1st Sunday of Lent

March 9, 2025

Luke 4:1-13

There are several significant events since the celebration of Jesus’ Birth that the Gospels take note of. The first is Jesus presentation in the temple to be recognized as the messiah by Simeon and Anna, representatives of the Jewish people. The second is Jesus realization in the Temple that God is his Father. The third is the baptism in the Jordan by John which just precedes today's Gospel where Jesus received the Father’s approval. And the fourth is Jesus experience in the desert being tempted by the devil, where Jesus defines what is ministry will be. 

St. Luke begins his gospel message concerning the journey of Jesus into the desert in a different way than St. Matthew or St. Mark. They have Jesus being lead or driven into the desert by the Spirit. Luke makes a stronger connection with the preceding Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan by John. Luke begins with, “Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days, to be tempted by the devil.” So, Jesus is going calmly into the desert, filled with the Holy Spirit and under his guidance, where Jesus will choose his methods before he begins his ministry.

The desert into which Jesus goes is a land where nothing grows, made up of limestone rocks; the smaller rocks look like loaves of bread. It is very hot there, and no water flows, nor is there any plant growing there. It is an uncomfortable and lonely place. Here Jesus fasts and prays. While he is there, hungry, thirsty, and alone, the devil comes and tries to find out exactly who Jesus is. The devil knows this is a man of power and perhaps God’s Son, but does not know this for sure. He sets up some tests to see if this is God’s Son. So the devil first tempts Jesus with making bread out of the stones because he is so hungry. But Jesus says, people “do not live by bread alone.” Here Jesus makes his first choice: his ministry and live are not for himself, not to make him comfortable, but for others.

Next, the devil offers him power by showing Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and offers them to Jesus if he would worship the devil. But, Jesus says, “You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall you serve.” Jesus refuses to abandon his Father for earthly power; Jesus rejects power as a tool or goal of his life and ministry.

Lastly, the devil tries to appeal to Jesus’ vanity. He takes Jesus high up on the Temple and tells Jesus to throw himself off the roof because, if he is the Son of God, the angels will guard him and protect him. Jesus tells the devil, “You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.” So the devil does not force Jesus to show that he is the Son of God before he is ready. Also, Jesus, does not want to use power to gain the acceptance of people. If he had jumped from the high roof of the temple, everyone would have had to recognize that he was God right away.

Take as an example the quarrel between Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and King Henry II of England, from 1163 to 1170. The controversy culminated with Becket’s murder in 1170, and was followed by Becket’s canonization in 1173 and Henry’s public penance at Canterbury in July 1174. In his play Murder in the Cathedral, playwright T.S. Eliot describes how St. Thomas Becket struggled with the threat of martyrdom. He was not afraid to die because of the sufferings of martyrdom, but because he might not be acting from the proper motives. As he defended the Church of England against King Henry II, Thomas wondered whether or not he was doing this out of pride. “Nothing would be more tragic,” he says, “than to do the right thing for the wrong reason; to do what is noble for reasons of vanity.” The temptations that faced Thomas Becket are similar to those that confronted Jesus in today’s Gospel.

Therefore we see that Jesus would not use his power for his own gain or benefit, it’s use was for others. He would not use power to gain control of the world and domination of all the people. And he would not use cheap tricks to make people recognize that he was the Son of God. So what would he be? He would live his life as a man for others, who never put himself first, but looked for the betterment of people’s lives and the salvation of their souls. He would lead people by his example and his message, but not by power as the world sees power; he even rejected being the kind of messiah everyone expected. Why? Because he was leading them to the Father as a true son would; he did not want to force them to the Father, but bring them to the Father as adopted children. The devil was gone for now, but would come back in the Garden on the Mount of Olives on Jesus’ way to the Cross. Jesus had made his choice of methods and accepted where they would take him: to the cross for the redemption of the whole human race.

Where does that leave us. After all we claim to be his followers, and more than that, we share in his sonship as children of the Father. It tells us to be like him. It tell us to use his methods of living by not living for ourselves only, by avoiding the use of power for our own advantage or even for the spread of the gospel. It tells us to not tempt God by falling back on our vanity. We are not to give in to our selfishness, to be greedy either with the goods of this world or of the spirit, we respect others and do not manipulate them. As Becket said: “Nothing would be more tragic, than to do the right thing for the wrong reason; to do what is noble for reasons of vanity.” In truly living for the right reason, we can move forward this Lent and we draw our hope from the example of Jesus who love us to the point of death and gain nothing for ourselves. It shows us a way that might have its crosses, but they are sure ways to make our way through the desert and freely be ready to meet the Father.

Fr. John Tran