21st February 2010 - "The Son of Man is going his appointed way"

Stephen Fielding - St Mary's, St Peter's, Tewin and Ayot St Peter

Over the last few weeks we've heard that the gap between the rich and the poor has never been wider. In Britain the rich have got richer and the poor have got poorer. I mention this, not to make a political point ahead of a general election, but because our gospel writer Luke was himself immensely interested in the gap between riches and poverty, and has a special concern for the poor. It is true that he also had serious concerns for women, tax collectors, sinners, and those on the fringes of society, but a key concern was for the poor and the divide between those who are rich and those who have nothing.

I am focusing this morning on Luke because he is our gospel writer throughout the period of Lent which has just started, because those of us who have signed up to the bishops’ Lent course have been receiving e-mails or texts with a text from St Luke every day, and because the groups which are about to start this week will be looking at the Sunday gospel passage from Luke every week for the next six weeks.

So I want to take some time this morning just to look at the salient background points about Luke that all of us may want to bear in mind as we read or hear the gospel passage which is set for the day. So this is a kind of thumbnail sketch about Luke, an introductory word, before I go on to say something about the temptations of Jesus recorded very early on in his public ministry.

Two unique facts can be noted about Luke. First of all he was a Gentile. He did not come as every other New Testament writer did from among the Jews. He was probably a Gentile Christian from Antioch, civilised, cultivated, cultured, in command of the best Greek of any of the New Testament writers. And the fact that he was a Gentile colours the whole of the writing of his gospel, and in a moment I'll tell you why.

The second unique fact about Luke is this. He was the only gospel writer to write a sequel to his gospel. Matthew, Mark and John give us their gospels but they give us no further account of what came next or what happened later. But Luke gave us the Acts of the Apostles, the story of the early church, what happened after Jesus had ascended into heaven. And in the gospel and Acts we have the two longest writings in the New Testament. Where does the story of Luke end?  Not as with the other gospel writers in Jerusalem………. but in Rome - the word of the Lord reaches the very heart and centre of the Roman Empire, and all the themes in Acts are already foreshadowed in the gospel.

The coming of Jesus is seen as the dawn of a new age when God's promises will be fulfilled. And because Israel rejects Jesus, God's Word is taken to the Gentiles. The Word of God is preached first in the synagogues, and after Jesus is rejected the word passes to the Gentiles. Jerusalem is the goal of the story where there will be rejection certainly, but Jerusalem is also the place of eventual triumph.

‘The Son of Man is going his appointed way’.

And what is so encouraging for us is that nothing that we do can halt the progress of God's plan. Even where there is rejection, Jesus proceeds on his way. And meanwhile, Jesus equips the disciples for carrying on the preaching and teaching after his death.

So with that introduction we turn briefly to the temptations of Jesus that are the specific subject matter of the gospel reading from Luke this morning. Here is a really important example of Luke stressing the humanity of Jesus. One thing you do not worry about in the Gospel of Luke is the fact that Jesus is a man. Again and again Luke is concerned to show the humanity of Jesus. And here is Jesus alone in the wilderness.  He sets himself apart in the desert for a very long period, and over that period, as he must have explained to his disciples at some point for Luke to be able to take the story down, he is tempted in three ways to abandon the slow, obedient route which he knows to be his calling. First of all he is fasting, and he is famished. He is incredibly hungry. Will he succumb to turning the stones into bread? ‘If you can do it, why don't you?’  That's what the powerful urging of the inner voice is saying to him insistently. Well yes he is hungry, but he knows that a deeper hunger has to be satisfied. Bread alone is not enough. Secondly he is tempted by power. You can have all the kingdoms of this world. It is the desire of the megalomaniac through the ages. ‘You can have all this, why don’t you?’ But Jesus knows it is deeply wrong. He knows in fact that shortcuts like this are much too short, that humility is the true mark of leadership as it is also paradoxically of power. And finally there is the testing of God himself, and Jesus will have none of it.

These temptations are a struggle for Jesus as a man. We are to suppose that no temptation escaped him. Not just in that long period in the wilderness. But throughout his earthly life. It was a constant struggle to do the will of God. I think that's what must be meant by that curious little phrase at the end of the passage where Luke says ‘the devil departed, biding his time.’ The devil was always coming back, and Jesus always had to cope with him.

What encouragement can we draw from these temptations of Jesus? What strength can we obtain personally from thinking that Jesus was, like us, faced with these terrible temptations to do what we know to be wrong? To me the truly encouraging thing is that Jesus has been here before us. If he struggled, why should we be surprised that we are tempted and that we struggle? What the story of the temptations seems to show is that, if we are armed with the spirit, and we appeal to the spirit to help us, then we have the chance to fashion and shape our wills according to the divine will, to God's way or purpose. We can learn what it is to be truly human. That is the challenge for us this Lent, as the Son of Man goes ahead of us ‘on his appointed way’.

Amen