First Sunday of Lent—2002 Homily

Today Matthew gives us his account of the temptation of Jesus in the Desert. He tells us that Jesus fasted forty days and forty nights.

I suppose in the world of today the people who keep a strict fast that we know most about are the Moslems during the month of Ramadan when they fast from dawn to dusk. This is OK if you live in the tropics but perhaps a bit of a problem if you are living in Finland and Ramadan happens to fall in the summer.

The phrase Land of the Midnight Sun doesn’t sound quite so romantic if you have to fast from dawn to dusk!

So how did Jesus manage fasting for forty days and forty nights—it would have been medically well-nigh impossible. But then we remember that Moses, when he went to get the Ten Commandments, was up on the mountain with the Lord for forty days and forty nights as recorded in Exodus 34:28.

We begin to realise that Matthew is speaking figuratively and stressing not only the severity of Jesus’ fast but also its purpose—to be with the Lord.

After saying that Jesus fasted forty days and forty nights Matthew then prosaically adds: after which he was very hungry! You might think that Matthew was stating the obvious; but a person who fasts as much as this is only hungry at the beginning after a short while they become physically unable to eat.

But we shouldn’t think of Matthew as being just plain wrong as that is using this as a literary device to lead into the temptation about the bread.

There are lots of other inconsistencies such as these in this account of the temptation. For example: Is it possible that the Devil has power over Jesus so that he could transport him to the pinnacle of the Temple?

The point is not that we should focus on the literal details of the story but on what it signifies. Jesus went to the desert to spend time in prayer and fasting—to be with his Father. And besides being divine Jesus is also fully human and he experiences temptation just as we do.

It is interesting to note that Jesus went into the desert immediately after his Baptism. The Baptism is the moment of truth which marked the beginning of Jesus' ministry. It is a moment where he takes the initiative and puts himself forward for baptism intending it to mark the beginning of his work. There is a divine response as the dove from heaven rests on him and the voice of God says: This is my beloved Son, my favour rests on him.

It was a high point in Jesus life. But like high points in our own life we are often immediately faced with a downer. Here immediately after this exhilarating incident Jesus naturally enough wants to be alone and there in his aloneness experiences temptation.

To be technical for a moment, there are actually three biblical themes from which this account of the Temptation is derived: 1) the temptations of Israel in the wilderness (Dt 8:3; 6:16,13) 2) the parallelism between Moses and Jesus (Dt 9:9-18) & 3) and the protection of God given to the hero mentioned in Psalm 91 which is frequently referred to, Matthew clearly sees here a parallel with Christ.

It is also generally thought that the text of the dialogue between the tempter and Jesus is in the form of a Rabbinic controversy. We can believe that members of the Early Church were involved in disputations with the Rabbis as to whether or not Jesus was truly the Messiah and Matthew is using this same type of argumentation to prove that he was.

According to Matthew Jesus, in his confrontation with Satan, triumphs over temptations similar to those which Israel succumbed in the desert and so proves himself to be the Messiah and the one who carries Israel's destiny on his shoulders.

This is all very well and really quite interesting, but it doesn’t help us too much right now. We have different questions. Most of us are more worried about how to resist temptation in our everyday life.

We are all too familiar with the phrase: I can resist anything except temptation!

There is a Chinese proverb which refers to temptation: You can’t stop birds flying over your head but you can prevent them from nesting in your hair!

Temptations are a part of life and we all experience them and we wouldn’t be truly human without them. Perhaps one of the most important lessons of this Gospel account is that it shows that Jesus suffered from temptations just as much as we do.

However, Jesus’ temptations don’t seem to have much connection with our own temptations today. We are tempted by other things, to indulge our greed, to lust after money, food and sex.

We are tempted to give vent to our ambitions and find ourselves stabbing a competitor at work in the back.

We find ourselves unable to resist the temptation to gossip about others, we frequently attempt to demonstrate that we have inside information and belong to a privileged ‘in-group’, thereby putting others down.

There are lots and lots of things that we fall prey to, many, many temptations which come our way each day. And society doesn’t help. All those adverts tell us to indulge ourselves and every TV programme presents us with another new life-style to aspire to. It’s not so much Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous as Ground Force and Changing Rooms that we need to worry about.

You can’t stop birds flying over your head but you can prevent them from nesting in your hair. We can’t stop experiencing temptation, it is an ever present part of the human condition. But we can stop them nesting in our hair; we can refuse to dwell on them.

We don’t have to get ourselves into such a state over our desires that we simply must fulfil them. What we need is a sense of perspective—we have to see these things as they really are: ordinary desires and fancies not necessarily to be indulged.

We are able to train ourselves, we are able to defer gratification, we are able to resist temptation once we have identified it and looked at it from the outside.

Yes, we can see the birds, and why not—but we don’t let them nest in our hair.