Come As You Are

Luke 4: 1-13

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.’ Jesus answered him, ‘It is written, “One does not live by bread alone.” ’

Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, ‘To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.’ Jesus answered him, ‘It is written, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” ’

Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, “He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you”, and “On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.” ’

Jesus answered him, ‘It is said, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” ’ When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

Throughout Lent, I’m going to continue to focus on aspects of the Gospels that highlight the amazing things that Jesus accomplished for us with so much love to give us free access to the Father.  In the midst of a busy life full of small and big demands, wounds, worries, unmet desires and immensely tough inner challenges, it’s so easy to lose touch with the full reality of Jesus and what he really did for us – for you, actually. Instead of using the pronouns ‘we’ and ‘us’ this time, I am going to write to you. It is too easy to feel lost and anonymous in the crowd of ‘us and we’. If you were the only person in the world, Jesus would have still died for you. You matter very much.  

Near the end of the Ash Wednesday reflection, I encouraged you to ponder on the line from the Exultet: “O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!”  The story of Adam and Eve is a story that astutely explains the propensity of human beings to desire control and autonomy over their lives and to live according to their own needs, desires and twisted perceptions rather than living harmoniously in God’s love and order. Genesis says, "Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.” Another translation says the serpent was the ‘subtlest’ of any beast. I like the word ‘subtle’ better because it is with great subtlety and deception that Satan used God’s own words and twisted them in order to manipulate Adam’s and Eve’s desires. The fault that the Exultet speaks of is the failure to listen to God and trust in his words of Life. This failure stripped Adam and Eve of their innocence; it laid them naked to their own inadequacies and made them acutely and humiliatingly aware of this nakedness. You have probably had many times in your life when an awareness of a sin created a deep, embarrassing and hurting disturbance in your heart and spirit and made you feel naked, anxious, vulnerable and scared - scared of your own inadequacy to always do the right thing and scared of your consistent inability to change yourself. You were miserable because you just couldn’t fathom how God could love you or even like you. You were desperately in need of a savior!

One of Jesus’ myriad of beautiful names is ‘The Second Adam.”  In this week’s Gospel, after he had been baptized and heard the Father’s words, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,” Jesus was led into the desert where he, too, was confronted by “the subtlest of all beasts.” Again, Satan tried to thwart God by using God’s own words to manipulate the second Adam just as he manipulated the first Adam. He wanted to strip Jesus of his innocence and lay him naked, humiliated and blemished before God.

The temptation of Jesus in the desert wasn’t just an occurrence to show you that Jesus resisted temptation so you should too. The temptations were an eternally mysterious, deep and necessary part of God’s total plan to bring you back to the Garden of his love. By resisting Satan’s attempts to manipulate and corrupt him, Jesus began the journey toward your full redemption. Where Adam and Eve failed and gave in, Jesus succeeded and held strong. Where Adam and Eve lost their humble innocence in the enthronement of Self as lord, Jesus professed and re-established the Father’s Kingship over all, especially over self-desire, self-control and self-aggrandizement. Where Adam and Eve felt the full humiliation of their nakedness and vulnerability, Jesus sanctified the waters of Baptism to cover your nakedness, (as many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. Galatians 3:27), resisted Satan and established the true security of the Lordship of the Father. Through this intervention, he reclaimed the deserts of your inner self to re-establish within you the Garden of the Lord, the Kingdom.

Jesus went into that desert for you. He went to the desert in your place. It was the beginning of the end of your naked vulnerability to the condemnation of sin. Jesus, the Lamb of God, was exposed to the evil one and remained unblemished - and we know that only an unblemished lamb was allowed for the Jewish sacrifices. Throughout the whole of the Old Testament the unblemished sacrificial lamb was a foreshadowing of how Jesus would bring you back home, back to the garden and back to his heart, back to your true self and back to the Father’s arms.

But he didn’t do this in some sort of Godly isolation, a super hero ten times removed from you and the other multitudes of sinful wretches. When looking at the crucifix at your church or when you see artists’ renditions of the suffering Christ, it’s easy to forget that Jesus is your brother. He is your big brother who, because you were lost, came to earth in order to bring you home. He came to slay “the subtlest of beasts” so you could follow him home in safety. Paul says in Romans 8: 29: “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first of many brothers and sisters,” and in Galatians 4:6,7, he says: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.”

A slave belongs to a master and is obligated by law to follow and obey, usually in fear of harsh punishment for mistakes. The relationship between a Father and his children is a relationship of love, trust and forgiveness of the type we witness in the story of the Prodigal Son. If you forget the love, if you forget who Jesus is, what he actually did and why he did it, then you slip back into the slave relationship where unresolved guilt creates within you huge condemnation and fear of reprisal. That’s exactly what Jesus came to save you from.

Can you believe it?