THE TEMPTATION TO RENOUNCE HUMANITY
The Rev. Stephen Elkins-Williams
Readings for February 21, 2024: Reflecting on the First Sunday in Lent
Today’s passage from Matthew recounts in more detail Jesus’ temptation encounter with Satan in the wilderness, which we heard about briefly in Mark’s account on Sunday.
At the conclusion of his long fast, Jesus was tempted to leave behind his humanity and to claim his divinity. The devil encouraged him to turn stones into bread, to tempt God, to rule over the kingdoms of the world. “If you are the Son of God,” the devil taunted, then prove it. But Jesus chose to retain his humanity, to be hungry and vulnerable and not to seize power and control.
This was not Jesus’ final temptation of course. That came in the garden at Gethsemane, the night before he died, when he was again tempted to renounce his humanity and avoid the suffering and death that lie before him. It continued on the cross: “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross!” Each time Jesus declined the easy escape. Each time he refused to renounce his humanity.
We are also challenged on the threshold of this Lenten season to unite ourselves with Jesus on his journey to the cross, which involves facing our temptations to renounce our humanity. We too, no less than Jesus, are urged by “Satan and all the forces of wickedness” to rebel against God. We are impelled by the evil powers of this world to “corrupt and destroy the creatures of God”. We are driven by our sinful desires to let them “draw [us] from the love of God.” Although we renounce all of these tempters each time we renew our Baptismal Covenant, persevering each day in resisting evil is much more difficult. It is even harder, of course, when in the rush of day-to-day living, we do not even recognize these promptings as temptation. We do not see them as urges to renounce our humanity.
The Ash Wednesday service articulates some of these temptations: not to forgive others, to envy others more fortunate than ourselves, to be negligent in prayer and worship, to be blind to human need and suffering, to be indifferent to injustice and cruelty, to be contemptuous of those who differ from us, to waste and pollute God’s creation. In these and many other ways, we are prompted to take control and to flee from our human identity.
Lent is a time for us to recognize these temptations, to unite ourselves with Jesus in refusing to renounce our humanity, and whenever we sin, to “repent and return to the Lord.” It is most of all a time to refocus on Jesus, to unite ourselves with his victory over sin and death, to believe that “it is he that hath made us [and redeemed us] and not we ourselves.” To God be the glory.
