Tempted as We Are

Let me read you part of this morning’s gospel again, giving a bit more prelude than we heard this morning… placing it in chronological sequence with what comes immediately before. The scene is the Jordan River. John the Baptizer, Jesus, and a large crowd of people were there. Luke writes: "Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’ [Then] 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."

Makes you wonder about getting baptized, doesn’t it? Maybe I would rather not hear a voice from heaven reach out to me and claim me as God’s own beloved. But surely there’s no connection… Surely we aren’t meant to understand that baptism actually leads to temptation, to encounters with the devil. Surely baptism is not the doorway into the wilderness.

Actually, in one very profound way, it is. Part of our baptismal initiation is into a wilderness of temptation.

Christian baptism is a beginning, not an end. The church has not always seen this clearly. In the earliest generations of the church, Christians viewed baptism as the end, the great culmination of the process of conversion by which they made themselves ready to come into God’s nearer presence. After years (!) of instruction, preparation and penance, adult Christians were baptized at the Easter vigil, washed clean from their sins, ready to face Christ at the second coming. When the second coming didn’t come right away the church grew nervous. Baptism washed away the sins of the past, but their own experience taught them that baptism was not a vaccine against future sin. The church was not sure then that sins committed after baptism could be redeemed. Baptism began to occur later and later in life as individuals sought to shorten as much as possible the time they might spend in the wilderness of temptation. For a time baptism became not only the end of the conversion process, it also became part of the end of life.

But baptism is not meant to be an end; rather it is a beginning, a beginning of the Christian life. And part of what begins is a life in which temptation is real. Not because baptism causes temptation, but because, in baptism, we choose, we vow, to renounce Satan, the evil powers of this world and all sinful desires. And, in baptism, we vow to turn to Jesus Christ, trust him and promise to follow and obey him. In baptism we affirm that the way of Christ is different from the way of the world, and we affirm that we care which is which, and that we will seek to follow Christ.

And that’s where temptation lies. Temptation lies in the space between right and wrong, between good and evil, between the way of Christ and the way of the world. Temptation does not exist for the atheist. The opposite of temptation is not bliss, nor is it sainthood; it’s apathy. If you don’t care whether the choices in your life are in accordance with God’s will or not, then you don’t really have to worry about temptation. You may have to worry about the laws of the state and their consequences, but you don’t have to worry about the temptation to sin. Just do whatever you like. Join that great segment of modern culture for whom the response to every question is "oh, whatever." If you don’t care whether or not God cares about you and the choices you make, then you don’t have to worry about temptation.

But when we are baptized as Christians, we say we do care. We care whether or not we are following Christ or Satan. We do care what God’s will is for us. We do care whether or not our life’s choices are in accord with God’s will or not. And to care is to enter a wilderness where temptation is real and powerful.

But it is a wilderness where Christ has gone before. This wilderness of temptation is not a place where we are abandoned or forsaken by God. It is a place where we are accompanied and led by Christ. In the Proper Preface for Lent we affirm that Christ was tempted in every way as we are. In every way. Christ knows and has shared every human temptation and trial. Yet Christ did what is not humanly possible. He did not sin. And he did for us what we could not do for ourselves. He forged a pathway through the wilderness of temptation, from the wilderness of temptation to God’s forgiveness and nearer presence.

The Great Litany is our cry from the wilderness. It is our very human cry for deliverance and guidance as we seek to find our way amid the trials and temptations that assault us human beings. It is a cry, a prayer, addressed—as one commentator said with clinical detachment—to the "second person of the Trinity." All of the other prayers in the Prayer Book are addressed to the first person of the Trinity. But there is nothing detached about the Great Litany. It is our passionate plea to Jesus… to a very human Jesus, who by his passion has done what we could not do—entered into the wilderness with us and opened a way for us out of the wilderness. If we will but follow him and put our trust in his guidance.

Listen to part of the prayer we say over the water at baptism. "We thank you Almighty God, for the gift of water. Over it the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of creation. Through it you led the children of Israel out of their bondage in Egypt into the land of promise. In it your Son Jesus received the baptism of John and was anointed by the Holy Spirit as the Messiah, the Christ, to lead us, through his death and resurrection, from the bondage of sin into everlasting life… We thank you Father, for the water of baptism. In it we are buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his resurrection."

Baptism is the beginning. The beginning of a road through the wilderness. Resurrection is the end. At his baptism Jesus stepped onto that road’s beginning so that we, through our baptisms, might know its end.

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