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And the spirit drove Jesus into the desert.
When I was in high school many years ago back in Ireland,
I had an Applied Math teacher who was a really good teacher.
I learned to appreciate how good a teacher he was,
but he was a tough man.
There was no messing around at all in his class.
He drove us really hard.
He would take you wherever you were as a student,
and he would push you to your limit.
Then he would take other students and push them over their limit.
Some of us had tons of homework
while others just got a little bit of homework.
Some of us advanced to much more difficult levels of applied math,
which were university level at that point in time.
And others did regular math.
Today we call that differentiated learning.
It was advanced teaching,
and he was way ahead of his time.
This was some 40 plus years ago now.
But when I look back at it,
he really drove every one of us
to be our best selves;
to learn at the best rate and compliment us.
I admire him for that.
One of this teacher’s close friends, was my coach in rugby.
He had the same attitude about driving each one of us.
We would do these runs around the school property,
it was about a mile loop,
and he would time every single one of us and record our times.
And then every week he would say,
“Now look, Brendan you are getting a little bit slow
on Tuesdays and on Thursdays.
What is happening on Tuesdays and Thursdays?”
And he would break it down. And I would say,
“Well, I do not know.”
“Well, you need to think about it.
There must be something happening on
Tuesdays and Thursdays that is not happening
on the other days of the week.”
And he would say you need to do this or you need to do that.
Your stride is getting short.
You need to get a longer stride.
And he would just constantly coach us to the best of our ability.
Again, differentiated coaching
as opposed to differentiated learning.
The reason I tell you this is because each of them pushed us to our limits,
drove us to our limits and got the best out of us.
When we hear in today's gospel
that the spirit drove Jesus into the desert to be tempted,
it seems rather shocking.
What are you doing?
Why would God do this, whoa?
The Spirit is meant to be working with God?
That is the very point, the Spirit is working with God,
the spirit pushed in this case,
the word they used is “drove” Jesus into the desert.
You could also say being pushed to that.
He came to confirm what he already would know.
The word used here is translated as “tempted,”
but in most other translations, it is translated as “tested.”
The original Greek word is actually more to test than to tempt.
It is interesting that in Mark's gospel,
he was more into testing by the spirits.
What do we do when we test?
What is the purpose of a test to evaluate your ability?
A teacher gives you a test to validate
that you already know something.
It is not to teach you something.
The test does not teach you anything.
A test only evaluates or confirms what you already know.
Jesus was driven into the desert by the Spirit to be tested,
to confirm what he already knew.
And what did he already know?
That he was the divine Son of God.
And that while he was also human,
he was driven by the spirit to confirm what he already knew.
And he did that for 40 days.
Now the part that is super important is the last sentence,
the last phrase of this sentence in this first paragraph.
It says, “And the angels minister to him”.
In other words, he does not do this alone.
God does not leave even his only son to be in the desert alone,
to be tested alone, he is ministered to by the angels.
Why is it so important to break this open so carefully?
Because as we enter our Lenten journey,
and we too are driven by the same spirit.
We too are asked to be tested to confirm what we already know.
That we are our sons and daughters of God,
but that the spirit drives us to do that so
that we can confirm it for ourselves.
But we do not do it alone.
God does not leave us alone in this journey.
The angels are messengers from God,
and they come in different forms.
Angels could be surrounding us right now;
it could be our spouse, a messenger from God
who accompanies us on the journey of Lent.
And that way, in a sense, we can all be angels to one another.
We can all be messengers of God to each other as a community.
We journey together ministered to by the angels,
driven by the spirit now and at a church.
Lent gives us three tests, if you would, to do this:
prayer, fasting, and almsgiving,
what I called the three lights in darkness on Ash Wednesday
because I think that we are called in the midst of our lives.
We often get a dark spot.
And the lights enable us to see in the midst of the dark.
Today, we are in the desert.
We recognize there are three tests
to confirm what we already know.
Number one is that we are called to prayer.
And again, this is not a temptation, it is a test.
It is to encourage us to confirm what we know,
that which we already have been given in our baptism,
that we are sons and daughters of God, beloved by God.
We do not have to do anything to be loved by God.
We are loved by God first,
and it is out of that love that we do these next two:
fasting and almsgiving.
Now the fasting is to sharpen our skills
to be able to affirm what we know.
There are a lot of voices out there
telling us that you have to do this
or you have to own this, or you have to look like this to be loved.
Those are the temptations that we will see in the other gospels.
The three temptations are:
you are what you have,
you are who other people say you are,
and you are what you do.
This is simply a test that to remind ourselves that God loves us
without having to do, be or say anything.
Once we accept prayer and fasting and we have got that,
then what we are called to share it,
because that is a pure gift.
Almsgiving is sharing and not keeping
this gift of God's love to ourselves.
And so we share it with others by loving them,
by helping them pass the test
so that they can know that they are loved,
not because of what they do say or are,
but by the mere fact that they were created by God
and that they are a son or a daughter of God.
So today, as we come to the Eucharist
and begin this first Sunday of Lent,
we come committing ourselves,
committing ourselves to allow the spirit to drive us
into the desert for the next 40 days
and to allow the angels to minister to us
through prayer, fasting and almsgiving.
To know and to confirm what we already know,
and to deepen that knowledge,
to say that I am a child of God,
I am the beloved son or the beloved daughter.
That God loves me just the way I am.
And the spirit drove Jesus into the desert.
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