Into The Desert

There was a time, as many of you know, after my first wife asked me to leave the house, that I found myself living in a small trailer. At the time, I was disabled due to a back injury, so I wasn’t able to get out much. This was a period of profound depression for me. For a while, my closest friends would stop by to visit me. But you know, it’s kind of a drag to hang around a depressed person, and after a while, the only friend who came by to visit with any kind of regularity was Paul, who passed away a few years ago. I think God must make it a drag to hang around depressed people on purpose, because, being alone, I was forced to take a much needed moral and spiritual inventory, and I came out of it much stronger.

I think that’s why Jesus, after being baptized by his cousin John, and keenly aware of his mission and how things would inevitably turn out, felt moved to go off into the desert by himself for forty days. According to the Gospel According to Luke, Jesus went into the desert and spent his days in fasting and in prayer. This was before he had begun his mission and he no doubt, had much to occupy his thoughts.

According to many scholars, it is believed that Jesus had spent a good deal of time living in a community of ascetics in Qumran (Koom-RAN) known as the Essenes (Es-SEENS). The Essenes were a pacifistic sect of Judaism who believed that the spiritual world, the real world to their way of thinking, was in a constant state of battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. Since Jesus left this community, it can be assumed that he felt there was some aspect to the Essene philosophy that was lacking. He, no doubt, needed to find some sort of synthesis between the beliefs of the Essenes and the more traditional beliefs of the Jewish community in which he was raised. The forty days of lent which most Christians observe today, is a feeble attempt to imitate Jesus in this retreat from the company of his family and community to figure things out.

Now as I say time and time again, it doesn’t really matter if the story of his time in the desert in an accurate account of what transpired there. It rather parallels the story of Moses going up on the mountain of God for forty days in order to receive the law. There is still something to be learned from this story no matter what your belief system, indeed, whether or not you even believe in God.

It is at the end of these forty days, when Jesus certainly knew what he was going to do and teach, when, according to the story, the devil came to him in order to tempt him. The word translated here as the devil, means “one who slanders or backbites”. Certainly once any of us decides to do something, there are those around who are ready to make fun of us, or try to talk us out of whatever we are planning. It always seems to be that whenever I go on a diet there is someone around who says, “Oh go on, one little piece of cake won’t hurt you.” Anyway, it is at the END of these forty days, when Jesus is at his weakest, that the devil comes to him to tempt him three times. And those temptations the devil presents to Jesus I find to be the same temptations that come to us whenever we try to make a positive change in our lives. I like to think of them as the three Ds.

The first D is for DESIRE. After forty days of fasting I’m sure even gefilte fish and matzos must be looking pretty good to Jesus about now. He had to be hungry as hell. So, according to the story, the devil says, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” To which Jesus answers, “It is written, man does not live by bread alone.” And what we see here is our desire for comfort over hardship. I can remember plenty of mornings when I was warm and comfortable in bed when the alarm went off and the last thing I wanted to do was to get up and go for a run. But somehow I would force myself to get up anyway, get dressed, and head on out the door for five miles in the cold early morning air. You try to quit smoking, but then you finish dinner and that ciggie is screaming your name. You know you want it. We all would rather have pleasure than pain, that’s for sure. But nothing is ever gained without some kind of sacrifice, and giving in to our desires all the time will just make us all fat and lazy. There is something about us that needs MORE than food and drink and creature comforts. So if we want to make any progress in our own mission, we have to learn to say no to our desires from time to time.

The second D is for DECEPTION. We love to deceive ourselves. After refusing the devil’s first temptation, Jesus is taken to the top of a tall mountain. According to the story, from here he is able to see all the kingdoms of earth in a single instant. Here, Satan says, “I shall give to you all this power and their glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I may give it to whomever I wish. All this will be yours, if you will honor me.” Now it should be remembered regarding this story, that Jesus, being the Messiah, the Christ, was already guaranteed a kingship. But he also knew that kingship was going to come at a pretty high price. He would have to suffer terribly and die horribly on a cross. Satan was offering him a worldly kingship without any of the suffering, and he clearly had the power to deliver it. But Jesus was aware that this worldly kingship could only be temporary at best. He answers, “It is written: ‘You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall you serve.’”

How many times do we try to find a shortcut to our goals? We want all of the gain with none of the pain. Look at the successful diet pill industry. Everybody wants a way to lose weight without having to go through the pain of dieting. Everyone wants to find the exercise machine that will give us the perfect body without having to go through the pain of exercise. Moreover, we all want it right now. We don’t want to weight. And deep down, we know those things don’t work, but we convince ourselves that perhaps this time, this one might actually be different. Perhaps this pill, this machine, will do as it promises. It never does.

Moreover, we lie to ourselves all the time, making excuses to do those things that are obstacles to what we want to accomplish. Well, one piece of candy won’t hurt, or I can smoke just one cigarette, or one little drink won’t hurt me. I’m too sore to work out today, or I’m just too tired to go to school tonight. There is no end to the number of lies we can use to deceive ourselves. But we just push ourselves further away from our goals. I remember taking the beginning philosophy class in college. The professor discussed the process of rationalization, the ways we convince ourselves to do things, or not do things. Even then, it seemed to me that rationalization was just a means of lying to ourselves, and if you can’t trust yourself, what have you got? You can’t keep fooling yourself and accomplish those goals you have set for yourself. If you think you can, you’re just fooling yourself, and THAT’S deception.

The third D is DOUBT. After Jesus refuses the devil a second time, Satan takes Jesus to a high tower on the walls of the city of Jerusalem and says, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you,’ and: ‘With their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone.’” To this Jesus reminds the devil that it is also written that you should not test God. But I’m sure it might have crossed Jesus’ mind what if he wasn’t the messiah? What if this was all in his head? Maybe he should call upon his Father to prove it to him. That way he would know he was on the right path. But Jesus WAS sure of himself. He had faith in his mission. And so the devil, defeated, finally leaves Jesus alone…at least for a few years.

The best story I can think of regarding these feelings of doubt regards my dad when he was younger. When my dad was a young man, he was a musician, and a good one. He had his own band, and he had performed on the radio. He could play the violin, the piano, but was especially good on the saxophone and the clarinet. He was good enough to get an audition to play with one of the biggest big bands of that time. To be honest, I can’t recall if it was an audition for Harry James, the Dorseys, or Gene Krupa, but it was one of those guys. Anyway, my dad told me the story that he sat in the auditorium and watched guys go up on stage to audition, and those guys all seemed so good to him, that he got up and left before he even got his chance. He just didn’t feel that he could measure up to those guys. So he never got his shot at the big time, because he lost faith in himself.

I know so many people who have not gone on to college, or dropped out, because they just didn’t think they were smart enough. I know people who have wanted to run a marathon, but have never tried, because they don’t think they could ever finish one. So many people are defeated before they ever start. I think we’re stronger than we give ourselves credit for being. We can do amazing things, if we just have the faith, and not just faith in God, but faith in ourselves. I can remember sitting in classrooms at university and thinking that I would never be as smart as those professors in front of me. They seemed to know everything. But I just kept on going, one class at a time, until I finally finished and got my diploma. And I still have a hard time believing that I’m smart at all. Maybe that’s because my brother and sister are much smarter than I am. I always felt like the dummy in the family. But then, from time to time, people tell me I’m smart. So who knows? I do know this. You can’t accomplish anything unless you believe you can.

These three Ds seem to get in the way of so much we want to accomplish. They are the same three Ds that Satan used against Jesus. And those Ds are mighty tempting. We will never amount to much of anything until we learn to overcome them. Maybe that’s what is so important about lent. We can take these forty days and exercise our ability to face our own demons and defeat them. We can use these forty days to prove to ourselves that we can be who we want to be and do the things we want to do. Whether or not this story about Jesus in the wilderness is true or not, it still contains the core of truth about the human condition. We have to overcome these three Ds in order to make the most of our lives here. There is a verse to that famous Woody Guthrie song, “This Land is Your Land” that most people never hear. It goes like this:

Nobody living can ever stop me

As I go walking this freedom highway

Nobody living can make me turn back

This land was made for you and me

Somehow I think that says it all.