February 21: First Sunday in Lent
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
Romans 10:8b-13
Luke 4:1-13
We have all had our moments in the wilderness, times when we were very vulnerable, times when we, like Jesus in the gospel passage from Luke, are no longer the person we were before but not yet the person we have been called to become. Our moments in the wilderness can come whenever we feel a bit lost and unsettled; when we are between jobs, when we have lost a relationship, when we are passing from one developmental stage of our lives into another.
During these times of transition we might find it difficult not to focus on what is lacking in our lives. It is also during these wilderness times when we are tempted to give in to the alluring voices inside our heads that try to steer us in the wrong direction. These voices are different for every person; our own particular temptations may be the siren call of our addictions, or our temptations may be the innumerable ways we can rationalize our poor behavior toward others.
Jesus must surely have felt extremely vulnerable after not eating for forty days in the wilderness. It must have taken every ounce of strength he had to turn away the devil’s offers of food, power and protection. But Luke tells us in the very beginning of this passage what enabled Jesus to say no to the devil’s temptations: Jesus was “full of the Holy Spirit.” It is Jesus’ closeness to the One who loved him that helped him to put his trust in God and not the alluring possibilities set before him.
Most of us will never be put to the test as Jesus was. But all of us will have to face, some time in our lives, moments of great internal poverty of spirit, moments when nothing makes sense. We need to remember, during these times, that it is our will, our ability to choose, that the forces of darkness cannot touch. Our emotions may swirl, we may feel down or discouraged, but because we are God’s children, full of the Holy Spirit, we can choose not to give in to the temptations that try to pull us down and would have us live in ways demeaning to our personhood.
We, like Jesus, have been given what we need to survive in the wilderness. Let us not squander the gift.