"When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time" (Lk. 4:13).

We read from Luke’s Gospel this morning the familiar account of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, one of the Scriptural models for our own Lenten practice of the forty day fast. At the prompting of the Holy Spirit, Jesus withdraws into the desert after his baptism, and is tempted by the devil; a temptation which immediately precedes the beginning of his public ministry. So far, so familiar; yet Luke’s unique account of the temptation has a particular perspective on these events, reflected in the details of his Gospel.

In Matthew’s Gospel, there are three temptations: for Jesus to turn stones into bread, to cast himself down from the Temple, and to worship the devil. Yet in Luke’s Gospel as we have heard it today the order differs, as the temptation at the pinnacle of the Temple in Jerusalem is the last and culminating temptation of the three. Luke’s order probably does not reflect his belief that tempting God is worse than worshiping the devil, but rather a belief in the particular importance of Jerusalem and the events which were later to take place there: Jesus’ arrest, trial, and crucifixion. He places the events in this order because he wishes the third and final one to take place in Jerusalem, the scene of a later and even more profound crisis in Jesus’ life.

Luke gives us another clue in the mention of the devil. "When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time". The "opportune time" is the time of testing in Jerusalem, when Jesus struggles with his mission and the will of God. The "trial" or "temptation" theme is common in the Gospel tradition about Jesus’ final journey to Jerusalem; in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus says to his disciples, "Pray that you may not come into the time of trial" (Lk. 22:39). But Luke alone portrays Jesus’ betrayal as the work of the devil: "Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was one of the twelve" (Lk. 22:3). The betrayal sets in motion all that is to follow: the struggle with God’s will in the Garden ("Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done."), and the struggle with evil that Jesus’ trial and crucifixion represent.

Christian sermons are not supposed to be about evil, or about the devil; they are about Good News, the victory of God in Christ. Some Christians are misled into making a hunt for wickedness, or a fascination with others’ evil, into the main point of the Gospel. Yet the role which the devil, and the struggle with evil, plays in our reading and in the Gospel of Luke as a whole, gives us a chance to say something about them.

The devil, of course, is a rather absurd cultural commonplace; horns and pitchfork and all that. This cultural commonplace has an ability to morph as well; hardly a year passes in which the film media does not re-tell the story of the devil in our own day (with Al Pacino, I notice, playing the role most recently: talk about a fascination with "the world, the flesh, and the devil"!).

Yet the personification of evil in the "fallen angel" of Christian tradition keeps a few truths in our sight: that evil is a spiritual issue (as the angels themselves are spiritual); that evil is intensely personal, coming from decisions made by persons (even if they are tempted); and that evil is not an abstraction or an illusion but that it is real. God has made nothing but good; yet God’s good creation from the highest to the lowest order is in rebellion, or caught up in its effects. When Jesus struggles with evil in the Desert, and in the Garden, he is engaged in a real life and death struggle. And so are we; as we prayed in the Litany this morning, "from all evil and wickedness; from sin; from the crafts and assaults of the devil… Good Lord, deliver us".

Here is where we come to the Good News. "Death and life have contended in that combat stupendous: the Prince of life, who died, reigns immortal", are the words of the old Latin hymn for Easter. To which we might add the words of Martin Luther’s hymn that we sing today, "the prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him; his rage we can endure, for lo! his doom is sure". It is with this note that all Christian preaching, and the proclamation of the Gospel, ends. Jesus has triumphed over evil, over sin and death; now there is for us his disciples new life, and the ability through grace to begin to lead the new life now.

Our Gospel this Lent, in Luke’s version, keeps us firmly focused on the struggle of the Christian life; but neither does it let us lose sight of our destination as Christians. Jesus is the pattern, Jesus the one we are following; and he is the one who leads us to new life.

The Rev’d John Bauerschmidt is Rector of Christ Church in Covington.

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