Here's an apple, my pretty......

I think that we often don't know what to do with the stories about Jesus.  I can tell you what the scholarship says about them, like why they were written and how the individual stories tell a larger story, but for most of us, the difficult part is not the interpretation (although that has its challenges) but how to translate them into the fabric of our lives.

Or, look at it this way.  Even those among us who have professed Jesus as the Son of God and Savior not only of the world but of me as well, continue to be seekers.  We seek after another, deeper meaning or a greater certitude.  On many days, I would like to see more permanent results from this in-breaking of God's kingdom....not just 'out there' but inside of me as well.  Sometimes I am a great disappointment to myself.

All of this on the Sunday when we open Lent with Luke's version of the wilderness temptations (Luke 4.1-12).  As it begins, we watch as Jesus, absolutely famished from fasting, turns down the opportunity to turn stones into bread.  

I'm glad Luke started with an easy one.  We almost get this one.  He was hungry.  He had the ability.  Who would have criticized Jesus for this most basic of self-care?  Shouldn't Jesus have eaten a little so to be strong enough for the tests that were coming next?

And yet Jesus' response was to reject his own need for the Father's plan.  In Jesus' calculus, God's Word was the bread that feeds us - and is so potent it can feed us even after 40 days of want.

You have questions?  I have questions, and to this end: so that this story of my Lord can enlighten me and how I live my days and how I rely on God and how I am fed.

First, although Luke tells us it is the devil who brings this temptation, don't you think Jesus was looking at those stones and contemplating what it would take to make them edible?  Do you really think it took the devil to bring that possibility to Jesus' attention?  Was the devil a force outside of Jesus.....or a voice within?

Did Jesus reject the negative force of his human desires? lusts? wants? in order to take up God's trajectory of life lived dependent on God?  Is this an exchange of the me-me-me attitude for the "What would you have me do, Lord?" stance?  Is laying down our desires/needs the first step in learning to love our neighbors?

Now there is a lot to be said about self-indulgence: my right to be angry or demanding or selfish.  But is this a story about self-indulgence? Or is it a story about the primacy of God's Word in our lives - from the most difficult decisions to the day to day needs of a hungry stomach.  God's Word first, always first.

Are we to listen to this Jesus and walk away saying to ourselves, "If I only trusted God more, I could do that too.  I could resist this temptation."?....which will lead us almost immediately to an [impossible] resolve to do better, to trust more, to be like Jesus; to be the kind of person that Jesus loves.

Each and every day getting better in every way.  Trusting, believing, resisting.

And with that, the Devil cries, "Got you!"

See how well I explained that?  

Not.