do I really need to go? We only recognize temptation for what it is when we realize something Gerhard Ebeling said, “In temptation (falling to temptation) our freedom becomes the means of our enslavement.

Unlike our Lord's Prayer request, Hannah Whitall Smith, a Quaker strongly influenced by the Methodist holiness movement, almost comes out and says: Bring on the temptations! She says in her tract, The Christian's Secret to a Happy Life, written in 1885: I want that they should not be ignorant of the fact that temptations are, after all, an invaluable part of our soul's development; and that, whatever may be their original source, they are used by God to work out in us many blessed graces of character which would otherwise be lacking. She goes on to say: Wherever temptation is, there is God also, superintending and controlling its power. Hannah also speaks to the issue that temptation is not a sin; she emphasizes succumbing to temptation is. She says further that most often we succumb to temptation when we are discouraged. A very wise man once said that incoming in overcoming temptations, cheerfulness was the first thing, cheerfulness the second, and cheerfulness the third. From the book of James we hear “Count it all joy when you fall into diverse temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith works patience. (James 1:2)

C.S. Lewis wrote a whole book on the work of the devil with humanity in his Screwtape Letters. Such ripe material humanity is on being lead down a path of compromised living, that the Master Devil Screwtape writes a series of letters to his trainee on how to ensnare a young man or woman.

Our scripture reading from Luke, however, is not about the temptation of just any young man, but is the story of Jesus' wilderness experiences. Unlike Mark who describes the experience, Luke gives three specific instances of encounter with the Adversary. And unlike Matthew, the other synoptic gospel, Luke gives a different order to three instances. Luke's version of the forty days alone in the wilderness is challenged at the beginning and the end in the temple. Each temptation the devil offers, Jesus meets with scripture from the Pentateuch Deuteronomy. So in the last temptation, the devil first quotes scripture and says if this is so, prove it. In fact, the very psalm we read this morning is quoted. “For God will give his angels charge over you to guard all your ways.” But Jesus responds in each case, similarly, refusing to fall after false hunger, to go after power and compromise himself or God for that kind of power, and finally refusing the need to prove or test God's faithfulness. To add to the message of this story, the first and last challenges Jesus encounters are prefaced with a reminder, “If you are the Son of God…” They remind the reader who, indeed, is this Jesus. The overall effect of this wilderness experience tells us how this Son of God, Jesus will act, what the nature of His work will be. It gives us a prelude of his identity in his coming ministry: Jesus will feed the hungry, Jesus will fulfill the heritage of Israel ; he will combat the rule of Satan, and he will fulfill his work as Savior by his faithfulness. That is, he will offer himself – his life – because of His call by God.

For some, this story of wilderness where the devil is personified, where there is moving from mountain top to temple pinnacle, where Jesus is confronted by such outstanding temptations is hard to relate to. It seems so unreal and removed from our experiences. The devil does not appear to us and transport us from place to place. The temptations we experience are often not so clearly recognizable. The choice is not so much between good and bad but between bad and worse or good and better. We deal in “gray” areas and do not have the choice of rejecting “Mr. In-between.” It used to be that in classic westerns, the good guys wore the white hats and the bad guys the black hats and any settlement between the two came at high noon on Main Street . But this type of scene has broken down. To the extent that when the obvious good ending happens, it's termed by movie reviewers as a feel-good ending and is said in a disparaging way. We seldom experience such clear choices and when we do we often lack the wisdom to deal with the choices we more typically face. How do we know the answers to such questions as: When does what is good for the corporate body outweigh the need of an individual? Which has a higher claim: The needs of the unemployed for a job or anti-pollution standards that protect the environment but close down an industry?

But this story that has no witnesses offers us a model for resisting temptations. Foundational to locating Jesus in a place that offered nothing, no distractions is the presence of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is filled with the Spirit; Jesus is led by the Spirit. And still leaving that place of desolation ready to return to Galilee , Jesus is filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. Foundational to this story of Jesus is His reliance on scripture to the history of a people wondering in the wilderness and their reliance on God's provision. Foundational for Jesus was knowing in faith that no matter the choices before him his main course was always refuge in God. Relying on this presence of the Spirit, on scripture and on his faith, Jesus meets the challenges.

But what else does this offer us as we face what may seem mundane or everyday decisions, and difficult choices as well? Jesus' wilderness time doesn't offer answers to every ethical question but it does describe certain ethical challenges we do face. It offers advice around temptations that ask us to forget our baptismal identity – we are children of God. It does offer advice when we face temptations that would have us use our religion for personal gain. It does offer advice when we are tempted to be successful rather than faithful. It does offer advice around issues of power and compromising oneself in order to have such. It does offer advice when we are tempted to be enthralled by the riches of the world. It does offer advice when we're tempted to not stand firm or avoid sacrifice or suffering.

The story is first and foremost about Jesus – who He is. Faced with pressing decisions about his identity and vocation, Jesus allowed himself to be led by the Spirit. Jesus responded to the Scripture's admonitions regarding God's purpose for life and the call to worship and serve God. The call is not adherence to a list of rules but to faithfulness to the call and purposes of God.

I would like to conclude with a story that Hannah Whitall Smith shared in her writing of 1885. It speaks of temptations and the need to be able to work through them using a faithfulness to the call and purposes of God as your guide. Hear this:

An invalid lady procured once the cocoon of a very beautiful butterfly with unusually magnificent wings hoping to have the pleasure of seeing it emerge from its cocoon in her sick chamber. She watched it eagerly as spring drew on, and finally was delighted to see the butterfly beginning to emerge. But it seemed to have great difficulty. It pushed, and strained, and struggled, and seemed to make so little headway, that she concluded it must need some help, and with a pair of delicate scissors she finally clipped the tight cord that seemed to bind in the opening of the cocoon. Immediately the cocoon opened wide, and the butterfly escaped without further struggle. She congratulated herself on the success of her experiment, but found in a moment that something was the matter with the butterfly. It was all out of the cocoon it is true, but its great wings were lifeless and colorless, and dragged after it as a useless burden. For a few days it lived a miserable sickly life, and then died, without having once lifted its powerless wings. The lady was sorely disappointed and could not understand it. But when she related the circumstance to a naturalist, he told her that it had all been her own fault. That it required just that pushing and struggling to send the life fluid into the veins of the wings, and that her mistaken kindness in shortening the struggle, had left the wings lifeless and colorless.

May our challenges be met with faith so we may indeed “mount up with wings as eagles.”