Today’s readings provide an interesting commentary on our attitude to Lent. First it is important to say that the Temptation of Jesus in the Wilderness is only one of a number of themes traversed over the Lent season. So while it is clear that that incident in the life of Jesus gives some shape to the season it does not entirely define it. And secondly it is worth noting that the Temptations come directly after the Baptism of Jesus when the heavenly voice proclaims Jesus’ Sonship, “this is my Son, my chosen one.” In other words it is the Son of God who is being tempted. That is not something we can readily replicate!

But before dealing with the Gospel passage from Mark I want to look at all today’s readings. At first glance they appear to have little to do with each other. After all what have Noah and the Covenant of the Rainbow and a strange piece from 1 Peter linking the Noah story to Baptism to do with the Temptation of Jesus in the Wilderness? It would appear absolutely nothing.

But upon reflection I believe that all three lessons make a unified commentary which helps us to understand the Lent season even better. Take the Noah story as a starting point. After the Creation narratives in Genesis we hear of the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve and the apple and all that. Then comes Cain’s murder of Abel and a general commentary on the sinfulness of humanity. It is in light of that that God decides to punish humankind with a great flood, to wipe the slate clean as it were and begin again! That archetypal flood is present in numerous religious texts from the Ancient Near East. This is where the righteous Noah comes in and builds his ark and in fact saves a representative group of people and animals. It is after all that that the first reading about the Covenant of the Rainbow comes in. This covenant replacing the covenant with Adam is to be between God and Noah and with every living creature. This narrative echoes the Creation narrative and broadens its scope. No longer is the covenant between God and humankind alone with the animals and the rest under the dominion of humankind but it is to be between God and the whole creation. God’s new covenant with Noah embraces the totality of creation and not only the human part of it. It reveals God to be truly Lord of all.

In its obscure way the passage from 1 Peter builds on this. The whole of 1 Peter can be seen as a commentary upon Christian Baptism. And here the writer of the Letter takes the waters of the Flood as symbolizing the waters of Baptism through which we like Noah and his family are saved. We may find the analogy a little stretched for our modern mind but the ancient mind loved finding that sort of consistency in God’s saving activity. The Church Fathers created elaborate analogies between Old and New Testament imagery and events. For those of you who have visited Chartres Cathedral south of Paris will remember the great carved portals with their corresponding Old and New Testament scenes on either side of the doors. However 1 Peter uses the Noah story as a precedent for Christian baptism. And in the passage we read he discourses on the full significance of the work of Christ. “Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey….” “And baptism now saves you…through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God…” What the writer is concerned for is the whole of Christ’s saving work, his death, his descent into hell and his resurrection and ascension. We are perhaps less familiar with the descent into hell although we acknowledge it each time we recite the Apostles’ Creed (he descended to the dead). To the Church in the Apostolic and the Patristic Period that was clearly understood as Christ including all the righteous dead in his saving work. It was his retrospective saving action. No one was to be left out of his Saving Love. In the iconography of the Eastern Church the Resurrection is always depicted as the Descent into Hell with the triumphant Christ literally yanking Adam and Eve and all the rest of the righteous dead out of their tombs with the smashed locks of hell scattered beneath them and Satan lying there trussed and bound. Here in this key passage Peter proclaims the fullness of Christ’s Saving Work. It embraces life and death, the living and the departed, earth and heaven. His embrace is total, it is inclusive of all. It is that salvation upon which we are to focus in Lent. That is what we are preparing to celebrate. And it is interesting to note that even a hymn like Forty Days and Forty Nights which we have just sung while taking the Temptations of Christ as its theme moves us on in the last verse to the Resurrection. “Keep O keep us Savior dear, ever constant by thy side; that with thee we may appear at the eternal Eastertide.” The focus of Lent is always on Christ and the fullness of his Saving Work.

But what about the Gospel we heard today. Of the three Synoptic gospels it has the most abbreviated account of the Temptations of Jesus in the Wilderness. Mark simply states that Jesus “was tempted by Satan” with no content given to the temptations as in Matthew and Mark. But what Mark does say is noteworthy. In four brief verses he mentions two great works of the Spirit: the Descent of the Spirit on Jesus after his baptism and the proclamation of his Sonship by the Divine Voice; and the same Spirit driving Jesus out into the wilderness for his temptation by Satan. These two incidents stand together united by their initiation by the Spirit of God. If you like the one Spirit encompasses both the highpoint of the Declaration of Divine Sonship and the lowpoint of the temptation by Satan. To look at it another way God is present in the totality of our experience. That is what Job learnt the hard way long ago. God was present in his prosperity and in his adversity. As hard as it was for Job to see God in his adversity in the end his eyes were opened and he recognized that God was present and had never forsaken him. Some see further significance in Mark’s mention of the presence with the wild beasts. Is this a foretaste of the redeemed creation when wild animals and humans are together unafraid? Remember Isaiah “the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together and a little child shall lead them.”(Isa.11:6) And in Mark no mention is made of Jesus fasting but simply the beautiful image of “the angels waited on him.”

So to return to my original question about whether or not the Temptations of Jesus define Lent my answer is “no”. For today’s readings which certainly include Mark’s brief account of the Temptation of Jesus in fact have a great deal more to say to us. What they bring to our attention is the full embrace of Christ’s saving work. That is to be our focus for Lent. That is what we are preparing to celebrate in Holy Week. So then our Lenten preparations whatever they may be are not there to make life difficult or to give us a hard time (like Jesus had in the wilderness) but they are there to prepare us again to hear the proclamation of the Easter gospel, the Christ who died is Risen and Lives forever.   Amen

Return to "Sermons"