Lent I
Bishop Ray R. Sutton

There’s an old English proverb that “one shouldn’t try to sip soup with the devil through a long spoon.” It’s too dangerous. It seems Satan’s craft often lures people into communing with him at a distance. He tempts them just to taste his delicacies with a long spoon. But before long, he’s trapped the person sipping at the other end of the long handle. It’s like the little three-year old girl who was caught red-handed with her hand in the cookie jar and her mouth full of cookies. When her mother asked for an explanation, she calmly explained, “I just climbed up to smell the fresh cookies, and my tooth got caught.” Sounds like a similar statement made by Adam and Eve when God caught them in the garden.

Instead, temptation should be dealt by decisively and definitively saying no to temptation. The problem is that the devil’s temptation is always so subtle that it doesn’t look like a temptation. And so, we begin Lent by having to face Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness. Today’s Gospel lesson reveals three different temptations extended to Jesus. Each offers us a glimpse of the long spoon of the devil.

The first temptation of Satan concerned needful things, for it touched a very real need of Jesus, hunger. In the midst of a forty day fast, Satan challenged Jesus to turn stones into bread. He tempted the Lord with something needful. Jesus could have done what Satan asked. There was a need, but necessity is not enough to obey Satan. This temptation of Christ was quite accurately portrayed in a movie not too long ago, Needful Things.  It’s about Satan’s visit to a New England town. He goes about the town enticing people with what they need. In exchange, they must wear an evil talisman that makes them a loyal subject to the devil. The effect of dealing with the devil is devastating. For example, one arthritic lady is portrayed as crippled on the outside but beautiful on the inside. After she puts on the talisman, she becomes gorgeous externally but a hideous person to be around. And so, the devil offers to sip soup with him through a long spoon by appealing to our basic needs, convincing us that we deserve them, offering to meet them in exchange for a piece of our soul. Christ’s response was to tell Satan, “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (4:4). The real need, in other words, is spiritual food.

Second, Satan tempted with promised things. The devil took what God the Father promised, care and protection, and baited Christ to presume upon God with His very own promise. He took Jesus to the top of the temple, told Him to throw Himself down and trust that angels would catch Him (Matt. 4:5-6). Satan wanted Christ to put Himself in harms’ way thereby reversing who serves whom. Instead of Jesus doing the Father’s will, the devil wanted the Father to do what Jesus wanted. The temptation was to presume on God with His promises.

The sin of presumption is quite serious and arrogant. Satan seeks to draw humans into presuming upon God, using God’s promises to force Him to do what they want. A few years ago a preacher crawled into the prayer tower of a school he founded and told the world he would fast and not come down until God provided over a million dollars. Thankfully, a dear soul gave the money and spared the death of this presumptuous preacher. God wants us to trust His promises but He does not desire for us to attempt to manipulate Him. The line is fine between promise and presumption but it is one that a believer must not cross.

Finally, Satan tempted Christ with hopeful things. He took Christ to another high place, this time an “exceeding high mountain.” He showed Christ everything this world has to offer and told our Lord that He could have it all if only He would worship the devil. The irony is that Jesus would have it all any way. But the temptation was to get Jesus to trade what would eventually be His for immediate gratification. God wants us to learn to wait. Satan wants us to act precipitously. And so he preys on our hopes. He offers them to us all the while getting us to worship him.

It’s like the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, the title of Robert Browning’s famous poem. You may remember the story on which the poem is based. A Medieval European town was overrun with rats. An odd character came to town promising to rid the village of their rats for a hundred guilders. To make a long story short, he played a tune on his flute and led the rats out of town. When he approached the mayor for his fee, the mayor would not pay. So the pied piper played another melodic tune on his pipe and led all of the children out of town into a mountain never to be seen again. Only one little boy who was lame on one foot and could not keep up escaped the lure of the pied piper. He later told the parents what he had heard when the piper played. The piper’s tune was about a land where all things were beautiful, the people brilliant. In this land, the dogs ran faster, bees didn’t sting, horses flew with eagle’s wings, and no one was ever sick.  So we must be careful when Satan offers us our hopes. He always has a price and the price is ultimately our soul. There’s nothing wrong with true hope as long as we don’t have to worship the devil or sip soup with him through a long spoon.

George MacDonald once observed, “That men may rise above temptation, it is needful that they should have temptation.” And so we will be tempted. But when we are, let us learn from our Lord. In the final analysis, Jesus quotes Holy Scripture to offset Satan’s misuse of the Word of God. If we come away with one simple lesson on how to avoid sipping soup with the devil through a long spoon it is to know Holy Scripture and put it to good use against the whiles of the devil. May we learn a little more about how to resist temptation this Lent. Amen.