Luke 4:1-2, 1 Corinthians 10:13, 23-24

Last week, Rola talked in her sermon about the idea of a “humanity test,” and as I was reflecting on the readings for this week, I had the funny thought of the 40 days of temptation in the wilderness as a sort of “humanity test” for Jesus.

All of us, with our different lives and perspectives and experiences, share some things in common which artists, anthropologists, and those with a flair for the dramatic like to call “the human condition”. All of us are born, and all of us will die. In between, we will live, love, suffer, learn, grow, struggle, and create. And one of the essential aspects of the human condition is the struggle between good and evil that we encounter in our lives.

Don’t hit your brother. Don’t cheat on that test. Don’t use money and power to get ahead. Don’t steal. Don’t yell at the person who took your parking spot.

Temptation as a general rule, isn’t just about the bad stuff that we do. It’s about the bad stuff that we want to do but understand that we shouldn’t.

This week, a news story broke about a scandal where dozens of wealthy Americans paid to get their children admission to elite colleges. They made up fake qualifications, including test scores and athletic achievements. They bought their way while countless teenagers put in hours of their time studying for the SATs, working, doing community service, learning an instrument, and cultivating a life worth telling about in an essay. It’s the perfect story to talk about temptation. How choosing the shortcut will always come back to bite you and you’ll get caught and paraded around and shamed in the public square.

But no, I don’t find that satisfying today. Because telling someone else’s story of scandal and shame and failure is a terribly cruel illustration, and it would miss my intent. And to be honest, I have a hard time feeling sorry for people who have so much power but want to grab for just a little bit more, but I imagine there’s a terrible pain in being Icarus and flying too close to the sun.

I think the better option would be to ask you about your own struggles with temptation, or to consider my own. And the room feels silent now.

As I prepared for my sermon this week, I really tried to think: What kinds of temptation are my friends at Parkview dealing with? Financial? Relationships? Substances? Habits? The answer was that I really didn’t know.

That’s not uncommon. Temptation, like any form of desire, is really personal. It’s lonely. It’s embarrassing. We don’t want other people to know about it. There’s a reason why Jesus was alone for 40 days in the wilderness while he was tempted. When we face temptation, we often feel we are facing it alone.

But at the end of the 40 days, Jesus returned to His disciples, and He told His story to a friend. I can’t possibly give a better sermon on temptation than the one Jesus gave to His disciples when he told the truth about His struggles in the wilderness.

We need a savior who was tempted, because we need to know that we aren’t the only ones suffering with the human condition.

Our passage from 1 Corinthians today reads “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to humankind”. Temptation is an all-too-common human experience. And though we know there are ways out, sometimes we will succumb to temptation.

Just this week, as I was trying to make sense of what I would say in this sermon, I found myself caught up in all the problems in the world: terrorism and mass shootings, abuses of power and wealth, sexism, war, generations of exploitation on a global scale, environmental destruction… Suddenly I felt very far from any good news. All of these things, it seemed to me, were rooted in thousands upon thousands of people saying yes to temptation. Everyone seeking their own good, not the good of others.

My constant struggle is the temptation to give up. The temptation to be overtaken by despair and frustration and even hatred which come from living in this kind of world. The temptation to run away from my responsibilities. And finally, to lose hope. As a person of faith, this is a painful struggle. I want to have the kind of trust in God that Jesus showed us. But instead, I just have the hunger.

This kind of anxiety comes and goes in my life. It’s not always there, but I don’t think I can ever expect it to go away entirely, either. But sometimes the “way out” that God provides is not that the promise that the temptation will leave us but God will be with us through the struggle of our temptations.

I got in a car accident two years ago while I was driving on a poorly lit road at night on the icy streets of Trenton. I hit the brakes as quickly as I could, but it was hard to slow down on ice, and I couldn’t stop the car. The collision was surreal. I replayed the scene in my head a thousand times over the next few weeks. It wouldn’t leave me alone. It took almost three months before I could sit in the passenger’s seat of a car without fear. I still haven’t gotten behind the wheel.

The worst part of this experience for me was the feeling that I shouldn’t be forgiven for what I had done. But that’s not God’s voice to us. In my little wilderness, this devil voice was telling me to give up. To not trust in God’s promise of forgiveness and grace. To believe it for everyone else but not for myself.

At its core, temptation is the opposite of trust. Each time that the devil tempted Jesus, Jesus responded with words of trust in God. “Bread is not the only source of life– God is”. “Only the Lord is worthy of worship”. “Do not put the Lord to the test”. I wonder what words of trust we can carry with us in our lives to combat temptation. Find them. Hold them close. Share them with a friend in need. Human temptation is common enough and important enough that Jesus had to go through it.

Jesus took on temptation as an act of compassion. Because if there’s one refrain throughout all of scripture, it is this: God is faithful.

Friends, as we wander together through the wilderness of this Lenten season, may we face temptations with boldness. May we share our struggles and hold one another up. May we trust that God will give us a way out from the unbearable weight of temptation. God has not given up on you, and God will never give up on you.

By Jesus’ love and compassion may we come to grow in the faith and knowledge of God’s faithfulness day by day.