Temptations in the Little Things

Text: Luke 4:1-13

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

            There’s something comforting about knowing what’s coming in the Church year. We have very few surprises. Yes, sometimes it might seem like big days like Christmas or Ash Wednesday sneak up on us, but there’s peace in that repeated pattern—the hymns we know we’ll have, the readings that are attached to the various times of our Lord’s life as we walk with Him, the cycle of our life together in the Church.

            So we come to this First Sunday in Lent. Every year, this is the day we hear about the temptation of Jesus. This is the day, well the other day, we sing “A Mighty Fortress is our God.” We hear about those temptations in the wilderness that the devil threw at our Lord. And no matter which Evangelist is telling us about it—Matthew, or as we hear today from St. Luke—the details of the first temptation always go the same way: “If you are the Son of God,” the devil says, “command this stone to become bread.”

            This temptation might strike us as strange. We know that Jesus has been fasting forty days, which is one of the foundations for our own season of Lent being forty days long. And we completely understand that He was hungry at the end of those forty days, as St. Luke tells us. But why would this be a temptation, as such? After all, what would be the harm? If Jesus is hungry, shouldn’t He eat?

            And that’s often how temptation gets its foot in the door: the question, “What would be the harm?” For those of us in this part of the world, it can be hard to understand why this particular temptation of Jesus, to turn stones into bread to satisfy His hunger, could be at all dangerous. After all, we’re used to the idea that if you’re hungry, you eat. If you’re tired, you sleep. If there’s something you want, something you tell yourself you need, then do it, take it, make it happen.

            And often, that can be harmless. We should eat to nourish the bodies God has given us. We should sleep to rest them. But we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that these things could never be used against us. For how often are our appetites, or the things used to satisfy our appetites, often the beginning of a great downfall? Didn’t Eve listen to the serpent in the Garden of Eden not only because the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was desired to make one wise, but also because Genesis tells us that it was good for food? Didn’t Esau sell his birthright to his brother Jacob for a bowl of stew because he was famished after being out in the field all day? Didn’t Israel rebel against God and Moses in the wilderness because they were hungry and thirsty?

            It’s often through these little everyday things—little hungers, what we might call natural thirsts—that the tempter subtly misleads us. So he tells Eve to eat the fruit that would satisfy her hunger and her thirst for knowledge that was not hers to take. He nudges Esau through the impatience of an empty belly to give up all that would come with being the ancestor of the Messiah for a simple hot meal to satisfy an immediate need. Through rumbling stomachs and other fleshly appetites, he convinces the Israelites to build a golden calf and worship that as the form of the Lord who will scratch their momentary itches. And make no mistake, though they began with something as simple as hunger, the results of these falls were tragic and enormous.

             And the devil tempts Jesus in the same way. “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” If is the critical word. It gives away the devil’s goal. “If you are the Son of God…” The devil tries to leverage Jesus’ hunger against believing what the Father had told Him only forty days before at His baptism: “You are my beloved Son; with You I am well-pleased.” But now the tempter tries to get Jesus to doubt that word. Because God would never let His Son be hungry, not for a second, would He? God would never let some desire, some hunger, some thirst, some want go unfulfilled, not if He loved you, right?

            Sound familiar? It’s a temptation the evil one uses all too often on us. If you’re really God’s child, why would He withhold that thing you really want? Why wouldn’t He want you to be fulfilled and satisfied all the time, full and happy, giving you all the food and drink and drugs and lovers and entertainment and popularity and money and whatever else your heart could want? And then the ancient liar holds out whatever it is that you’re desiring and he offers to give it to you. All you have to do is reach out and take it, at his suggestion. All it will cost you is your faith that God will provide what you really need.

            When we recognize the very real threat hidden in places like that, in our everyday hungers and wants, and the subtle ways they can lead us away from God, it can make the world and existence in it a frightening, or a least nerve-wracking, idea. We have so many of these little desires, fears, wants, hungers. And in our decadent society, we have countless opportunities to simply do as the tempter suggests and take them by our own power, our own will. How can we ever hope to win a spiritual match like this, where the odds are so stacked against us, with so powerful an enemy, with so many chances to fall?

            The answer is in our reading. The answer, as always, is Jesus. But not only in the sense that Jesus just teaches us what to do in moments of temptation. He does do that here. He shows us how to look to the Word of God for answers in times of distress. But there’s more. Jesus defeats the tempter for us.

            It’s no accident that the first temptation was to eat that which was not given to Adam and Eve to eat. So many downfalls in Scripture are related to hunger, eating. So it’s not just happenstance that this first temptation that Jesus overcomes in the place of all those who have fallen is about eating what has not been given Him to eat, to violate the nature of a stone and make it something it isn’t for His own satisfaction. Fighting in the place of all the fallen, Jesus overcomes that temptation. He defeats the devil for us in the wilderness, in this little matter of daily appetite. He doesn’t just defeat the evil one in dramatic ways like high atop the temple or overlooking all the kingdoms of the earth. He also defeats the devil on the turf of everyday life, the little humble places he tries to strike at us.

            God is interested in the little things in our lives. He cares about the everyday things that fill our normal existence. And He knows that we need things like food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, home, land, animals, money, goods, a devout husband or wife, devout children, devout workers, devout and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, self-control, good reputation, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like. But rather than just reaching out and snatching them to slake some appetite, He would rather give them to us by His own hand. So He teaches us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” He teaches us not to just grab the everyday pennies and crumbs from His hand, as the tempter would have us do. Instead, He would rather us reach for His hand in faith, to take hold of His hand, to be held by Him, knowing that all those good things will be given us to us along with His hand, with His presence, with His love.

            Jesus has made our lives and the everyday things that fill them holy by overcoming the old evil foe and all the ways he would use them against us. So we turn to our Lord in faith, we take hold of Him. We eat and drink what He has given us to enjoy—daily bread, His own body and blood—for our good. And in the moments of temptation, we look to Him for victory in times of need. In the name of Jesus, the Crucified One. Amen.