In his baptism, standing waist deep in the waters of the river, Jesus experiences God’s claim on his life. He hears a voice and he knows that he is God’s Son, God’s beloved. Now he must decide what to do, how to live out his new sense of God’s claim. And it is precisely at that point that the story says he is led by the Spirit—the Spirit of God, that is—into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
The temptations themselves are not to do terrible things—rob, cheat, steal, do public violence to innocent people. If there are crimes here, they are victimless crimes. What Jesus is tempted to do, as I understand it, is to take the easy way out, take the shortcuts, persuade by novelty rather than content, by sensation rather than the substance of his teaching and his life.
The struggle that he goes through is what Lent out to be for us. And it ought, in some way, take us to the wilderness, the place where we encounter uncertainty and doubt.
I am cheered by the suggestion that the Spirit of God leads us into those wildernesses and after the struggle—the promise that angels come and minister to him, that God does come to us at the end of the day, the end of the wilderness.
Today it begins, a new Lenten journey. God bless us on our way.
Dr. Willy L Mafuta,
Senior Pastor,
Hopewell United Methodist Church, Hopewell, NJ 08525