First Sunday in Lent
Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be
tempted by Satan; Come quickly to help us who are assaulted
by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of
each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through
Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with
you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

So there it is right at the outset...one of the "hard" words for most contemporary liberal Christians. Temptation, like sin and repentance is not particularly popular in our culture. But unlike sin, temptation has been tamed. It's been co opted by Madison Avenue. We are told to "give into temptation" in myriad ads about chocolate, cookies and even fiber bars. Temptation becomes an island in an inane reality show, or an all inclusive resort. It is made to seem such a little thing.

And yet it is given a major place in the gospels. The first two things that all the synoptic gospels agree upon is the Baptism of Jesus by John, and then his successive temptation in the wilderness. Just this sequence suggests how important a concept temptation is. After the glorious decent of the Holy Spirit on Jesus you'd think he'd be ready to begin his ministry in some triumphant gesture. That's what one of us modern people would do. But no...he disappears for forty day, living in the desert without food or drink. And at the end of it he is tempted by the devil.

Here's another hard word for us moderns. The devil doesn't have much truck with us or we with him in the modern world. He seems hopelessly medieval. And yet he represents in the temptation stories so much that we value in modern life. He tempts Jesus with food...physical needs met, then with extravagant gestures or "specialness"...the angels themselves would swoop down and keep him from falling off a high place. And finally, worldly power beyond Jesus' wildest dreams. Father Thomas Keating in his book Invitation to Love likens these three temptations to the major concerns of our False Self...Safety and security (the bread), affection and esteem (jumping from the parapet) and power and control (the kingdoms of the world). So Jesus in these forty days is showing us that it is indeed possible not to give in to our False Selves, and that in resisting these temptations, great or small, we are taking a giant step toward God and the serving of God's purpose in our world.

So temptation isn't a little thing at all...it is the means by which the Devil, who is present in our False Self just as truly as God is present through the Holy Spirit in our True Self. Or at least the Devil uses the False Self system as the earpiece by which he communicates with us. Therefore there are no "little" temptations. C.S. Lewis in his masterpiece The Screwtape Letters depicts Hell as a fiendish bureaucracy in which little demons are constantly barraging us with suggestions which don't seem so bad in themselves but which serve to separate us from God and our fellow humans. This is a very clever but pointed picture of our inner life. The myriad little temptations which we succumb to yank us away from our intention, so that without realizing it, we even end up doing the exact opposite of our original intention.

Scholasticism in the Roman Catholic church has left us with, among other things, a cataloging tendency when it comes to sin...some are venial and some are mortal. I think that the above picture shreds that scholastic tendency. All sin is venial and all sing is moral. Even the most serious sin is venial when sincerely repented of, and even the most trivial sin is mortal when it's accumulation leads us in the opposite direction of our original intention. The situation would be hopeless...except, as the collect suggests, the answer doesn't lie with u.

For God's grace is such that it can bridge the gap that develops between us and God...that space is never less than a breath away. Just turning to God, aware of how powerless we are over our own passions can help restore the balance in our lives. For God ardently wants us back. All we need to do is turn again...as Thomas Keating says to "change the direction in which you are looking for happiness." It is so easy to fall back into old patterns, even though we know that the old patterns have not helped us in the past and hold no hope for our future. God's path is new...and is always new. It is unfamiliar to us, even though we have "known" it from a young age. It is counter cultural and counter psychological, yet to choose it changes everything.

Happiness lies here...we just have to choose it.