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To borrow a phrase from the popular mythologist, Joseph Campbell’s book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, today on this first Sunday of Lent, we know that the face of temptation wears a thousand different masks.

Perhaps we are tempted to be a bit flippant when it comes to the idea of temptation: Flip Wilson’s line, “the devil made me do it,” comes to mind, or we even reduce temptation to the lure of chocolate or other sweets, “mmm, that looks tempting” as we eye the cheesecake in the restaurant or the new dress on the department store’s rack.

But I think that temptation should be preserved as a decidedly spiritual word, “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” we pray as part of our worship ritual each Sunday. Temptation is more than wanting what we know is probably not so good for our figures or something that we can’t really afford. But what, then, is temptation?

It is one of the great ironies and paradoxes of the Christian faith that when we think we are most free from real temptation, most spiritually self-confident and secure, it is then that we are actually the most vulnerable and subject to the tempter’s wiles. St. Ambrose, one of the Church Fathers, liked to say: “the devil’s snare does not catch you unless you are first caught by the devil’s bait.” And so it is with the subtle things that seduce our spirits and lay us low and bait us into a betrayal of our God-intended humanity.

The scriptures tell us that the human Jesus suffered temptation for us. The writer of Hebrews even goes so far as to say “we do not have a great high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (4:15).

For centuries, one of synoptic texts about the wilderness temptations of Jesus has been read in churches on the first Sunday of Lent. It is the story of the contest of wit and will between the Lord and the Devil.

Jesus is tempted three times by Satan. The first temptation concerns itself with the physical facts of hunger, the basic need for survival and nourishment. Jesus was hungry. He was famished. None of us has known real hunger. I am not talking about the craving for a meal that you can smell cooking in the oven. But rather, I mean the desperate aching of the body for physical sustenance. The kind of hunger Ghandi felt as he fasted in protest against the oppressive English government in India or that the protesting Christians in South Africa felt as they worked to bring down the evil of Apartheid, which, lest we forget, was established with the complicity of Reform Christians.

Real hunger can be devastating. It can alter the personality. It can warp the judgment and reduce the rational human being to abject bestiality; hunger can drive a person to desperate lengths. And so we find Jesus famished, and the devil, always clever at marketing, offered him bread. “If you are the son of God, turn this stone to bread.” But Jesus, not willing to buy survival at any price, declines the challenge and the offer.

The second temptation is in many ways more subtle than the first. The first dealt with basic survival (food), but the second deals with almost as basic a human desire, if not need: power. The devil took Jesus up onto a mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of the world, and offered them to him if he would but pay homage to the devil. The commentaries tell us that the so-called Mount of the Temptations sits in a wasteland hundreds of feet below sea level, and that the view it affords is not of large kingdoms but of tiny, impoverished hamlets and sheepfolds, and that the only town nearby is the famous but humble Jericho. The devil wasn’t offering real estate so much as an appeal to that human need for the temporal power of authority and a sense of territory. But Jesus, once again, was not so easily bought. “It is written, ‘worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”

Henri Nouwen, the Catholic priest who transformed a generation of thinking about the practice of ministry, wrote a book in the late 1980s entitled: In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership, in which he tried to translate the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness into temptations Christian leaders face today: the temptation to be relevant, the temptation to be popular, and the temptation to be powerful. He writes this about the temptation to power:

“One of the greatest ironies of the history of Christianity is that its leaders constantly gave in to the temptation of power – political power, military power, economic power, or moral and spiritual power – even though they continued to speak in the name of Jesus, who did not cling to his divine power but emptied himself and became as we are. The temptation to consider power an apt instrument for the proclamation of the Gospel is the greatest of all. We keep hearing from others, as well as saying to ourselves, that having power – provided it is used in the service of God and your fellow human beings – is a good thing. With this rationalization, crusades took place; inquisitions were organized; Indians were enslaved; positions of great influence were desired . . . and much moral manipulation of conscience was engaged in. Whenever we see a major crisis in the history of the church . . . we always see that a major cause of rupture is the power exercised by those who claim to be followers of the poor and powerless Jesus” (p.58)

Although Nouwen died long before the crisis of pedophilia and clergy abuse was uncovered in the Catholic Church, what more damning example of the power of temptation and the misuse of the Church’s power could there be?

The third and final temptation is also ingenious on the part of the devil. This one appeals to the sense of identity and the need to prove who we are. “If you are really who you think you are,” says the devil, “prove it by casting yourself down to the ground. Surely the angels will come and pick you up before you crash. God can suspend gravity if its all in the family. Try it and see.” No one likes to have his or her identity challenged or threatened; we are insecure enough without someone always demanding proof that we are who we say we are, but once again, Jesus is able to transcend the question. “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

Jesus has been tested at the most vulnerable human points of survival, power, and identity. The devil’s knowledge of human psychology and human nature would make Freud proud. The devil has given Jesus his best shots.

Parker Palmer writes that “the devil prefaces his series of questions to Jesus with the taunt that takes a very familiar form: “If you are the Chosen One . . .” Though few of us get needled for thinking we are Chosen, the tone of that taunt should remind us of outward or inward voices in our lives. “If you are able. . . .” “If you are a real woman or man . . . “ If you truly care . . . “ If you are such a good parent . . . “ If you really loved me . . . .” The root temptation here is almost irresistible. It is not the temptation to do a magic trick, which most of us know we cannot. It is the temptation to prove our identity, which many of us feel we must” (The Active Life: a Spirituality of Work, Creativity and Caring, p. 105 quoted in Pulpit Resource).

And so, not only is this wilderness story about temptation and the avoidance thereof, but at an even more basic level, it is a lesson about confrontation with one’s true spiritual identity. Jesus confronts the devil; Jesus confronts his temptations; Jesus confronts his vulnerable points and his spiritual conflicts. The devil always wears the mask that is most appealing to our greatest weaknesses.

To the student, the devil comes wearing the mask of peer pressure. We are asked to change our identity to fit the group’s identity.

To the parent, it is the mask of choosing friendship with a child over being a parent. We are asked to change our parental identity by avoiding the hard choices that a parent must sometimes make.

To the Christian, it is the mask that presents the soothing voice of the Pharisee, “I bless God that I am not as other people.” We are asked to take on the pride of feeling superior in our spiritual accomplishments.

What mask does the adversary wear when he appears to you?

While Jesus has already, in a sense, faced down the devil for us, still we must face the evil within ourselves. And that is always the challenge of these 40 days of Lent as it is the challenge even during non-Lent days . . . looking at ourselves behind the elaborate social cosmetic we create in order to protect ourselves from our own vanities. The ultimate confrontation we face is with our own ego and ambition and fear.

It would be satisfying to us if this account of Jesus’ temptation ended with the triumphant defeat of Satan after the third trial, but it doesn’t. The story ends on a rather ominous note. “When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.”

Rather than admitting to defeat, the devil made a strategic retreat, a retreat until an opportune time when Jesus would once again be both vulnerable and susceptible to Satan’s influence. There in the shadows of Gethsemane and hovering around the passion of Golgotha, Satan had not by any means quit the contest. Jesus’ time of temptation was not over. In a way, here in the wilderness, the time of temptation had just begun.

The devil awaits that opportune time with us, that time when he can appeal to our injured pride, our wounded ego, our fear of not being appreciated, our anger at being ignored. These are the opportune times when the devil’s persistence reaps great benefits.

The devil’s performance must, however, be matched by our own, and such perseverance in spiritual wilderness is what the Lenten discipline is all about.

The struggle with evil in this world begins with the struggle with evil that is within ourselves, and that struggle depends on self-knowledge: knowing and acknowledging our limitations and our capacities both for truth and honesty but also for deception and selfishness.Such introspection should take place at all times with us, to be sure, but Lent is that particular time in the church year when we pay attention to that process in a special way.

As Jesus prepared himself for the discipline of his ministry by his time in the wilderness, we prepare ourselves once again for that ultimate renewal that comes to us and to the earth at Easter. There are many routes to Easter, but none of them escapes the shadow of the cross, that point where our time and God’s eternity converge; and at the center point where time and eternity meet is the Christ who makes it all possible.

In the shadow of that cross we make our way, acknowledging who and what we are, sinners who stand in need of God’s forgiveness and the forgiveness of our brothers and sisters. All this we know. But we need to be reminded to remember it. And Lent is an opportune time for remembering just that.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.