Luke 4:1-13
Forty days of temptation: surely none of us can imagine that. Can we?
While I’ve no desire to take away from the impact of the idea of forty literal days, I often like to remind myself that the concept of forty in scripture is a nebulous one. Forty is the number of days that the rains fell during the flood. Forty is the number of years that the Children of Israel wandered in the wilderness. And while it can be taken as a true count of time, it is also a stand-in for a time outside of time. It’s a time that may be days, may be months, or may be years. No matter how long it lasts, it feels like a very long time.
Time after a major event can be like this. No matter how many years pass, it always seems like just yesterday that I married my wife. And, at the same time, it seems as though we’ve been together for the whole of our lives. Forty is what really explains the time of our marriage. It is a time somehow beyond time.
So when I come to this story, I find myself thinking that the time in the wilderness could have been longer than forty days. And whether it was only a month-and-a-half or six months, the entire time, we’re told, Jesus was tempted. He was, to borrow a military term, besieged. And the success of a siege depends upon the attacker’s resources outlasting those it has attacked.
When we think of temptation, we often think of it in a childlike sense of a suggestion to do something wrong—a cookie before dinner, crossing the street without asking. But temptation involves more than just simple no-nos. In fact, I’ve often found that the temptation to do things is often a lot easier to resist than the temptation to stop doing things.
All three of the temptations outlined in our Gospel today involve a suggestion, a seduction to stop doing something. For Jesus to turn stones into bread was to stop relying upon the Divine. To throw himself from the temple’s peak was to stop being humble. To bow down and accept the riches of the world was to stop being honest to his own heart just for a decent paycheck.
Jesus, somehow, withstood the siege. Worn down, tired, hungry, wondering if this was how it was all supposed to work out, Jesus managed to resist the temptation to stop. So often, I look at these passages in awe and think how weak I must seem when I, time and again, succumb to the siege.
But then I remember that the one who endured those long days, the one who was weak, is also the One who remembers what that experience was like. That’s the One who has overcome and returned to show us the way.
You are the One who has overcome the urge to stop, the urge to cease doing good. Help me as I hold out when I am tempted.