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The First Sunday In Lent
Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted of Satan; Make speed to help thy servants who are assaulted by manifold temptations; and, as thou knowest their several infirmities, let each one find thee mighty to save; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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The First Sunday In Lent
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A Sermon by
Fr. Daniels
✛
Led by the Spirit
Collect for the First Sunday in Lent
Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted of Satan; Make speed to help thy servants who are assaulted by manifold temptations; and, as thou knowest their several infirmities, let each one find thee mighty to save; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The collect for the first Sunday in the Lenten season begins with a scriptural reference: “Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted of Satan…”
That episode was our Gospel reading at our morning services, from the Gospel of Luke: Jesus was “led by the Spirit into the wilderness,” being there for forty days, and then tempted by the devil. This story is reported in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, giving us reason to believe that the earliest Christian communities considered it to be a central event in the life of Jesus. There in the desert, he was tempted by the types of temptations that are perennial: using power for selfish purposes; seeking an increase in prestige; hoarding all the wealth and power one can get one’s hands on. Jesus was tempted but did not succumb, among other things telling the tempter that one does not live by bread alone, quoting from the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy (our first reading this evening). The collect goes on to entreat God for his salvation, for us his servants to be saved from the “manifold temptations” by which we are assaulted. It is, in my opinion, a beautiful prayer, in classical collect form: an address and then description of God; a supplication; and the invocation of Jesus as the mediator of our prayers, the one who gives us access to the Father in the Spirit.
It is also worth noting that the sending of Jesus, by the Spirit, into the wilderness, where he would be tempted, comes at a perhaps unexpected time. That is, in all three of those gospels, Jesus goes to the wilderness directly after his baptism. Now, performing baptisms is one of the great privileges of being a priest, and it is, without fail, a joyous occasion. Whether the baptismal candidate is the tiniest of babies or an adult who has decided to follow Jesus, there is rightfully a sense that it is a momentous event. Depending on the circumstances, right after those baptisms any number of things may happen: some people go have a celebratory party; others may simply go home with a warm glow. But none, as far as I know, have ever immediately been driven into the desert to be tempted by Satan.
And yet perhaps because these are joyous experiences we may lose track of what baptism entails. The Church has traditionally identified a link between the water of the Jordan River in which Jesus was baptized and the chaos that was the undifferentiated waters at the time of creation. The ancient Hebrews were very uneasy about waters and rivers and oceans. That is why there is that odd line in the Revelation of Saint John, when the writer says that he “saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea” (21:1). The oceans were no more in the new heaven and earth because chaos and danger and disorder were no more. It also bears mentioning that this is why Jesus walking on water was such a big deal. It showed that Jesus could do what, so far as they knew, only God himself could do: take control of the waters, minimizing their harm. There is also the parting of the waters at the exodus from Egypt, of course, and many other examples besides. God could do those things, perhaps, but people except Jesus could not: waters remained a menacing force in the days of the first heaven and first earth.
But it was precisely these chaotic waters that Jesus was plunged into at the moment of his baptism by John. At that moment that was the cusp of his public ministry, Jesus showed his willingness to undergo all of the experiences of the human beings that he has joined. As his body became covered with water—his mouth, then his nose, then his eyes, so that he could no longer breathe nor see—he showed what it would involve to enter fully into the teeming mass of humanity and to be subject to any and all of the forces of sin and evil. There was to be no remaining above the fray, for Jesus. He was not to be a well-intentioned prince, let’s say, benevolent but untouched. This very fact is emphasized in tonight’s reading from the epistle to the Hebrews, when it says, “For … he took not on him the nature of angels; but … the seed of Abraham.” And the children of Abraham are subject to all kinds of things.
When we think of his baptism that way then we can see, perhaps, how the Spirit driving him into the desert is an extension, rather than a contrast, of his baptism. Those “assault[s] by manifold temptations” that the collect talks about would be shared by Jesus, and he would bear certain infirmities, as people do, as well: not sin, in his case, but physicality, vulnerability, weakness.
It is because he did share those things—the wilderness time in the desert; the violence of society; even taking on himself the sins of the world, the sin he did not commit—that he is thus able to intercede for us with the Father. He can be the priest who brings our weaknesses and infirmities heavenward and pleads for our forgiveness. He is the merciful and faithful high priest who makes reconciliation for the sins of the people.
Perhaps that is why we invoke that experience of his at the beginning of the collect for the first Sunday in Lent. As if we’re reminding God: your blessed Son, the one whom you described as “beloved” at the moment of his baptism, was also tempted, as we are. So please look at him and his life—not us and ours—when passing judgment. The Jesus who was tempted is the Jesus who can help those who are tempted, the Word of God made flesh, a human being without remainder.
We entreat our heavenly Father in this lovely collect, as befits the days that are beginning this Lenten season. We entreat him for his help, that we may resist temptation the way our Lord did. And then, knowing that our resistance may not be sufficient, we entreat him for his mercy.
