The Temptation of Despair

The Revd Dr William Lamb
The First Sunday of Lent

10.30am

Choral Eucharist

Deuteronomy 26.1-11       Luke 4.1-13

Lent can be dangerous. Dangerous because we can so easily make it into a kind of ecclesiastical charade, a time when we try to make ourselves uncomfortable in some fiddling but irritating way: we give up chocolate or booze or sugar in our tea, in the hope that we may make ourselves feel rather guilty and miserable and therefore become exemplars of moral virtue. 

One of the great theologians of the Western Church is an African Christian, St Augustine of Hippo, the great doctor of grace who lived in the fifth century. This was a period of political instability, when Rome itself fell to the Visigoths in the year 410. The idea that the pax Romana might be disrupted was unimaginable to Roman citizens, just like the idea that there might be a war in Europe seems unimaginable to us. Augustine responded to this crisis by writing a treatise entitled The City of God. It takes the form of an extended meditation on the Book of Revelation, and drawing on the imagery of that curious text, Augustine draws a contrast between the earthly city and the heavenly city.

Right at the beginning of the book he uses a particularly striking phrase, the libido dominandi, the lust for domination. He says: ‘Therefore I cannot refrain from speaking about the city of this world, a city which aims at dominion, which holds nations in enslavement, but is itself dominated by that very lust for domination’. For Augustine, this lust for domination lies at the heart of our perennial temptation to sin. Augustine of course is the great theologian of the doctrine of original sin – but as we consider the three temptations, described in our gospel reading today, I want us to consider how each of these temptations illuminates different aspects of the libido dominandi, our perennial desire to seek control and domination, and the ‘will to power’ is often disclosed to us in manipulative, abusive, even violent behaviour.

The temptations begin with forty days in the wilderness, and the wilderness is symbol. It is a place of testing. Luke is reminding his listeners of the story of the Exodus and the account in Deuteronomy recording the forty years when the Israelites were tested in the wilderness. The temptations faced by Jesus mirror the temptations faced by the Israelites. The Israelites were hungry, and they began to grumble, and even when God provided manna for them in the wilderness, they continued to grumble. They sought to take more manna than they could possibly eat and hoard it away. They sought to assert their own control by accumulating more and more. They believed that by accumulating more and more possessions, they could overcome their sense of insecurity. And yet even though we have left a trail of destruction across the planet as we have sought to accumulate more and more material possessions, Jesus reminds us that ‘One does not live by bread alone’. This Lent we need to learn that endless accumulation of material possessions will never help us to overcome a sense of insecurity. We can only begin to counter our fears and anxieties by cultivating the life of faith, cultivating the soul.

Then the devil shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and says, ‘To you I will give their glory and all this authority…. if you will worship me’. This is the point when we see the will to power, with which I began, more clearly. We see this will to power in the insanity of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, captivated by a desire to leave a glorious legacy, regardless of the pain and destruction caused to innocent people. That desire, that will to power, is a dangerous and destructive idol.

You will be familiar with the story of the golden calf in the account of the Exodus. When Moses went up the mountain, the people began to grumble about whether they had chosen the right God. The consequence of their speculation was that they began to construct idols of their own. The story is a reminder of the way in which we can so easily fall prey to false Gods, money, beauty, power, war. The whole pantheon of ancient Gods are still there to seduce us by their easy answers, their half-truths masking suffering, the half-fulfilled desires which promising everything and deliver nothing. One of the unspoken tragedies of our lives is that human beings are still sacrificed to idols – we need to look no further than the streets of Kyiv. Jesus says, ‘It is written, Worship the Lord your God and serve only him’. Augustine recognised that the will to power, the libido dominandi, which lies at the heart of all idolatry is nothing other than the renunciation of love. The will to power is all about the assertion of self, while love is the surrender of self to others. To ‘worship the Lord your God and serve only him‘ discloses to each of us the secret of our hearts, our true love.

But the third temptation is perhaps the most intriguing. It is the temptation of despair. It comes last (and note that Luke has changed the order) because by this stage most of us have already tried the other two and found them wanting. The Book of Exodus tells that during their journey, the Israelites came to the wilderness of Sin and when they camped at Rephidim, they discovered that there was no water and they despaired. The people quarrelled with Moses and they complained against Moses, ‘Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?’ And they called the place Massah and Meribah because their quarrelling and despair put God to the test.

So Jesus is taken and placed on the pinnacle of the temple and told, ‘Throw yourself down from here’. Another word for pinnacle would be ‘the edge’. Jesus is pushed to the very edge – but he is not pushed over the edge. He does not despair. He says, ‘You do not put the Lord your God to the test’. In the face of all kinds of provocation, manipulation and violence, we do not despair. Think of the images last week of those Ukrainian women encountering a young Russian conscript, barely out of school, clearly confused and distressed. They feed him and phone his mum to let her know that he’s safe. Such an action, in its generosity, appeals to the best in us and shows us that we do not need to despair, and even though the current situation may not give us grounds for optimism, we can still hope.

The story of Jesus in the wilderness discloses to us three perennial temptations, which disclose to us the sometimes complicated and conflicted emotions in the human heart. As we ponder these three temptations, we are challenged to think again about our motives and our compulsions, our fears and anxieties, particularly the ones which manifest themselves in destructive patterns of behaviour.

Lent is not a period for us to wallow in our sins, or to pretend that it is wicked to be you. It is a time for us to put away our temptation to despair, and instead to cultivate the great theological virtues of faith, of hope, of love. Lent is a season of preparation for the mystery of Easter, and when we celebrate the paschal mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are drawn into a profound and challenging narrative in which faith is renewed, hope is restored, and love’s redeeming work is done. This is the mystery which we celebrate in this Eucharist. Amen.