Each year on the first Sunday of Lent the liturgy presents us with one or other of the gospel texts narrating the testing of Jesus. In the synoptics the testing narrative is situated at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, and they agree as to the place – in the desert, and on the role of the Spirit, and on a forty-day duration, but otherwise they each differ in their respective accounts.

In Luke, as in Matthew, the testing of Jesus is presented imaginatively in the format of a typical rabbinic debate, with questions and answers – the answer in each case grounded in a scriptural statement as the final word. The three ways in which Jesus is tested are symbolic, representative of varied and ongoing challenges in life.  Although often called “The Temptations of Jesus,” as though Jesus were being tempted to sin, the gospel core is actually concerned with a different kind of testing, a testing related to Jesus’ identity and the struggles he would later encounter in his ministry. At the heart of the threefold question, “If you are the Son of God…,” lies the central issue of identity.

There is a particular link between this gospel passage and our own journey in life as we struggle to become more authentic followers of Jesus. In this season of chapter, we are invited to refocus on what ‘being mercy’ means today. If we explore the three dialogues in Luke’s gospel passage we can find some possible clues. In the first dialogue Jesus, vulnerable because starving, is challenged to use his identity to enhance his personal status: “Tell these stones to turn into bread.” His response, “One does not live by bread alone,” reinforces for us the question of finding ways of entering more deeply into what can nourish our true sense of identity.

In the second dialogue, where Jesus is challenged to use his power in the services of the tempter, rather than remaining rooted in God, we are reminded that chapter processes invite us to be centred in the God of mercy, and not in alternative sources of power. If we reformulate the response Jesus gives to the tempter, to “worship the Lord our God,” and serve God alone, as synonymous with the invitation to become centred in the God of mercy, we can see how this invitation offers a very different source of power from that offered by the tempter.

In the third and final testing, in which Jesus is invited to cast himself from the pinnacle of the temple, the scriptural response of “you must not test the Lord your God,” has as its background an incident in the Exodus, where the quarrelling Israelites were haranguing Moses, challenging him as to whether the Lord was among them or not. This question of God’s presence was one that Jesus was destined to face many times, reaching a climax in his sense of abandonment on the cross. It is a question that we too will face, both collectively and individually, in the days ahead – is God really with us?

In a word, the central challenge of this gospel passage concerns the testing of Jesus as to his true identity, through challenging him to turn away from his mission to alternatives that looked attractive and full of promise. As we prepare to begin our Lenten journey 2013 perhaps we also might carry with us a threefold question:
• What constitutes our mercy identity?
• In whom is it rooted?
• How can the word of God nourish and illuminate our journey?

Carmel McCarthy rsm
South Central Province