Homily on Mark 1: 12- 15

There was a deacon who was going to a meeting at a church which didn't have much off- street parking in a crowded part of town, and he was running a little late. He circled the block and circled the block looking for a parking place, without any luck.

Finally he decided to park in a spot that was clearly marked as "No Parking" and put a note on his windshield that said: "I am Deacon Bob and I'm going to a meeting at the church across the street. I circled the block for 10 minutes and couldn't find a spot. If I don't park here I'll miss my meeting." And the note ended with: "Forgive us our trespasses."

When the deacon came back from his meeting an hour or two later his note was gone, and it has been replaced by this note: "I am traffic control officer John. I have circled this block for 10 years. If I don't give you a ticket I'll lose my job." And it ended with: "Lead us not into temptation." Underneath the note was a $40 parking ticket.

Our Gospel today gets us thinking about temptation because that is what Jesus experiences in the desert. We hear today Mark's quite-abbreviated version of Jesus' temptation right after He is baptized and the Spirit "drives" Him-- other translations might say "lead Him"--into the desert where He fasts for 40 days and is tempted.

Mark doesn't describe the temptations but if we look at Luke or Matthew we see that they involve having Satan tell Jesus to turn rocks into leaves of bread when He has been fasting and is hungry, or having Jesus go up to the top of the Temple and throw himself off, so that the Angels will rescue him. Or, probably the most difficult one of all. Satan shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world-- which Jesus has come to claim for His Father-- and tells Jesus He can have them all if He will just worship Satan. The idea, of course, is that Jesus could in that way accomplish His mission without having to endure death by crucifixion.

Jesus resists all the temptations, of course, which really doesn't surprise us. Not only is Jesus perfect as a human being, but He is also God-- the second Person of the Trinity-- and the idea that God is stronger than Satan seems obvious.

So if it is such a foregone conclusion that Jesus will be able to resist anything the devil can throw at Him, why does the Spirit lead, or "drive," Jesus out into the desert to be tempted?

As I reflected on that question, I was reminded of a story about a railroad engineer who designed bridges for trains in the late 19th century in the American southwest. The country was rough and he had to design bridges to cross gorges, gullies, canyons and such. One time he designed a bridge which had a particularly long span, and after the bridge was done he had the construction crew put double the load on the bridge that it would ever have to carry-- engines, boxcars and such. Of course, the bridge span handled that double load just fine.

One of the workers said to the engineer: "So were you doing that to test whether or not the bridge would hold that kind of load?"

"No," said the engineer. "I designed the bridge and did all the calculations, which told me for sure that the bridge would hold the load. I just had to see it for myself."

And maybe that's what was going on with Jesus too. He knew who He was, and intellectually He knew He could deal with whatever Satan might send His way. But there is something about experiencing that reality-- having that experiential knowledge that lodges in your gut and you just know you can do something.

Jesus was beginning a mission that would end in His death and resurrection. There would be temptations along the way, not the leas of which would be the idea that He could achieve His objective without being crucified. That's the kind of thing Peter proposes, when he tells Jesus that He doesn't need to die-- and Jesus says the same thing He said in the desert-- "get behind me Satan."

So Jesus needed to be rock-solidly sure that He could resist all those temptations-- know in His gut that He could do it-- just like those folks at the Olympics, the skiers or snowboarders and such-- they can't "throw down a 1440," as they say, without believing absolutely that they can. Any doubt would be fatal.
So the temptation in the desert might well have been designed to show Jesus at a core level that He could take anything the devil could throw at Him.

But what does that mean for all the rest of us, who also are tempted too. We are far from perfect humans, and we certainly aren't the Second Person of the Trinity-- God. After all, we need confidence too. If when we get out of bed and start the day we have in the back of our mind that there are temptations that we're going to get that we can't resist, that we can't overcome-- we've pretty-much lost the battle already.

So where do we get the confidence to do what Jesus did-- to resist whatever Satan throws at us? The good news is that we get to participate in Jesus' victory, not in our own strength, of course, since that is never enough, but by seeking the same source of strength that sustained Jesus-- by asking for God's grace.

We are reminded of Paul, who when he was being tested by a thorn in his flesh--some sort of temptation-- three times asked God to take the temptation away, and God told Paul, as Paul recounts in his second letter to the Corinthians, that "my grace is sufficient for you..." So the source of our confidence is to know always that God's grace is there for us, is sufficient to deal with whatever temptation we might face.

Our challenge is to have the will to ask God for that grace.