Lent: Road to Calvary AND Temptations in the Wilderness

In talking to the Bible Study group on Wednesday, I found myself in competing images when describing Lent. On the one hand, I was telling them that we were accompanying Jesus on the road to Calvary during Lent (especially as Good Friday approaches), and on the other I was telling them that it was a chance to be in the wilderness with Jesus when he was tempted by Satan. I kept on feeling it necessary to mention both, and it felt a little strange and awkward.

This morning, Metroing in to work, I found myself thinking about those images; letting myself be drawn in deeper too them and it occurred to me (probably nothing new to many) that in joining the two images together – or keeping the wilderness experience in mind as we remember Calvary – that a deeper sense of the Passion can be sensed. Let me see if I can explain better.

Though the gospels do not say that Jesus was tempted during the crucifixion, in many ways it makes sense to think there were elements of temptation during that most trying time. And it is Satan who is known as the tempter, the same Satan who was there with Jesus in the wilderness. We do not need to place Satan somehow physically there at Calvary like some modern interpretations do (cough, cough – Passion of the Christ – cough, cough), in many ways we have a far more human element: memory.

On there, on the cross, it would be easy to remember a moment of great temptation such as what happened in the wilderness. Even in some of Jesus’ words you have a potential remembrance and second answer to the temptations. The Gospel of St. John has Jesus saying, “I thirst.” Why? It would have been so easy, as the Son of God to have quenched his thirst by causing it to rain, or any number of other ways. Indeed, with someone who had learned to control his body through fasting, why would he even need to say “I thirst”? John tells us it was to fulfill prophecy, which it undoubtedly was, but it also seems to be a very good response to the first temptation in the wilderness.

In the wilderness Satan tempts Jesus to turn stones into bread to satisfy his hunger. Jesus responds by saying that humans do not live by bread alone. Flash forward to the crucifixion. It is a very human thing to do to look back over one’s life in times of great agony, especially before death. Jesus is thirsty and the memory springs to mind of Satan making the observation that Jesus could turn stones into bread – why not make water fall from the heavens?

Instead, he humbles himself and states to his persecutors, those who were partially responsible for inflicting this agony upon him: “I thirst.” What humility and restraint are in those words if we bring them into contact with the temptations in the wilderness! Who would have faulted Jesus for making a little rain so that he might quench his thirst, but that wouldn’t be right … and so Jesus humbles himself to say “I thirst.”

The next temptation Satan offers in the wilderness, according to St. Luke, is when Satan takes Jesus to a high mountain and offers him the world if he but falls down and worships him. On the cross – perhaps – a memory stirs: all of the people jeering and insulting him, all of the people persecuting him, all of them could – in an instant – be turned from persecutors into adoring fans and slaves. The soldiers who had whipped him, could be his lackeys; the people who stopped by to insult him as he was hung upon the cross would fall over themselves to worship him. All he had to do was say ‘yes’ to Satan’s temptation. Yet, on the cross, we have Jesus saying other words.

Looking down at the people insulting, jeering, and ridiculing him, he says: “Father, forgive them.” Jesus didn’t want slaves, didn’t want mindless fanatics: he simply loved them, and asked His Father to forgive them for what they were doing to the Son. Wow.

Then, the final temptation according to Luke: taking Jesus up to the temple, and Satan throwing seeds of doubt about the Father’s love for His Son. “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here; your Father will protect you – well, that is He would if you are the Son of God.”

Crucifixcion, for those who have heard me take about it, was not only brutal physically, but also psychologically. Part of the psychological torture was that you were not hung high up in the air, but only a few feet from the ground: you were slowly suffocating to death and you knew all you had to do was take one step – one small step – and you could breathe again. Except, it was that one step that being nailed to a cross wouldn’t allow you to take.

Jesus, on the Cross, could have taken that step. He, unlike all the others who were killed in that fashion, could have let the nails fall – what is one more miracle among so many. He could have taken that one step and eased all his suffering. Afterall, wouldn’t a father not want his child to suffer; didn’t the Father love him and would understand that simple step?

But Jesus didn’t step down. All that kept him up upon that Cross was love of us and faith in the Father. In the deepest moment of despair he does not give up on those simple facts: looking out at his mother, at John, but also looking out at those who reviled and hated him, Jesus loved them … and so he stayed on the Cross to fulfill what was needed. In the moment of anguish he cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Does the Father love him? Is he truly the Son of God? It would be so easy to test God and see; test a Father’s love – how many of us our guilty of testing to see if our parents love us? Then Jesus makes a leap.

It is not a physical leap, but a very human one that we are all called to do: he abandons himself, his own dreams and thoughts, and gives himself to the Father. It is not easy, and even Jesus feels forsaken, but in the ends he has done what the Father called him to do. “It is finished.”