Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”
But he answered, “It is written,
‘One does not live by bread alone,
but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”
Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple,
saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written,
‘He will command his angels concerning you,’
and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’ ”
Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ”
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”
Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,
‘Worship the Lord your God,
and serve only him.’ ”
Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

Matthew 4:1-11 (NRSV)

The Church traditionally observes the season of Lent each year for a total of forty days beginning with Ash Wednesday and ending on Easter Sunday. The Sundays in Lent “don’t count” as fast days during Lent because they are considered “little Easters” when we celebrate Christ’s ultimate victory over sin and death through the corporate worship of the gathered people of God – in other words, Sundays don’t count ’cause that’s when we go to church!

However, the rest of the days in Lent, we are thrust out into the big bad world with all of its trouble and nasty surprises just waiting to jump out and get us. It is during our time in the extreme, unforgiving conditions of the desert of life that we are tempted. Temptation may take different forms, but there is more to temptation than just the common physical things we think of when we hear the word temptation. It can be much more subtle than we might expect. For example, we all have that little voice in our head that likes to criticize us all the time. We get the idea to do something that we think would be a good idea, something that has the potential to help others, make a difference, and the little voice speaks up, “That won’t work. Why even bother trying?” Some people hear that voice a lot, and hear it enough that they are tempted to listen to that voice instead of the voice of God calling them to do a new thing.

New things don’t seem to happen out here in this desert – at least, not very often. Things tend to go along as they always have. It’s one of, if not the, universal habit of human nature: the habit of resisting change. We’ve lived our whole lives in this desert, this wilderness, and we know how things work. It’s tempting to allow that sense of superior knowledge seep into our relationship with God and convince us that, somehow, we know better because our past experience tells us so.

Maybe that’s why Jesus fasted from food from so long in the wilderness before the tempter approached him. Reminding himself, preparing himself to meet the tempter with the first words Jesus spoke to him about not living by bread alone.

But bread (understood as referring to food in general) is how we survive. We know that from experience. We have to have it or we will die. We need to make getting it and making sure we have it a priority. We better store up extra just in case. Does this sound familiar? Yet, God calls us to give it away. It is tempting to listen to the first voice and ignore the second, especially in the midst of all the threat of ruin we encounter while living in the desert.

So now we are observing Lent in the desert, since we have established that we can’t remain up on the mountain. We have chosen whatever it is we are going to give up or, alternatively, what we are going to take up as our Lenten discipline this year. We have attended Ash Wednesday and received the imposition of ashes, the stark reminder that dust we are, and unto dust we shall return. We are all prepared and ready to keep a Holy Lent, even in the midst of the wilderness and all of its nasty threats.

When the feeling of hunger (real or metaphoric) sets in, let us remember whose voice to listen to during these forty days, and may we live by every single word that voice speaks.

Amen.