"Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil." (Matthew 4:1)

Matthew, alone among the three Evangelists who have an account of Jesus going into the desert after his Baptism, tells us that the purpose of his going was to be tempted by the devil. While Mark and Luke tell us that Jesus went into the wilderness and was tempted there, only Matthew makes this claim that the Spirit's leading was for the purpose of putting Jesus in the way of temptation.

It is hard for us to see temptation as a good thing, as something that God might will for someone - even for Jesus. We don't want to be tempted - or, at least, that's what we claim. Sometimes, I think, we welcome temptation and are all too prepared to yield to it when it comes. But should God will that we or Jesus be tempted? That's another matter.

But the writers of Scripture had no such problem with seeing God at work in the temptations or the suffering of Jesus. The Letter to the Hebrews puts it this way: "It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings." (Hebrews 2:10) That unknown writer agrees with Paul - as we hear him this morning in the Letter to the Romans - and with Matthew, that Jesus stands as the representative of the people of God, the one through whom God works to bring many - indeed all - humankind into abundant life. That is at least part of what the people of Israel understood the title "Son of God" to mean - God's chosen representative of the people, God's chosen King. And for Jesus to be that chosen one not only did he have to share in the common lot of humans - including temptations - but even in more intense temptations and sufferings than we ever need experience.

So Jesus was tempted and, unlike our mythical first parents - and unlike us - Jesus resisted the devil's temptations. The temptations are three - not only here in Matthew, but also in Luke and Mark. In describing the first temptation - to turn stones into bread - Matthew gives us a narrative detail not found in the other Gospels. The temptation came when Jesus was famished after fasting for forty days. It was in his weakness - in our weakness - in the places where we are vulnerable - that temptation comes. And the temptation was not to fulfill a need that isn't important. We all need to eat - Jesus no less than you or I. But, as Jesus would say later in Matthew's Gospel, "Is not life more than food?" Jesus saw this first temptation as the temptation to reduce us to the physical, to deny that fullness of being which includes not only the physical, but also the intellectual and emotional and spiritual dimensions. We do " not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God."

In the second temptation the devil, understanding that Jesus was well versed in Scripture, used Scripture to tempt him. If, after all, Jesus was - is - the Son of God, the promises that God made in Scripture should be true for him. So the devil dared him to test God's promises by throwing himself off the pinnacle of the Temple. But again Jesus resisted, again quoting from the Book of Deuteronomy. Jesus needed no proofs of God's love for him, no testing was required.

In the final temptation, the devil, who had in the first two kept his real intention unstated, revealed what he really wanted from Jesus - to make Jesus worship him. That is at the heart of temptation, for every temptation is in a sense a temptation to put something else in the place of God in our lives. And again Jesus resisted, quoting yet another verse from Deuteronomy. Only God is worthy of our worship, of the central place in our lives. Or to put it in another way, only with God in the center will we find our life's fulfillment.

Jesus victory over these three temptations provides us with a decent summary of how the people of God are to live. First, as people who know that we are more than physical, that we are created in the image and likeness of God, that we possess by God's gift an abundant life that can never be reduced to the physical and that this abundant life blossoms as we depend upon every word that comes forth from God. Second, as people who know ourselves be the beloved of God and need not test God's love. And, finally, as those whose lives are centered in God, who understand that with God at the center all the rest of life will come into its proper order.