Sunday Reflection with Canon Robin Gibbons: 26th February 2023

The Temptation of Christ by Simon Bening. Wiki Image

26th February 2023
First Sunday of Lent

Listen!

It's an odd thought, but as I begin this reflection the words from psalm 94/5 the Invitatory psalm for Vigils in our monastic communities (also the Office of Readings or Morning Prayer) suddenly emerged into my consciousness:

O that today you would listen to his voice!

8 "Harden not your hearts as at Meribah,

as on that day at Massah in the desert

9 when your fathers put me to the test;

when they tried me, though they saw my work'. (ps 95 vv8-9)

Temptation

That's perhaps the fruit of lectio divina, for it ties up with a theme running through the scriptures of this first Sunday in Lent. That word is 'temptation'!

How often do we mull over that sentence in the Lord's Prayer where we ask that we not be led into temptation, or put to the test? I suppose like many things it often passes us by, but during this week to come, those three temptations of Jesus in the wilderness, call us not to an exegesis of text, but to an exegesis of 'MY life'! So I start with the psalm for a very good reason. The world's media is unfortunately full of mistruths, untruths and downright lies, worse than that the religious media in Christianity has to take some of the blame. Everybody, thanks to Twitter, Facebook and other social media has access to an audience and can spout all kinds of crazy theories without having to face consequences (or so they think!) I don't know about you, but I was taught that the moral life of a Christian involved some kind of framework in which we follow the Living Christ and try to live out his teachings as expressed in the Great Commandment and the Beatitudes. We are not helped by malfeasance of any kind. To know what it is and to call it out is important and a truly positive service in the fight for truth-but in order to do that we really have to listen to what God is teaching us!

Discernment

That listening is a starting point, but the choices we face and the road we travel has also got nourishment for us in the form of gifts-such as discernment, prudence, truth, faith, hope and love. We are not only to be active in doing, giving, serving, we are also to avoid (and help others avoid) those things detrimental and harmful to our full human growth. Temptation is one such issue, and it is a big one because it encompasses so much. Usually it begins with a deceit, an untruth and it leads us onwards to a downward spiral. As a pointer the first reading from Genesis puts us firmly in this kind of situation, a picture so familiar to all of us, slight distortion, the subtlety of colourful advertising to catch and draw us in. Here it is the serpent being a voiceover for the supposed gift the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil in Eden is for Adam and Eve. Do we remind ourselves that in this story there is 'every' tree they can eat from, and the fruit of the tree of life which they are free to touch? Here their friend, God asks them not to touch one of the very many, that tree of good and evil it. Can you see in yourself the pull, 'why not?', 'What's wrong with this one?' and the great advertising agent of the garden the Serpent does his stuff:

'The woman answered the snake:

"We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden;

it is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, 'You shall not eat it or even touch it, or else you will die.'"

But the snake said to the woman:

"You certainly will not die!

God knows well that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, who know* good and evil."

The woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes,

and the tree was desirable for gaining wisdom. (Gen 3: 2-6)

Take a good step back, you and I know that this passage has a reality not because it is an historical description but because it is the opening out of a truth, told to us in hugely symbolic words. The 'made-from-star-dust people', us humans, show a perverse capacity for distorted knowledge, just remind yourself of this nuance, there is a play on words here, which we can still get from old English 'cunning' referring to 'naked . The enticements of the serpent calls us to full knowledge, but all we get is the knowledge that we are 'naked-dust,' nothing!

Harden not your hearts

Now take the temptations of Jesus, every one of the three is sold to him in that same mellifluous voice of reasoned salesmanship, 'you are hungry, well you have the miraculous power, use it for your food'. 'Leap off the parapet because you know that your status as divine will stop harm, in fact you will show great power over everybody else, you won't fall, you'll fly'. And of course there is power, that major ingredient of corruption, 'Do this, work with me, hand over power to me, vote for me, and I'll do you many favours'. To each temptation Jesus replies with the voice of honesty, knowing what the context, cost and result will truly be. None of these so called gifts are anything but chimera, for Jesus and for us, there is a deeper, truer law, one of relationship ,that obedience/listening to God-which is not slavery but discernment and knowledge, where love is the bartering coinage, where being the best is the only way forward.

And so we return to our psalm, temptation hardens our hearts against the possibilities of what God has in store for us. Testing God, which we often think we don't do, is really a turning away from what we are called to be as good people-those who listen, discern, are open to the moment and to others, seeing beyond the immediacy of the greed of our desires to go further and find the Lord with us, in us, through us. The direction we travel is onwards, to face temptation with Christ beside us, and learning to understand what it is all about, but not to let it become to ordering force of our world, for there is also the still small voice of TRUST in Christ and it is that call we need to work on!

Lectio divina

Psalm 94/95

Venite Exsultemus

1 Come, ring out our joy to the Lord;

hail the rock who saves us.

2 Let us come before him, giving thanks,

with songs let us hail the Lord.

3 A mighty God is the Lord,

a great king above all gods.

4 In his hands are the depths of the earth;

the heights of the mountains are his.

5 To him belongs the sea, for he made it

and the dry land shaped by his hands.

6 Come in; let us bow and bend low;

let us kneel before the God who made us

7 for he is our God and we

the people who belong to his pasture,

the flock that is led by his hand.

O that today you would listen to his voice!

8 "Harden not your hearts as at Meribah,

as on that day at Massah in the desert

9 when your fathers put me to the test;

when they tried me, though they saw my work.

10 For forty years I was wearied of these people

and I said: 'Their hearts are astray,

these people do not know my ways.

11 Then I took an oath in my anger:

'Never shall they enter my rest.'"

St Gregory Nazianzen on Temptation

If after Baptism the persecutor and tempter of the light assail you … you have the means to conquer him. Fear not the conflict; defend yourself with the Water; defend yourself with the Spirit, by which all the fiery darts of the wicked shall be quenched. It is Spirit, but that Spirit which rent the mountains. It is Water, but that which quenches fire.

If he assail you by your want (as he dared to assail Christ), and asks that stones should be made bread, do not be ignorant of his devices. Teach him what he has not learned. Defend yourself with the Word of life, Who is the Bread sent down from heaven, and giving life to the world.

If he plot against you with vain glory (as he did against Christ when he led Him up to the pinnacle of the temple and said to Him, Cast Yourself down as a proof of Your Godhead), be not overborne by elation. If you be taken by this he will not stop here. For he is insatiable, he grasps at every thing. He fawns upon you with fair pretences, but he ends in evil; this is the manner of his fighting. …

If he wrestle against you to a fall through avarice, showing you all the Kingdoms at one instant and in the twinkling of an eye, as belonging to himself, and demand your worship, despise him as a beggar. Say to him relying on the Seal, "I am myself the Image of God; I have not yet been cast down from the heavenly Glory, as you were through your pride; I have put on Christ; I have been transformed into Christ by Baptism; worship thou me."

Well do I know that he will depart, defeated and put to shame by this; as he did from Christ the first Light, so he will from those who are illumined by Christ.

Such blessings does the laver bestow on those who apprehend it; such is the rich feast which it provides for those who hunger aright.

From No. X of Gregory of Nazianzen's Oration on Holy Baptism, preached at Constantinople on January 6, 381.