Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16; Luke 4:1-13; Romans 10:8b-13
Temptation is often seen in clear-cut terms. Eating too many sweets and having problems with your teeth. Being too friendly with too many people who aren't your partner, and hurting the one you're meant to be closest to. Taking something that isn't yours, whether it's hefty bonuses or someone's mobile phone. That's the newspaper view of temptation: giving in to a desire that's obviously wrong. But in fact Jesus' temptations in the desert don't seem to follow that pattern. Satisfying your hunger by eating is not wrong. Nor is wanting to be safe from harm. The real temptation to wrongdoing Jesus faced, in the newspaper understanding of the word, was to worship the devil rather than God; to choose destruction rather than creation. And that would have been no obvious temptation either, for a pitchfork and cloven hooves - or whatever the first-century equivalent may have been - would rather have given the game away. Jesus was truly being tempted by the possibility of using great powers for good, with the only proviso that his ultimate obedience would no longer be given to God.
And that sort of temptation, doing something wrong for a right reason, is much easier to fall into. Consider the situation in Palestine right now, several thousand years on from our reading in Deuteronomy, when first the people of Israel who had been enslaved in Egypt came into a new land and found God-given freedom. Now Israelis live in fear of rockets fired from Palestine. Now Palestinians live in fear of Israeli soldiers destroying their houses, uprooting their olive trees and building more walls so they can't travel to work or college or hospital. Because such terrible things have happened to Jews in the centuries since first they entered Palestine, the Israeli government feels justified in committing injustices against others who lay claim to the land. Because the Palestinian people suffer under this harsh treatment, terrorists feel justified in killing themselves and bystanders in order to attack Israel. Both sides are tempted by the power of victimhood to treat others as less than human - and that's always a trick of the devil.
Both sides appeal to God who upholds the innocent. Yet if they would only look at our Deuteronomy reading more carefully, both sides would find that aliens - in other words, people who are different from us, not the Dr Who variety - are also to join in the harvest feast God has provided, for there is enough for all to eat and be satisfied.
You may be wondering whether that can really be true. For in Palestine Jews and Muslims as well as Christians fight over God and God's promises. And our reading from Paul's letter to the church in Rome seems clear-cut: if we confess with our lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead, God will save us, rescue us. That's a pretty clear definition of being Christian, so you might think Paul's argument excluded Jews and, presumably, Muslims, who didn't exist when the letter was written, from being people God rescues. But we could only understand our reading that way through falling into temptation: the temptation of being lazy and taking a few verses from the Bible on their own, rather than looking at the whole context in which they are written.
David Hill's Bible studies on the lectionary passages on Tuesday evenings during Lent will certainly not fall into that temptation, and I recommend them to you. But since they will not begin until this coming Tuesday, I can remind you without fear of repetition that Paul has written this whole passage to try to work out the position of Jews who do not become Christian - and by the end of the next chapter he has decided that, while he is sure people like us who are not Jewish can claim God's promises as true, what we cannot do is to decide that others, who have chosen a different path, are beyond God's salvation, God's rescue.
But what exactly is this rescue about? Our psalm this morning might make us think those who love God are guaranteed a pain-free existence, kept by hosts of angels from anything that might hurt us. But either none of us truly loves God, or that can't be the right answer; for we know life's not like that. People suffer. People die.
And that's not just true for us, either. Over these next few weeks of Lent we'll be retelling the story of Jesus' suffering and death, which angels did nothing to prevent. And even at this stage of the story, right at the beginning of his mission, Jesus realises it's useless his trying to manipulate God to his own advantage by living dangerously and then demanding God's protection; for God doesn't play that game.
It's all very well for Jesus, you may be thinking. He knows God's mind, so he'd win a game of Who Wants to Follow God hands down without even thinking about it. But can that be true? For if Jesus had that level of understanding, right from the beginning, could he be human as we understand humanity? I think not. We're told in the letter to the Hebrews that Jesus was tempted as we are, yet never gave in to temptation. Somehow we need to hold both sides of that equation in balance. If he'd never had to wrestle with the temptation of doing something that looked really promising but went against everything he believed in, he wouldn't have known what it's like to be human. Yet if, as we are told, Jesus always did resist temptation, then we may need to look again at how he did behave, when he was angry at injustice; when he was bewildered at people's lack of trust in him; when he felt as though God had forsaken him. Are the uncomfortable emotions of anger, uncertainty and despondency something we feel, as Christians, we should not experience? Maybe we should think again; for Jesus has been there before us.
If God's promise of rescue, that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved, is to mean anything, it must mean God can provide us with enough resources for us to be able to resist the obvious temptations that will come our way about food or love or money, as well as that more subtle temptation to keep others away from what we have, because they are not as human as us. And Jesus, who for love of us and all gave up even his life, demonstrates that generous supply of God's love which can carry us through all temptation - if we admit we need help, and call our friend.