The Desert

In the beginning of his Gospel, Luke tells the story of John the Baptist and Jesus in parallel.

We first read about the angel appearing to Zechariah and then to Mary. Then follows the story of Elizabeth and Mary. After that come the depictions of the birth of John and then of Jesus. Finally,  Jesus goes to the Temple as a 12 year old boy to present himself to the Jewish leaders and John goes to the desert to present himself to the people.

At that point, John's ministry births that of Jesus when, as John is baptizing Jesus, the Holy Spirit descends upon Him in the form of a dove.

What comes next is intriguing. John goes to prison and Jesus goes into the desert. John's ministry ends and Jesus' begins. But how?

His purpose is to discover what being "my beloved son," as he was called during his baptism, means for his life. There he encounters visions that offer various routes to living out the call: to be a provider like Moses, a political king like David or a sacrificial offering and trust that God would do for him what he did for Abraham and Issac.

The Scriptures call these "temptations," but they can't be all bad because Jesus actually did all of them in His ministry. He fed the five thousand and lived out the choice to "command that these stones become loaves of bread." He toyed with the idea of political power by entering Jerusalem to the cries of "Hosanna to the Son of David" and stirred the hopes of the people that He would be their King. Finally, He decided to "throw (himself) down from the parapet of the Temple" by going to the cross willingly.

I think what made these "temptations" was that they were conceived in private. He was being tempted to "try out" His powers before putting them on display for the people. Was God really going to come through for Him?

That's the challenge of faith for us in a nutshell. Is God going to come through for us?

Yes, as Jesus found out, but it may not be in quite the way we expect. John was beheaded by Herod and Jesus was nailed to a cross by Pilate. The angels did not intervene in the Passion so that "he would not dash his foot against a stone." But after the three days of tension, Jesus rose. He lives! And because He lives, we do, too. We just have to make it through the three days...