LECTIONARY READINGS
First reading: Deuteronomy 26:4-10
Responsorial Psalm: 90(91):1-2, 10-15
Second reading: Romans 10:8-13
Gospel: Luke 4:1-13
Link to readings
Throughout human history, and especially within the great monotheistic religions, spiritual impulses of great power have sprung from the desert. In the wilderness issues of good and evil are basic and clear. With comforts, supports, and delusions stripped away, human beings must confront the conflict that is continually engaged in the depths of their being, determining motivations, choices and action.
Appropriately, the readings for the First Sunday of Lent each year present Jesus in this situation at the start of his ministry. He goes to the wilderness to confront the choices that lie before him if he is to be the Messiah that the Father is calling him to be.
Lent is a time when we are invited to go into the desert with Jesus: to share both his conflict and his victory, to feel something of our own weakness and temptations, to know the depth of our reliance on God’s grace. Only so can genuine conversion occur.
FIRST FRUITS
This sense of being grasped by God’s power rings through the first two readings. The First reading, Deut 26:4-10, describes a ritual incumbent on all Israelites as they brought the first fruits of the produce of their land to be offered to God in the Temple. The gift of the first fruits was a symbolic acknowledgment that the whole crop was the gift of God to Israel and, more fundamentally, that the entire land from which it was produced, was the outcome of the great act of liberation whereby God delivered them from slavery in Egypt to give them this land. The little creed that the Israelite had to recite reinforced the sense of national identity flowing from this truth, fostering a sense of gratitude and dependence on God.
In the Second reading, Rom 10:8-13, St. Paul updates this for Christian believers, with the central focus now being on God’s mighty act in raising Christ from the dead. To confess this with all one’s heart is already to have a taste of a salvation that goes beyond ethnic boundaries to encompass the entire human race.
THE TEMPTATIONS OF JESUS
The three temptations of Jesus in the Gospel, Luke 4:1-13, all bear in some way on the nature and direction of this mission. Following his baptism by John, he has just been reminded of his unique status: “You are my Son, the Beloved, my favour rests on you” (3:21-22). Each temptation suggests a compromise that would not only make the mission less burdensome but would also seem appropriate in view of the special status that he, as Son of God, enjoys.
The temptations, then, are subtle. Like all temptations to which people, otherwise basically virtuous, are vulnerable, they come under the guise of good. So, in first place, since Jesus is extremely hungry, it seems reasonable that he should use his miraculous powers for just one moment of self-interest. His response is sharp and clear: his powers are solely at the service of others.
The second temptation conjures up possession of political authority and power throughout the world. Again, within the ambit of conventional messianic expectation, this is not an inappropriate ambition for the messianic Son of God. The issue is whether he should gain such authority now by worshipping the one (the devil) who claims to be able to give it or whether he should not wait to receive it from the hands of God. The first is an easy and immediate path to lordship, but choosing it will simply preserve the present situation where rulers exercise authority in the world in oppressive and violent ways (cf. 22:25). The alternative is to embrace the path where the authority to be exercised is one that serves rather than dominates (22:26-27). If God alone is to be worshipped and all humanity made to feel at home in God’s house, this is way God’s Son must choose.
The final temptation, to cast himself down from the Temple pinnacle, rests on a divine pledge of protection for the messianic king contained in Ps 91:11-12. What an effective way to launch a messianic career. Jesus, however, rebuts such a test of God. What he will experience in Jerusalem will be rejection, shame and humiliation. But God will indeed “bear him up”: raising him from the dead and making him “Lord of all” (Acts 10:36; Phil 2:9-11).
JESUS’ MISSION IS SET
So, Jesus emerges from the conflict with the true direction of his mission irreversibly set. Son of God though he is and “special” beyond all other human beings in this sense, he will not be exempt from treading the ordinary path of human life. Obedient as God’s Son to the pattern of divine love and grace that drives him, he will enter fully into the pain and evil of the world to transform it from within and thereby reclaim it for true humanity.
Image: Judean desert – depositphotos.com