Sermon preached at the Parish Church of St Mary’s, Primrose Hill on First Sunday of Lent, by the Reverend Robert Atwell, Sunday 25 February 2007  

As a result of films like Lawrence of Arabia and The English Patient the desert has acquired a certain glamour in people’s imaginations. In reality, however, deserts are life-threatening places. There is no water; no shade; burning temperatures by day and freezing temperatures by night; and quicksands that engulf you without warning. Deserts are dangerous and lonely places. There are no maps and no roads, except the ones you make by walking on them.

The Judean desert, which was the arena for Jesus' temptations, lies due east of Jerusalem, and runs for miles and miles until it descends to the Jordan valley. Wilderness is a better word than desert because unlike the Sahara there are no sand-dunes in Judea. Instead the landscape is rocky, barren and completely devoid of vegetation, and of course in summer it is burning hot. It is not the sort of place you would dare venture off the main road.

But in the Bible the desert is not primarily a geographical reality. It's a metaphor for human vulnerability. It is about the landscape of our souls: the wilderness within each of us. It is a place of testing where the power of false gods is broken. It a place of encounter with ourselves and with God.

You will remember that it was across the desert that Abraham travelled in response to the call of God, and finally arrived in the land of Canaan.

It was across the great Sinai desert that Moses led the people of Israel in their flight from slavery in Egypt. For forty years they journeyed, searching for the Promised Land.

It was to the desert that the prophet Elijah fled from the wrath of Queen Jezebel, and there encountered God not in the earthquake, the wind or the fire, but in the still small voice.

All these stories lie behind this morning's account of the temptation of Jesus.

St Mark tells us that the Spirit 'drove' him into the wilderness. Mark uses a very brutal word: ekballein, meaning literally 'kicked out'. And note it's not the devil who is doing the kicking – it's the Spirit of God – the same Spirit who five minutes earlier was anointing him at his baptism in the river Jordan and assuring him that he was beloved of God. What sort of a God is this? we might ask.

St Teresa d'Avila, the great Spanish mystic, as she trundled across the Sierra Nevada in the back of an ox-cart, is alleged to have said, 'Well God, if this is how you treat your friends, it's no wonder you've got so few of them.'

Clearly both St Matthew and St Luke were embarrassed by Mark's choice of verb and substituted the softer word 'led' for 'driven' in their accounts which is altogether much nicer. 'The Spirit of God led him into the wilderness to be tempted,' says St Luke. But I like Mark's brasher style. Sometimes I need my inertia to be disturbed. I don't think inertia was a problem for Jesus, but it is for me. From time to time, I get stuck and become complacent. I find myself colluding with destructive things in my life simply because I haven't the courage or the energy to change them. I need God to give me a spiritual kick up the back-side.

So what are we to make of the three temptations that assailed Jesus?

The first temptation to confront Jesus was to turn stones into bread. The temptation was more subtle than merely satisfying his own physical needs. Remember, Jesus has just been baptised by John and become profoundly aware of his divine sonship and destiny. The Messiah was expected to give the people bread from heaven, just as Moses had done for the Israelites in the wilderness. To a nation that was used to food shortages and famine, the most popular picture of the messianic age was that of a banquet. What better thing then for Jesus to demonstrate his messiahship than by turning stones into bread. But he refuses. Man shall not live by bread alone.

Then, in an ecstatic vision Jesus sees all the kingdoms of the world stretched out before him. Over all this territory Caesar reigned. What could Jesus not achieve if he were sitting on Caesar's throne! But Jesus refuses the temptation to worldly power. To pin his hope on securing an earthly throne would be to worship that which is not God.

And so comes in St Luke's version the greatest temptation of all: spiritual power. In his imagination Jesus pictures himself standing on the pinnacle of the royal porch of the temple in Jerusalem which overlooked a sheer drop of some 450 feet to the Kidron valley below. Throw yourself down, comes the voice inside him. If he were to jump, could he not trust God to bring him safely to the ground and so provide spectacular proof of the power of faith and prayer, and thus gain the people's respect? But to test God is the opposite of trusting him. When we ask God for proof, we've not yet learned the meaning of faith.

What is interesting about all three temptations is that the devil attacks Jesus not at the point of weakness, but at the point of strength:

Jesus' compassion – his wish to feed people;
Jesus' commitment – his desire to change the world;
Jesus' faith – his longing to proclaim the sovereignty of God.

And it's this surprising fact that we should reflect upon.

Whenever we hear the language of temptation, we immediately think of our weaknesses, where we are most vulnerable to falling (at least as we perceive it). But this is not necessarily so. Sometimes our weaknesses can be saving graces in our lives because they stop us from becoming hoity-toity. As the old proverb has it, 'Pride comes before a fall.' Often it's not our weaknesses that are our problem, but our strengths, where we believe ourselves to be invulnerable. When we are supremely confident we become arrogant, and when we are arrogant we are impervious to the grace of God. It's why St Paul throughout his epistles keeps saying that he will only boast of his weaknesses, because he says, 'When I am weak, then I am strong.'

The desert and the temptations that assail us will be different for each of us. Our desert can be any situation of stripping, of hopelessness, of being overwhelmed by despair. Perhaps our life has fallen apart and all around us is the debris of broken relationships. The desert is a place of sterility and loneliness from which we long to escape. The desert is only a real desert when it is too big for us, when we can't see the end of it, when we can't see that any good can come of it, when we don't know what to do, what the right road is; when we have no reliance except God – and that's just the point.

We have no reliance except God.

So what I want to say this morning is simply this: God is as much Lord of the wilderness as he is of the oasis. No one can teach you that: you have to discover it for yourself. The God of compassion and mercy journeys with us through all the ups and downs of life. And just as angels ministered to Jesus in the wilderness, so when eventually we look back on our desert experiences, we too will recognise the hand of God and even know that angels have ministered to us unawares.

So as we begin our observance of Lent, I leave you with these words from the Book of Deuteronomy: 'The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.' And to that text may we all say Amen.